Susan Shipley, Ph.D.
Susan Shipley, Ph.D.
(she/her)
Dr. Susan Shipley practices clinical psychology and works with clients, both adults and children. During your sessions, your unique life experiences and goals shall be respected. Sessions include compassionate counseling, keen observation, and collaboration. We will address your situations, relationships, and ineffective coping with evidence-based therapy techniques. Learn helpful tools to meet goals to overcome what’s holding you back. My clients often have challenges such as anxiety, depression, and grief. I've had experiences working with young adults with anorexia, and people with phobias, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive thoughts and other intrusive thoughts, and folks who may have an over dependence on another person, place or thing. Addiction and recovery are areas of my expertise. I'm a school psychologist familiar with children with learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, developmental delays, and parents. Occasionally life challenges meet us at a particularly vulnerable time, and I work with people who have adjustment to such life changes, people who find they are severely co-dependent on others with addiction dependency, the alcoholic and drug dependent person. In addition, I've assisted those experiencing grief, including job loss. I'm an artist myself and a trained art therapist. I found, art making often speaks with more feeling and force than words alone. We will incorporate art if you choose. CBT works in a collaborative manner between the therapist and the client. Together, we can identify what's not working and get you back to balance. We'll use a whole self-approach, addressing your needs. I also integrate mindfulness, yoga, and art to help you develop a stronger relationship with others and most importantly yourself. You have found a safe space to heal and grow. In our sessions together, I'll meet you with compassion and evidence-based techniques so you can overcome the hangups and habits holding you back. Let's work together!
Get to know me
In our first session together, here's what you can expect
Your first session with me will be a time to get to know one another, ask questions about anything that concerns you. It is also an important time to see if we fit as a team. During the course of therapy we become a team working to find the best solutions to your concerns and those problems you’ve encountered. Through presenting your concern at the initial meeting, we begin to address feelings, thoughts and/or behavior that have been bothering you. Because therapy is most effective when it’s intense collaboration, we should fit well together as a team.
The biggest strengths that I bring into our sessions
As the adult client, you lead the initial discussion. I listen to your concern and together we work through any hang-ups, ineffective coping or habits, distressing thought patterns, feelings of loss or helplessness. Through Dialectic Behavior therapy, we work to a place where you can experience growth, gain strength , resilience, calm, unleash your creativity, feel loved and belonging. This is a place of balance where your empowerment is goal.
The clients I'm best positioned to serve
I am proud to have earned a Ph.D and clinical psychology license and adhere to a strict ethical code of practice. My life work is to help you achieve your dreams through therapy. I work with people struggling with job loss, assist parents with children, help those with blocked creativity, assist people navigate through grief and loss. Together we will work overcoming obsessive-compulsive tendencies, guide people to get over dependence on others or things such as addictions, eating disorders, fears and phobias, help reach success when caught in the grips of alcohol, drugs and gambling, codependence. Often my therapy orientation helps people deal with depression and anxiety that stem from trauma, relationship problems, and especially address problems with those dealing with negative intrusive thoughts. I especially work well and value clients unafraid to be challenged, if needed. Clients can expect empathy, insight and understanding in our therapeutic relationship.
About Susan Shipley, Ph.D.
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VirtualMy treatment methods
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
Like cognitive behavioral therapy, DBT also focuses on thoughts, behaviors and feelings through the dialogue between client and therapist. The word dialectic means alternatives thoughts and proofs that the negative intrusive thought is not true, but a remnant of childhood. The dialectic alternative thought can be the opposite way of thinking to the negative thought and a means of chipping away at the power such intrusive thoughts can hold. For instance when a reoccurring troubling thought seems to continually intrude on your life, you’ll learn how to address it with the tools of DBT.
Solution Focused Brief Treatment
When life gets chaotic and unmanageable we work through your concerns and seek out possible solutions to those unmanageable problems. Often it is an accessible solution.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
Both CBT and DBT have proven effective at reducing the compulsions and depressive thoughts associated with addiction.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Mindfulness is a core practice in DBT and this effective strategy has been proven effective with eating disorders anorexia and bulimia.
Play Therapy
Play therapy in my practice is art therapy . The client with the therapist analysis their art product, the process of doing the art and often communicate through the art like play expression. Having worked many years with children in school settings, I have unique insight in learning differences and achievement expectations.