About Susan
Susan Garner is a licensed marriage and family therapist with twenty years of clinical experience. She focuses on stress, anxiety, relationships, trauma and abuse, intimacy-related issues, depression, family concerns, grief, anger, self-esteem, career questions, bipolar disorder, coping with life changes, and ADHD.
Background and approach
Susan aims to help people find clarity and practical ways forward when life feels overwhelming. In sessions she listens first, then helps clients define clear goals.
She uses straightforward conversation to identify patterns that keep people stuck. Together they build small, manageable steps toward change and better connection with others.
Susan draws from several therapeutic traditions to match the work to the person. She blends attachment-based ideas about how relationships shape us with client-centered listening that keeps the client’s needs in focus.
Cognitive behavioral strategies are used to shift thoughts and behaviors that feed anxiety and depression. Her practice often addresses family-of-origin issues, communication problems, codependency, infidelity, and blended family challenges.
She also supports people facing midlife shifts, body image struggles, and the fallout from abandonment or betrayal. The goal is clearer thinking and stronger relationships.
Susan works with people who want honest, steady support while they sort through painful feelings and make practical changes. Her manner is compassionate and direct, aiming to help clients build self-confidence and more satisfying connections with others.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Susan combines attachment-based ideas with client-centered listening to help people understand how past relationships shape current feelings. Attachment-based work looks at patterns in close relationships and helps people build safer, more trusting connections. Client-centered therapy emphasizes respectful listening and follows the client's priorities to find what matters most.She also uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. CBT provides hands-on tools to reduce anxiety, manage mood swings, and break cycles of avoidance or negative self-talk. These approaches are used together so the plan fits each person’s situation and goals. Deciding which mix to use is a collaborative process; the therapist and client review needs, goals, and preferences and adjust the approach as therapy progresses.
Online sessions are offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video sessions let people read facial expressions and practice interactional skills, while phone sessions use less bandwidth and can fit during a work break. Live chat and text-based messaging support shorter check-ins, ongoing reflection between sessions, and people who prefer writing to speaking. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around busy schedules and life changes.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Jealousy
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- California, Oregon
- Languages
- English