About Susan
Susan Johnston is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) with eight years of clinical experience. She practices in Indiana and has worked in a range of care settings. Her approach centers on working with people as partners to address stress, anxiety, relationship strain, and other life challenges.
Susan began her career as a returning adult student and has provided care across settings such as outpatient offices, residential and group homes, inpatient mental health, intensive outpatient programs, probation services, and college counseling environments.
Background and approach
This range taught her how varied life circumstances affect stress and coping. She has experience in addiction treatment and has helped people and their loved ones rebuild trust and hope. Susan has also worked with immigrant and refugee families, collaborating with professional interpreters when language support was needed.
Her clinical viewpoint blends humanistic and experiential ideas with emotion-focused and cognitive work framed by family systems theory. In practice this looks like attentive listening, guided emotional processing, and practical strategies to change unhelpful patterns between people. Susan aims to individualize care by teaming with clients to set realistic goals and decide on steps that fit each person’s life.
She offers conversational, down-to-earth sessions that focus on clear next steps and skill-building. If someone needs support for anxiety, grief, parenting stress, or relationship issues, she helps them talk through options and plan achievable changes.
How evidence-based techniques translate to online therapy
Susan uses evidence-based therapeutic techniques that combine emotional work and cognitive strategies. Emotion-focused work helps people name and process strong feelings, which can reduce overwhelm and improve relationships when those feelings are discussed and understood. Cognitive-based techniques look at the thoughts that feed anxiety or low mood and teach practical skills to shift unhelpful thinking patterns.She also draws on family systems ideas to spot patterns in how people relate to each other. This approach helps identify recurring dynamics and creates small, actionable changes that improve interactions and reduce conflict. Susan treats the choice of approach as collaborative and tailors methods to each person's needs and goals rather than sticking to one fixed method.
Online therapy with her is offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video sessions allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions can fit a short break at work or work better when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging let people check in between conversations or use written notes to reflect on progress. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life while still working on anxiety, grief, parenting stress, relationship concerns, or addiction-related goals.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Addictions
- Anger management
- Career difficulties
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Trauma and abuse
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed
- Indiana, California
- Languages
- English
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