Susan Lipkin, LISW

Susan Lipkin is a licensed independent social worker with decades of experience helping people navigate stress, anxiety, depression, relationship strain, and grief. She brings a calm, listening-first approach and focuses on what each person already knows about what helps them. Her work includes support for people facing caregiving strain, infertility-related distress, and challenges tied to aging and geriatric issues.

She uses a client-centered stance, starting by asking what matters most to the person in front of her and adapting methods to fit those needs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a regular part of her work when it matches a person’s goals, and she also draws on mindfulness and narrative techniques to help people manage thoughts and tell a clearer story about their lives.

Her background includes community mental health centers, psychiatric hospitals, veterans' services, and several years in private practice as a psychotherapist. That range informs how she works with people dealing with trauma and abuse, domestic violence, and the long-term effects of chronic illness or caregiving stress.

Susan is practical in sessions. She helps people break problems into manageable steps, try small experiments, and notice what changes. She also supports conversations about identity, sexual orientation, and relationship dynamics without judgment.

Across 36 years of practice she has developed an approach that stays flexible to the situation. Sessions emphasize listening, concrete tools, and collaborative planning so people can make decisions that fit their lives.

How Susan's approaches translate to online work

Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and understanding a person’s priorities. In practice this means the therapist helps people set goals that feel relevant and works from the client’s own insights. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts and behaviors interact and uses structured exercises to reduce anxiety, lift mood, and change unhelpful patterns. Mindfulness Therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices to reduce reactivity and manage stress in daily life.

Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the therapeutic process. Susan will collaborate with each person to decide which methods to try first, revising the plan as needs or goals change. That way therapy stays practical and focused on real-life results rather than a single fixed method.

Session formats are not specified in the biography, so confirm current online options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy schedule, shorten travel time, and allow brief check-ins when life feels hectic. It can also let people practice skills in the environments where their problems occur, which helps bridge what happens in sessions with everyday life.