Anna Lederman

MA, LPC

Pronouns: She/Her

Therapy for Teens and Adults Ready to Rewrite a Stuck Story

Steady, honest counseling where insight, values, and a little well-timed humor all have a place.

LET'S START HERE

There's a version of your story you've told so many times it stopped feeling like a story — it just feels like a fact about who you are: too much, not enough, the one who always messes this up. It shapes what you try, what you avoid, and how harshly you talk to yourself when things go sideways.
Underneath it there's usually something you actually want — to feel your feelings without being flattened by them, to say the hard thing out loud, to stop repeating a pattern you can name and still can't interrupt. Those are workable, and saying them out loud is where the work starts.

What would you say to someone who’s nervous or unsure about starting therapy?

The story you tell about yourself isn't the whole story — it's the version that got the most airtime. I'm Anna Lederman, a licensed professional counselor at Tides Mental Health, and much of my work is helping teens and adults find the parts that got left out. Sessions are warm, honest, and yes, sometimes funny. If that sounds like the kind of room you'd want to sit in, let's talk.

What It’s Like to Work Together

Sessions here feel less like a report-out and more like getting curious together. We'll slow down on the details that usually get skipped — when a pattern started, who was around, what you absorbed about yourself back then — because that's usually where the story got written.

From there we work in two directions. Narrative Therapy helps you separate yourself from the problem, so “I'm an anxious person” becomes “anxiety shows up when …” — and once it's outside of you, you can do something with it. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) turns the attention toward what genuinely matters to you, so your next steps get chosen on purpose instead of by default.

You'll also hear laughter in here. Humor isn't a way around the hard parts — it's what makes room for them, and it's often the first sign that something heavy has gotten a little more portable.

What does a session feel like?

Honestly? Like a conversation with someone paying very close attention. Nothing has to be performed — you can arrive scattered, or quiet, or unsure where to start, and we'll find the thread together. Some sessions are heavy. Some end with both of us laughing. Most have room for both.

Why I’m passionate about this work

I came to counseling as a second career, and what pulled me in hasn't changed: people are so much more than the story they've settled for. Watching someone say a truer, kinder version of it out loud for the first time is the part I never get tired of. Everyone deserves a place where that's possible.

Clinical Specialties

Anxiety and OCD – the loops, rituals, and what-ifs that quietly organize your day around avoiding a feeling
Depression and low mood — when motivation, energy, and interest have gone flat and willpower alone isn't moving them
Grief and loss — including the losses that don't get named as grief: a relationship, a role, a version of your future
Living with chronic illness — the fatigue, identity shifts, and quiet grief of a body that keeps setting new terms
Self-esteem and self-criticism — untangling who you are from the harshest thing you believe about yourself
Life transitions — starting over, changing direction, or rebuilding after a plan fell through
Relationships and communication — noticing what you do when closeness or conflict gets uncomfortable
ADHD — building systems and self-understanding that work with how your attention actually operates

Treatment Modalities

Narrative Therapy — step back from the story you've been handed about yourself, look at where it came from, and build a fuller one with room for your strengths in it.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — stop pouring energy into what's outside your control and put it toward what you value, so change outlasts the goal that started it.
Mindfulness practices — get out of your head and back into your actual life, so you can notice a feeling without immediately reacting to it.
Strengths-based work — spend real time on what you're already good at, because that's usually the raw material for whatever comes next.
Cognitive and dialectical tools (CBT and DBT) — practical skills for riding out an intense moment or testing whether a thought is telling you the truth.

Populations Served

Teens ages 14 and older
Adults across all life stages
Clients from diverse cultural backgrounds
People new to therapy, or returning after a first attempt that didn't stick
Teens and adults living with chronic illness or ongoing health conditions
Anyone in the middle of a major change — a move, a loss, a career shift, a new season

Training & Credentials

Education: Master of Arts, Clinical Mental Health Counseling — The Chicago School
Bachelor of Science, Accounting — University of New Orleans
Licensure: Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), State of Illinois
Certification: Clinical training at Clarity Clinic, Chicago — outpatient individual therapy with adults and adolescents, plus DBT-informed group facilitation in a partial hospitalization program
Member, American Counseling Association
Languages Spoken: Sessions conducted in English
Availability: In-person sessions in Chicago and telehealth for clients across Illinois — weekday afternoons and early evenings, plus Saturday mornings

You don't need a tidy explanation of what's wrong to begin. Most people arrive with a general sense that the story they're living in has gotten too small, and that's plenty to work with.
If a counselor who takes your inner world seriously — and still leaves room to laugh — is what you've been looking for, a free 15-minute consultation is a low-stakes place to find out.

Insurance We Accept

We accept most major insurance providers and offer several convenient payment methods to ensure accessibility for your care. We also offer various payment methods, including credit cards, bank transfers, and electronic payments.