About Susan
Susan Johnston is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with eight years of clinical experience. She practices in Indiana and brings a calm, straightforward approach to helping people manage stress, anxiety, relationship strain, grief, and other life challenges.
Background and approach
Her background includes work in a variety of settings, which informs how she adapts care to fit each person’s situation. She has worked in office settings, residential and group homes, inpatient mental health care, and intensive outpatient programs.
That range of experience helps her recognize practical steps people can take to feel steadier. She also has experience in addiction treatment and in collaborating with others to rebuild hope and self-belief.
Susan has worked with individuals, couples, and families, including immigrant and refugee clients with the aid of professional interpreters. That work strengthened her focus on respecting different languages and cultures while keeping therapy focused on achievable goals.
Her approach combines humanistic and experiential methods with emotion work and cognitive techniques, all grounded in family systems thinking. In sessions she aims to listen carefully, reflect what she hears, and try simple, doable strategies together.
The goal is to tailor sessions so they match each person’s needs and life circumstances. Susan emphasizes teamwork in therapy.
She partners with people to set clear goals and figure out practical steps toward them. Sessions are intended to feel collaborative and directed toward real-life results.
How evidence-based techniques fit into online sessions
Susan blends humanistic and experiential approaches with emotion-focused and cognitive techniques. Humanistic work focuses on understanding what matters to a person and building strengths through supportive conversation. Experiential methods involve trying exercises in session to access and process feelings, which can help with trauma, grief, and relationship issues.Emotion-focused work helps people identify and name feelings, then use that awareness to change how they respond in relationships and daily life. Cognitive techniques look at unhelpful thought patterns and test them with practical, real-world steps to reduce anxiety or depressive cycles.
Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist collaborates with each person to choose techniques that match their goals, comfort level, and life situation. That plan can change as progress is made and needs shift.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for longer sessions and deeper conversation, while phone calls can fit a work break or require less bandwidth. Live chat and text messaging are helpful for quick check-ins, brief reflections, or when keeping a regular contact rhythm matters. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives and to keep momentum between sessions.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- 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