Shirley Souder, LMFT, LCSW
Practical relationship-focused therapy with real-world tools
About Shirley
Shirley Souder uses relationship-focused and practical therapies to help people manage life stressors. She brings 43 years of experience to sessions and blends talk therapy with real-world tools.
Background and approach
Shirley holds licenses as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in Indiana. She works in English and sees people both in Indiana and internationally.
Shirley mixes Attachment-Based ideas with client-centered and cognitive approaches. Sessions often look at how patterns started and what keeps them going.
She helps people name feelings, test different behaviors, and try small changes between meetings. Her background includes study in psychology and Christian counseling, and she incorporates faith-based values when clients request that perspective.
Shirley focuses on concrete skills such as emotional forgiveness, communication strategies, and coping techniques for stress and anxiety. She also offers coaching around career moves, interviewing, and adapting to new life rhythms.
People come to her for help with relationship concerns, parenting questions, grief, addiction struggles, and ADHD-related challenges. She works with intimacy and self-esteem issues, anger, and compassion fatigue.
Sessions can also address more specific topics like blended family dynamics, caregiver stress, body image, and coping after trauma. Shirley uses a straightforward style.
She asks practical questions, helps set clear goals, and suggests exercises to try between sessions. Her aim is to help people make measurable changes they can carry into daily life.
Using attachment and cognitive work in online therapy
Shirley draws on Attachment-Based Therapy to look at how early relationship patterns affect current behavior and feelings; this helps when people struggle with trust, closeness, or repeated conflicts. She also uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify unhelpful thoughts and test new, practical behaviors that reduce anxiety and improve mood.Choosing the best approach is a collaborative process. Shirley will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn't helped before. Together they decide which methods to focus on and adjust the plan as progress is made.
Online sessions are offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make therapy fit into daily life. Video is useful for deeper conversations and body language, phone calls work well when bandwidth is limited, and chat or text can support brief check-ins or coaching between meetings. These options let people fit sessions around work, caregiving, or travel while keeping continuity of care.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 43 years
- Licensed
- Indiana
- Languages
- English