Online therapist in Illinois · English & Albanian
A therapist who understands where you come from.
Online therapy for adults and teens in Illinois experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma, grief and life transitions, with particular experience supporting women, immigrants and people living between cultures. In English or Albanian.
Dr. Venera Bekteshi, PhD, MSW, MPA, MA, LCSW · Licensed in Illinois and Minnesota
In my own words
Dr. Venera Bekteshi
Licensed Clinical Social Worker · Licensed in Illinois and Minnesota
I know what it is to build a life in a second country, and to love two places at once. Many of the women I sit with know it too. You can be capable and successful and still carry a loss nobody around you can see. Therapy is a place to set some of it down, in whichever language it lives in.
What I help with
Six areas, one way of working.
Culturally responsive, trauma-informed and strengths-based, drawing on CBT and solution-focused techniques.
- Culturally responsive
- Trauma-informed
- Strengths-based
- CBT
- Solution-focused
- 01
Anxiety
The worry that keeps everyone else safe.
CBT-based help for the worry that never quite switches off.
About anxiety → - 02
Depression
When the color goes quiet.
Support when life feels heavy, flat or far away.
About depression → - 03
Trauma and PTSD
What happened, and what it left behind.
Paced, trauma-informed work on what happened and what it left behind.
About trauma and PTSD → - 04
Grief
Grief for people, places and the life you pictured.
Room to grieve a person, a place or the life you pictured.
About grief → - 05
Life transitions
The changes you chose, and the ones you didn't.
Steadying support through the changes you chose and the ones you didn't.
About life transitions → - 06
Acculturative stress
Belonging to two places, and fully to neither.
The stress of adapting to life in a new country.
About acculturative stress →
Immigration evaluations are not a therapy service here; they are offered separately through Forward With Dignity.
Who I work with
Adults and teens, wherever they are in Illinois.
Adults
Women, immigrants and people living between cultures
Individual therapy for adults carrying trauma, anxiety, grief or a change that came with a move, a marriage, a loss or a new country. You don't have to explain where you come from before we can begin.
- Women navigating family, work and identity
- First- and second-generation immigrants
- Anyone whose life crosses more than one culture
Adolescents
Teens caught between home and everywhere else
For teenagers growing up between their family's culture and the one at school, and for parents who want to understand them without losing what matters at home.
- Cultural and generational conflict
- Anxiety, low mood and school stress
- Parents included when it helps
“Always between two worlds.”
The title of a talk I gave in 2005 on the lives of Albanian American refugees. It's still the heart of my work.
Art: Claude Monet · Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer), 1890–91 · Art Institute of Chicago
About
Dr. Venera Bekteshi, PhD, MSW, MPA, MA, LCSW
I came to the United States from Kosovo, and my work has followed one question ever since: what helps people stay whole when their lives stretch across two worlds?
I co-founded the Albanian American Women’s Organization in New York, earned my PhD at Boston College studying how immigrant women cope with acculturative stress, and spent more than a decade teaching social work and mental health in the United States and the United Kingdom. Now I bring all of it to therapy, one person at a time.
- Illinois LCSW
- PhD & MSW, Boston College
- English · Shqip
Flas shqip.
Sessions are available in English and Albanian, so you can speak in the language your feelings first learned. Online, from anywhere in Illinois.
How it starts
Three steps, beginning with a free call.
- 1
Book a free 15-minute consultation
Pick a time on my calendar, or send a short note first and I reply within two business days. We can talk in English or Albanian.
- 2
A first session to understand you
We focus on understanding what brought you to therapy, agree on what you want help with, and talk through how we will work together.
- 3
Weekly sessions by secure video
From wherever you are in Illinois. Most people start weekly and space sessions out as things settle; we decide that together.
Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.
Book a free 15-minute consultation online, or send a short note first. I reply within two business days.
Book a free 15-minute consultation