Meet Lexi
After graduating from Lewis University with her MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Lexi Konieczny spent several years working in a long-term psychiatric residential treatment facility with highly-acute adolescents from all over the country. This experience included patients with a wide range of diagnoses, including a variety of severe emotional disturbances, debilitating trauma histories, personality disorders, developmental disorders, and a number of conditions that greatly impact daily functioning.
In recent years, Lexi has been working as a Clinical Therapist in the Adolescent Mental Health Program at the Linden Oaks PHP/IOP program in Naperville. In this role, Lexi works primarily from the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) theoretical orientation, and runs group, individual, and family sessions.
Lexi also specializes in Couples Counseling, Parent Support, Crisis Management, Men's/Women's Issues, and Clinical Intervention. Lexi has a great interest in Family Therapy, especially after having expanded her own family to include her husband, their two children, and two cats named Rick and Morty.
Lexi adapts her therapeutic style based on the population with whom she is working and the struggles they are facing. Some clients seek insight and behavior modification, some need a neutral party to observe and redirect ineffective communication styles, and some clients only desire a safe space and patient ear to actively listen and validate them.
As a clinician, passion and compassion are vital qualities to be effective in clients' progress. She has many years of experience working with highly acute teens and young adults, and has become more involved in working with families and couples in recent years. Lexi enjoys working with people of all cultures and personal backgrounds, and believes identity is something to be celebrated.
Lexi’s Counseling Services
Individual Counseling
Working with adolescents differs vastly from working with adults, because they are in a very different stage of life. Adolescents are in the process of developing their identities, are undergoing immense physical transformations, and typically have far less control of their surroundings than they would like. Adults often have fully-developed personalities that have stabilized over great lengths of time, and have the opportunity to change their environments and circumstances rather than simply adapt to their current situations. In all cases, Lexi’s goal is to establish rapport and boundaries, challenge unhealthy thinking and behavioral patterns, and assist clients to live their fullest lives in accordance with their values and morals.
Couples Counseling
A couple is a single unit formed by two individuals, and this unit can often contain friction. Nobody agrees on everything all the time – it’s simply human nature. While minor disagreements and varied opinions are to be expected in any relationship, a large incident (unfaithfulness, lying about a major event, a significant loss, etc.) or too many small accumulations of tension (small arguments, family disagreements, mounting incongruous values, etc.) can cause a significant divide within the unit. Lexi esteems to resolve the friction within the unit without sacrificing each person’s individuality and to provide an environment in which everyone feels safe to express themselves.
Family Counseling
Lexi loves to work with families, since an individual’s mental health is greatly affected by their environment and support people. Family therapy is an opportunity to strengthen the support system for all involved, and to foster healthy growth for the individuals in the family and the family as a whole. She believes long-term communication styles play a large role in all family struggles. Individual events can trigger immediate conflict, but the means of communication determine how – or if – those issues are resolved. She enjoys exploring individual communication styles, and challenging unhelpful tendencies at the root of conflict.
We are in network for BCBS PPO and United Healthcare. We also accept private pay, sliding scale, and will submit to insurance for out-of-network clients.