About Susan
Susan MacDonald is a licensed mental health counselor in Rhode Island who helps people facing stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression. She speaks plainly and offers steady support to people who feel stuck or overwhelmed by life changes. Her style aims to make conversations feel calm and straightforward so worries are easier to talk through.
With 14 years of experience, she focuses on practical steps that fit each person’s life.
Background and approach
Sessions often center on improving communication, coping with family of origin issues, and managing panic or obsessive thoughts. She also helps people navigate divorce or separation, deal with codependency, and work through feelings of emptiness or guilt. Susan blends several approaches to match what a person needs.
She uses client-centered methods to keep the session focused on the person’s experience and draws on cognitive behavioral tools to address unhelpful thinking and behavior. She also integrates dialectical skills and mindfulness practices when someone needs emotional regulation strategies. Sessions are conversational and goal oriented.
Susan helps set small, clear steps and checks progress along the way. People can expect a supportive atmosphere where honesty and gradual change are the priorities. Appointments are available through video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging.
The aim is to make it easier to get help without adding extra stress from scheduling or travel.
Approach and online care that fit your life
Client-centered therapy focuses on the person’s experience and priorities. It means the therapist follows the person’s lead, listens closely, and helps them find their own answers. This style is useful when someone needs a respectful, steady space to make sense of difficult feelings.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions influence each other. In practice this means identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and testing small behavior changes to reduce anxiety or depressive symptoms. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, offers skills for emotional regulation and improving distress tolerance when feelings feel intense.
Susan aims to find the right mix of approaches with each person. She works collaboratively to figure out which methods suit the client’s goals and preferences, and adjusts as progress is made. Choosing an approach is part of the work together rather than a fixed plan from the start.
Online therapy offers practical benefits like scheduling flexibility and easier access from different locations. Video calls let visual cues guide the work, phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is limited, and live chat or text-based messaging can support shorter check-ins or ongoing reflection between sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into busy days and maintain continuity of care.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also works with
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- Rhode Island
- Languages
- English