Wendy Goffena

Wendy Goffena is a licensed clinical social worker in Montana and Wyoming who brings nine years of clinical therapy experience and a total of 24 years working in mental health services. She currently works at a Community Mental Health Center in Central Montana, serving a wide age range of adults from 18 to 90.

Her caseload includes military veterans, people needing extra support coping with common mental health concerns, individuals who are severely mentally ill or disabled, and court-mandated clients. Wendy provides care to individuals and families affected by depression, anxiety, PTSD, various forms of abuse and trauma, complex grief and loss, anger management concerns, and interpersonal challenges across home, family, and work life.

Wendy offers individual, group, and family therapy and draws on a strengths-based, client-centered approach that treats clients as the experts on their own lives. She uses Motivational Interviewing to support engagement and goal setting, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to examine links among thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, Dialectical Behavior Therapy to build mindfulness and emotional regulation skills, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to increase psychological flexibility, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy to process trauma that affects daily functioning and relationships.

Her professional background spans multiple clinical settings: five years in a rural Montana county mental health center; two years in medical social work providing therapeutic support to patients diagnosed with Stage 4 and Stage 5 chronic kidney failure; sixteen years in an inpatient residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed youth ages 8 to 18; three years working in a Department of Justice correctional facility serving adolescent girls; one year in child protective services; and four years providing services and case management for partial and intensive outpatient day treatment programs in an alternative school.

A Montana native from a farming and ranching family, Wendy earned an undergraduate degree in Elementary Education from Montana State University in Billings and taught in small communities for seven years. She returned to graduate school in 2013 and graduated with honors in 2015 with a master’s degree in social work from Walla Walla University’s Billings satellite campus. She has held her clinical social work license for nine years.

Wendy is passionate about helping others build confidence and achieve meaningful change. Her goal is to help clients experience greater joy and freedom from distressing symptoms and to strengthen their ability to cope with life’s stressors. Outside of her clinical work she enjoys Montana’s outdoors through hiking, fishing, camping, exploring historical sites, rock-hounding, and gardening, and she is an avid artist.