Susan Van Wazer
Experienced counselor blending insight and practical change
LPC Missouri
- Experience
- 30 years in practice
- Focus areas
- Stress, Anxiety, Relationship, Family
- Approaches
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Client-Centered Therapy
- Languages
- English
About Susan
Susan Van Wazer is a licensed professional counselor (LPC) in Missouri with three decades of clinical experience helping people navigate stress, relationships, grief, addiction, and major life transitions. She centers on understanding the patterns and systems that shape current difficulties and helps clients translate insight into practical change.
Background and approach
Susan combines family-systems thinking with cognitive behavioral techniques to identify repeating dynamics and develop concrete strategies for coping and growth. Her practice also attends to trauma and post-traumatic stress, mood concerns such as depression and bipolar-related issues, and interpersonal challenges including codependency and family problems.
Susan has supported clients facing career crossroads, midlife questions, parenting struggles, and compassion fatigue, and she brings training in mindfulness, existential, and Jungian-informed perspectives to deepen exploration of meaning and personal values.
She welcomes international clients and conducts sessions in English, offering a collaborative, paced approach that pairs exploration with actionable steps toward the goals each person brings to therapy.
Therapeutic Approaches and Online Options
Client-centered therapy emphasizes an empathetic, listening stance that helps people feel understood and guides the pace of work according to their concerns, often supporting self-exploration and emotional processing. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and behaviors and practicing concrete strategies to reduce symptoms like anxiety, depression, or patterns that impede change. Existential therapy invites reflection on meaning, values, and life choices, which can be especially useful for clients facing major transitions or questions of purpose.Choosing the right approach is treated as a collaborative process. The therapist will work with clients to weigh goals, preferences, and presenting concerns and may blend elements from several methods to suit individual needs and stages of progress. That partnership helps tailor sessions so they feel relevant and purposeful.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules, enable ongoing contact between sessions when appropriate, and allow people to access licensed professionals from different locations. The variety of formats supports different communication styles and can help clients maintain consistency in care while balancing everyday responsibilities.
Frequently asked questions
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Areas of expertise
Primary focus
Also works with
Additional focus areas
Therapeutic approaches
Experience
30+ years
Licensed
Missouri
Languages
English