Susan Garner, LMFT

Susan Garner is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in California with 20 years of clinical experience. She helps people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, relationship struggles, trauma, and intimacy-related concerns including jealousy. Her approach aims to make problems easier to name and address, so people can feel more confident in their day-to-day lives.

Susan frames therapy as a partnership. She listens, offers respectful feedback, and helps clients set clear goals. Sessions can include learning new communication or boundary skills, working through hurt from past relationships, or managing strong emotions like anger and grief.

Her work draws from attachment-based ideas and emotionally-focused approaches to help people understand relational patterns. She also uses client-centered methods and cognitive behavioral techniques to address thoughts and behaviors that get in the way of change.

Susan combines practical strategies with mindfulness and insight-oriented reflection. That mix lets clients practice new ways of responding, notice body-based responses, and slowly shift long-standing patterns. She explains steps clearly and keeps tasks realistic between sessions.

Over the years she has supported people with a wide range of concerns, from career stress and family conflicts to bipolar mood issues and life transitions. Her goal is to help clients gain clarity, build self-esteem, and move toward the life they want.

How Susan’s Approaches Translate to Online Work

Attachment-based work focuses on how early relationships shape current patterns. It helps people spot repeated cycles in close relationships and learn safer ways of connecting. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at the thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going, offering concrete skills to test and change unhelpful patterns. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps people identify core emotions and the interaction patterns that follow, useful for reducing relationship distance and repairing hurt.

Finding the right approach is part of therapy. Susan treats approach selection as a collaborative process. She will listen to your goals, try techniques together, and adjust the plan based on what helps most. Clients often mix strategies from these approaches to address both feelings and day-to-day habits.

The biography does not list specific online session formats, so please confirm current options before booking. Online therapy can make fitting sessions into a busy life easier, for example by saving travel time or allowing shorter check-in sessions when schedules are tight. It can also let people try different tools between appointments, like brief mindfulness practices or CBT worksheets, while keeping the work focused on real-life situations.