About Susan
Susan Kates is a licensed marriage and family therapist with three decades of experience in behavioral health. She helps people facing addictions, trauma, stress, anxiety, mood disorders, and grief.
Background and approach
Parents and caregivers will find practical support for parenting strain, family conflict, and caregiver stress. She takes a straightforward, compassionate approach in sessions.
Susan listens first to understand what matters most to each person. Then she offers tools and steps that fit real life, whether the need is short-term problem solving or longer work on trauma and mood issues.
Susan draws on client-centered methods to create a respectful, nonjudgmental space. She also uses cognitive behavioral techniques to help people change unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns.
Solution-focused strategies are used when clients want quick, practical steps to move forward. Her background includes work with people affected by chemical dependency, trauma, and homelessness, and with children who experienced trauma in hospital settings.
Those experiences shaped a practical style that blends empathy with concrete skills and coping strategies. Susan is licensed in Wyoming as an LMFT.
She offers sessions in English and works with international clients. Her approach is flexible so people can find the pace and tools that suit their goals.
How Susan’s Approaches Work Online
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and understanding the person as the expert in their own life. It helps people feel heard and respected while they decide what changes to make. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect and teaches simple skills to reduce anxiety, manage mood, and change unhelpful behaviors.Finding the best approach is a collaborative process. Susan will work together with each person to figure out which methods fit their goals and comfort level. She often blends client-centered listening with CBT tools and solution-focused steps when that serves the client’s priorities.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video calls are useful for in-depth conversations and visual cues, while phone sessions can work when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging are options for brief updates, check-ins between sessions, or for people who prefer writing to speaking. These formats help people fit therapy into busy lives and access support across distances.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Grief
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 30 years
- Licensed
- Wyoming
- Languages
- English