Compassionate Virtual Counseling for Individuals and Couples

You may be the person other people depend on. You manage responsibilities, solve problems, care for family members, and try to keep relationships stable. From the outside, you may appear capable and dependable. Internally, you may feel exhausted, anxious, disconnected, or unsure how long you can continue carrying so much. Cherry Creek Therapy provides online therapy in Lakewood, Colorado, for adults and couples who need a private space to understand their emotions, relationships, and experiences. Jennifer Gardner, M.A., MFT-C, offers online individual therapy, couples counseling, marriage counseling, premarital counseling, trauma treatment, grief support, infidelity therapy, and help with a range of emotional and relational concerns. Virtual appointments allow you to receive personalized care from your home or another private location without commuting across the Denver metropolitan area.

Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation

When You Are the One Everyone Relies On

Being responsible and caring can become part of your identity. You may have learned that being useful, agreeable, productive, or emotionally composed was the safest way to maintain connection. You may now find it difficult to rest, ask for help, disappoint someone, or establish a boundary. Over time, this can contribute to:

• Anxiety

• Burnout

• Resentment

• Emotional exhaustion

• People-pleasing

• Perfectionism

• Difficulty identifying your own needs

• Unequal relationship roles

• Fear of conflict

• Chronic self-criticism

• Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions

• Disconnection from yourself

Therapy can help you understand how these patterns developed and whether they continue serving you. The goal is not to stop caring about other people. It is to create relationships and responsibilities that do not require you to repeatedly abandon yourself.

Why Lakewood Clients Choose Online Therapy

Online counseling makes it possible to receive consistent support without adding travel, traffic, parking, or another transition to your day. Virtual therapy may be helpful if you:

• Work from home

• Have a demanding schedule

• Commute within the Denver metropolitan area

• Have parenting or caregiving responsibilities

• Need greater scheduling flexibility

• Experience chronic illness, pain, or mobility limitations

• Prefer discussing personal concerns from a familiar space

• Want greater privacy

• Travel regularly within Colorado

• Need relationship-focused or trauma-informed treatment

• Have struggled to find the right therapist nearby

• Want to maintain consistency during changing circumstances

Online access also allows you to choose a therapist based on connection, therapeutic approach, and experience rather than office location alone. Clients must be physically located in Colorado during each virtual appointment.

Online Individual Therapy in Lakewood

Individual therapy provides space to focus on your experience without needing to protect, reassure, or take care of someone else. You may consider online individual counseling if you are:

• Feeling anxious or overwhelmed

• Experiencing depression

• Struggling with perfectionism

• Having difficulty setting boundaries

• Feeling responsible for everyone around you

• Recovering from trauma

• Grieving a loss

• Navigating a major transition

• Coping with chronic illness

• Processing miscarriage or reproductive loss

• Experiencing disordered eating

• Questioning religious beliefs

• Healing from religious trauma

• Struggling with self-esteem

• Repeating painful relationship patterns

• Seeking personal growth

Jennifer uses a systemic approach that considers how family, culture, relationships, identity, community, and earlier experiences influence present emotions and behavior. Therapy is not about blaming your past. It is about understanding what shaped you so you can respond more intentionally in the present.

Online Anxiety Therapy in Lakewood

Anxiety may convince you that you need to remain prepared for everything. You might overthink conversations, anticipate problems, take responsibility for other people’s reactions, or believe that making a mistake will have serious consequences. Anxiety may appear as:

• Persistent worry

• Physical tension

• Irritability

• Difficulty sleeping

• Perfectionism

• People-pleasing

• Avoidance

• Indecision

• Fear of disappointing others

• Trouble delegating

• Difficulty resting

• A need to remain in control

Online anxiety therapy can help you understand the experiences and beliefs beneath these responses. Jennifer may help you develop emotional-regulation skills, establish healthier boundaries, tolerate uncertainty, and approach yourself with greater compassion. The goal is not to become careless. It is to live without treating every uncertainty as an emergency.

Online Depression Therapy

Depression can make daily responsibilities feel heavy and meaningful activities feel distant. You may continue functioning while experiencing:

• Persistent sadness

• Emotional numbness

• Fatigue

• Low motivation

• Isolation

• Loss of interest

• Hopelessness

• Difficulty concentrating

• Changes in sleep or appetite

• Harsh self-criticism

• Feelings of worthlessness

• Disconnection from your identity

Online depression therapy provides room to explore what is contributing to these feelings and what kind of support could help. Treatment may include understanding emotional patterns, addressing isolation, reconnecting with values, and identifying manageable changes that support greater engagement with life.

Online Therapy for Boundaries and Self-Care

Boundaries are not punishments or demands that control another person. A healthy boundary communicates what you need, what you are willing to participate in, and what you will do to protect your well-being or relationship. You may benefit from boundary-focused therapy if you:

• Agree to things you do not want to do

• Feel guilty when saying no

• Avoid difficult conversations

• Take responsibility for other people’s emotions

• Feel resentful after repeatedly overextending yourself

• Struggle to ask for privacy or personal time

• Have difficulty maintaining limits with family

• Feel controlled within a relationship

• Worry that a boundary will lead to rejection

• Need help distinguishing a boundary from an ultimatum

Therapy can help you communicate limits more clearly while remaining compassionate and connected. Self-care is not only about taking breaks. It also involves creating relationships, responsibilities, and expectations that are emotionally sustainable.

Online Couples Therapy in Lakewood

Relationship conflict often becomes repetitive because partners are reacting to each other’s protective responses. One partner may seek reassurance through criticism, questioning, or pursuing a conversation. The other may feel overwhelmed and respond through defensiveness, silence, or withdrawal. Both partners may want connection while behaving in ways that create greater distance. Online couples therapy helps partners recognize this cycle. Jennifer works with couples experiencing:

• Communication breakdowns

• Repeated arguments

• Emotional distance

• Unequal responsibilities

• Boundary disagreements

• Parenting conflict

• Financial stress

• Intimacy concerns

• Resentment

• Extended-family pressure

• Major life transitions

• Trust concerns

• Infidelity

• Financial betrayal

• Uncertainty about the future

Therapy provides a structured environment where both people can slow down, explain their experience, and listen without immediately returning to the familiar conflict. The goal is not to determine who is the problem. It is to understand the pattern affecting the relationship and help both partners participate in changing it.

Online Marriage Counseling

Marriage counseling can help couples address distress, strengthen connection, and respond to life pressures as a more collaborative team. You might consider online marriage counseling if you want to:

• Interrupt recurring conflict

• Communicate with less criticism and defensiveness

• Express needs more clearly

• Rebuild trust

• Repair after painful interactions

• Establish healthier family boundaries

• Address unequal emotional or household responsibilities

• Discuss money more productively

• Navigate parenting stress

• Restore affection and intimacy

• Adjust to a major transition

• Make a difficult decision about the relationship

Couples do not need to wait until separation feels imminent. Marriage counseling can also support partners who want to understand each other more deeply and protect a relationship they value.

Online Premarital Counseling in Lakewood

Premarital counseling helps couples prepare for the everyday reality of marriage. Partners often discover that they have made different assumptions about money, family, responsibilities, conflict, intimacy, or parenting. Online premarital counseling may include conversations about:

• Communication

• Conflict and emotional repair

• Finances

• Household responsibilities

• Career expectations

• Children and parenting

• Emotional and physical intimacy

• Religion and culture

• In-laws

• Holidays and family traditions

• Boundaries and privacy

• Trust and commitment

• Past experiences

• Expectations for married life

The purpose is not to reach perfect agreement. It is to help couples identify differences, understand what those differences mean, and develop a respectful process for making decisions together.

Online Infidelity and Betrayal-Trauma Therapy

Infidelity, hidden financial behavior, and other significant betrayals can disrupt trust in both the relationship and yourself. You may wonder how you missed what was happening, whether you know the full truth, or whether your sense of safety can return. Betrayal may produce:

• Shock

• Anger

• Grief

• Intrusive thoughts

• Anxiety

• Hypervigilance

• Sleep difficulties

• Loss of self-esteem

• Repeated questioning

• Emotional triggers

• Difficulty making decisions

• Fear of future betrayal

Online betrayal-trauma therapy is available for individuals and couples. Individual counseling can help you process the emotional impact, establish boundaries, rebuild self-trust, and consider what you need next. Couples counseling can help partners address honesty, transparency, accountability, emotional safety, and the requirements of meaningful repair. Therapy does not require reconciliation or separation. Jennifer helps clients approach these decisions with greater clarity and emotional stability.

Online Trauma and PTSD Therapy in Lakewood

Trauma can continue affecting you long after an experience has ended. Your nervous system may respond to present situations through patterns that developed during earlier periods of danger, instability, loss, or helplessness. Trauma-related experiences may include:

• Intrusive memories

• Nightmares

• Hypervigilance

• Avoidance

• Emotional numbness

• Shame

• Self-blame

• Strong reactions to reminders

• Difficulty trusting others

• Feeling detached from yourself

• Trouble with emotional or physical intimacy

• Persistent fear, anger, or grief

• PTSD symptoms

Jennifer provides trauma-informed therapy that respects your pace and readiness. You will not be expected to immediately discuss every painful detail. Treatment may begin with emotional stabilization, grounding, understanding trauma responses, and strengthening internal resources.

Online EMDR Therapy

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing may help clients process traumatic memories and emotionally distressing experiences. When online EMDR is appropriate, bilateral stimulation may be adapted through guided eye movements, alternating sound, self-administered tapping, or virtual tools. Jennifer evaluates each client’s privacy, emotional stability, treatment needs, resources, and readiness before beginning virtual trauma processing. Extended 80-minute individual appointments may be recommended for EMDR and other trauma-focused work.

Online Grief and Loss Counseling

Grief may follow the death of someone important, miscarriage, child loss, divorce, estrangement, illness, a major transition, or the loss of a future you expected. There is no single correct response to loss. You may feel sadness, anger, guilt, numbness, relief, loneliness, or several conflicting emotions. Online grief counseling offers space to:

• Speak honestly about the loss

• Process painful or complicated emotions

• Understand changes in identity and relationships

• Navigate family differences around grief

• Prepare for difficult dates and reminders

• Address guilt or unfinished feelings

• Find ways to honor what was meaningful

• Move forward without minimizing what happened

Therapy does not attempt to erase grief. It provides support as you learn to carry it differently.

Online Therapy for Chronic Illness

Chronic illness can affect far more than physical health. It may change your routines, relationships, work, independence, identity, and plans for the future. You may feel pressure to remain positive while grieving what has changed. Therapy can provide support for:

• Medical uncertainty

• Anxiety about symptoms

• Changes in physical ability

• Grief

• Isolation

• Relationship strain

• Difficulty asking for help

• Changes in employment or finances

• Loss of independence

• Adjusting expectations

• Communicating needs and limitations

• Establishing boundaries around advice or caregiving

Emotional support does not suggest that a medical condition is psychological. It recognizes that living with illness has meaningful emotional and relational effects.

Additional Concerns Supported Through Online Counseling

Jennifer also works with concerns involving:

• Major life transitions

• Miscarriage

• Disordered eating

• Faith crises

• Religious trauma

• Communication

• Self-esteem

• Emotional overwhelm

• Relationship patterns

• Financial betrayal

• Child loss

• Accidents and injuries

• Abuse

• Identity

• Personal growth

If your concern is not listed, you are welcome to discuss it during the free consultation.

Therapeutic Approaches Used Online

Jennifer provides empathetic, systemic, trauma-informed, and personalized therapy. Depending on your needs, treatment may incorporate:

Internal Family Systems

Internal Family Systems helps clients understand emotional parts and protective responses with compassion. A part of you may want to establish a boundary while another fears rejection. One part may want closeness while another protects you through distance. IFS helps you approach these internal conflicts without shame.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy helps partners understand the attachment needs and fears beneath conflict. Couples learn to recognize the cycle creating disconnection and develop a more emotionally responsive way of relating.

EMDR

EMDR may be used to process trauma and emotionally distressing experiences when online treatment is clinically appropriate.

Relational Life Therapy

Relational Life Therapy helps couples examine accountability, emotional honesty, communication, boundaries, and balance within the relationship.

Attachment-Based Therapy

Attachment-based work explores how earlier relationships influence present experiences of closeness, safety, trust, abandonment, and rejection.

Mindfulness and Emotional-Regulation Skills

Grounding and emotional-regulation practices can help clients remain present during difficult emotions and respond more intentionally. Jennifer selects approaches based on each client’s needs, identities, history, strengths, goals, and pace.

How Online Therapy Works

Virtual sessions take place through a secure video platform. To prepare for an appointment:

• Select a private location

• Test your internet connection

• Check your camera and microphone

• Use headphones if helpful

• Silence notifications

• Keep water nearby

• Bring a grounding object if needed

• Allow several minutes to settle

• Avoid scheduling another stressful commitment immediately afterward

During therapy, Jennifer may help you explore emotions, identify recurring patterns, connect present struggles with earlier experiences, communicate a difficult need, process grief or trauma, and identify changes to practice outside sessions. Therapy is collaborative. You can ask questions and provide feedback throughout the process.

Online Therapy Throughout Lakewood and the West Metro Area

Virtual appointments are available throughout Lakewood, including people living in and around:

• Belmar

• Green Mountain

• Applewood

• Solterra

• Bear Creek

• Morse Park

• Eiber

• Edgewood

• West Lochwood

• Southern Gables

Online counseling is also available to clients in nearby Colorado communities, including:

• Wheat Ridge

• Golden

• Morrison

• Edgewater

• Arvada

• Littleton

• Denver

Cherry Creek Therapy does not maintain a physical office in Lakewood. Services for Lakewood residents are provided online. Clients must be physically located in Colorado during every virtual appointment.

Online Therapy Rates

Cherry Creek Therapy is currently a self-pay practice and does not accept insurance.

Current rates are:

• Individual therapy: 50 minutes — $175

• Couples therapy: 50 minutes — $175

• Extended couples session: 80 minutes — $240

• Extended individual session: 80 minutes — $240

• Consultation: 15 minutes — free

Extended appointments are encouraged for the first couples session and may be recommended for ongoing couples work. Extended individual sessions may be recommended for EMDR and trauma processing. A limited number of sliding-scale appointments may be available. Please ask about current availability.

Meet Jennifer Gardner, M.A., MFT-C

Jennifer Gardner provides compassionate, focused therapy for adults and couples. She earned a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy from Regis University. Before becoming a therapist, Jennifer worked as a school teacher with certification in special education. That experience helped shape her understanding of how family, relationships, community, culture, and other systems influence individual well-being. Jennifer celebrates diverse client identities, including racial identity, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. She recognizes that the intersection of a person’s identities is an important part of the therapeutic process. Her training includes:

• EMDR

• Internal Family Systems

• Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

• Relational Life Therapy

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy

• Grief treatment

• The Developmental Model for Couples

Her approach is warm, thoughtful, direct, and goal-oriented.

Frequently Asked Questions About Online Therapy in Lakewood

Does Cherry Creek Therapy have an office in Lakewood?

No. Cherry Creek Therapy’s physical office is in Denver. Therapy for Lakewood clients is provided online.

Can I attend virtual therapy from anywhere in Lakewood?

Yes. You may attend from any suitable private location. You must be physically located in Colorado during the appointment.

Is online counseling available for couples?

Yes. Jennifer provides online couples therapy, marriage counseling, premarital counseling, and infidelity-recovery support.

Can couples attend from two locations?

This may be possible if both partners are physically located in Colorado and each has adequate privacy and technology. Discuss the arrangement with Jennifer in advance.

Can I choose between online and in-person therapy?

Online sessions are available throughout Colorado. In-person appointments are available at Cherry Creek Therapy’s Denver office. Jennifer can discuss which option may be appropriate and available.

Does Cherry Creek Therapy accept insurance?

Cherry Creek Therapy is self-pay and is not currently accepting insurance. Limited sliding-scale appointments may be available.

What does online therapy cost?

A standard 50-minute individual session is $150. A 50-minute couples session is $175. Extended 80-minute individual and couples sessions are $240.

Can EMDR be provided virtually?

Online EMDR may be available when Jennifer determines that virtual trauma processing is appropriate for your treatment needs and circumstances.

How long are appointments?

Standard appointments are 50 minutes. Extended individual and couples sessions are 80 minutes.

Is there a free consultation?

Yes. Jennifer offers a free 15-minute consultation online, by phone, or in person.

Is online therapy appropriate during an emergency?

Online outpatient therapy is not an emergency or immediate crisis service. If you cannot remain safe or need urgent assistance, contact local emergency services or an appropriate crisis resource.

Begin Online Therapy in Lakewood

You do not need to keep carrying everything by yourself. Therapy can help you understand the emotional patterns beneath anxiety, exhaustion, relationship conflict, grief, and difficulty establishing boundaries. Online appointments make it possible to receive consistent, personalized support from a private location in Lakewood. Cherry Creek Therapy provides virtual counseling for individuals and couples throughout Lakewood and across Colorado.

Schedule a free 15-minute consultation with Jennifer Gardner, M.A., MFT-C, to ask questions and determine whether online therapy is the right fit.

Call: (303) 720-6287

Online therapy available throughout Lakewood and across Colorado

In-person appointments available in Denver at:

90 Madison Street
Suite 102
Denver, CO 80206