Dr. Susan Terris

Susan C. Terris is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) with 25 years of experience in the mental health field. For 14 years Susan was a psych social worker/group psychotherapist at Herrick Hospital’s Partial Hospitalization Program/Intensive Outpatient Program in Berkeley, California. She evaluated and treated young adults and adults of all ages seeking help with mood, anxiety, and thought disorders, and worked with many families in support of the treatment process. Susan completed her Master of Arts (MA) in Counseling Psychology at John F. Kennedy University. She has been strengthening her understanding about culturally-sensitive issues, such as race-based and minority stress, social justice, and equity. Susan will help her clients find a better fit if a therapist matching their own culture is preferred. Susan identifies as cisgender, is gender-affirming and accepting of your sexual orientation and/or questioning. She is especially interested in helping clients to get in …touch with their own feelings or learn how to contain them as needed. Susan feels one of her strengths is helping clients to decrease anxiety and depression and increase coping skills. She collaborates with each client to find the therapeutic skills they find most helpful. Susan is a sought-after consultant to help others find appropriate community resources and referrals. Together you and Susan can learn how to tenderly hold any disowned parts of yourself, and help you navigate relationship issues. She understands how to help you approach healing grief, including complicated and/or traumatic grief, and feels deep empathy with this process. Susan uses creative skills such as mindfulness, poetry, or art when clients indicate their desire to explore therapy in this way. She teaches cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and enjoys helping clients work through grief, using grounding and trauma-informed methods. Susan would like the chance to get to know you in a nonjudgmental environment. She knows it is hard to tell your story to someone new, so please pace yourself and tell only what you are comfortable with. Like the Rumi poem, “Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there…”