About Suzanne
Suzanne Martinez is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 25 years of clinical experience based in Illinois. She helps people who feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, depression, grief, ADHD, relationship struggles, and life transitions. Her approach is practical and down-to-earth so conversations stay focused and useful from the first session.
Suzanne blends straightforward counseling with tools you can use between sessions. She uses approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help clients notice what matters, change unhelpful thinking, and build new habits.
Background and approach
She also draws on client-centered listening and emotionally-focused work for relationship and intimacy concerns. She has taught and written about personal well-being and psychological growth for many years, and she has provided clinical care in both independent practice and university settings. That background informs a calm, experienced style that aims to reduce overwhelm and increase clarity about next steps.
Suzanne works with a wide range of concerns including trauma and abuse, addictions, parenting stress, caregiver strain, career issues, eating and sleeping difficulties, and compassion fatigue. She pays attention to family of origin and attachment patterns when they affect current relationships. Practical planning is part of the work.
Clients leave sessions with small, doable steps to practice. Suzanne helps each person set goals that match their values and daily life.
Therapeutic approaches and how they work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice unhelpful thoughts and reconnect with what matters to them. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and motivation problems because it focuses on values and small, doable actions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at patterns of thinking and behavior and offers practical skills to reduce distress and change habits. It is commonly used for stress, sleep and eating concerns, and depressive symptoms. Client-Centered Therapy centers on empathic listening and building a trusting relationship so clients can explore feelings and make their own choices.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Suzanne will talk with each person about goals and preferences and will recommend methods that fit their needs. This is a collaborative process and plans can be adjusted as therapy progresses.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, which make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life. Video is useful for a full-session conversation, phone is handy for shorter check-ins or when bandwidth is limited, and messaging or chat can keep momentum between sessions. These options increase flexibility and let people choose what works best for their schedule and daily routine.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Hypnotherapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
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