About Suzanne
Suzanne Baer is a licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) in Illinois with 22 years of therapeutic experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, addictions, trauma and abuse, grief, and depression.
Background and approach
She draws on a wide clinical background that includes work in inpatient drug and alcohol treatment, sexual abuse counseling, and community mental health settings, giving her a broad perspective on complex and overlapping concerns such as codependency, chronic pain and illness, attachment issues, and communication problems.
Her approach is warm, interactive, and pragmatic; she centers sessions on each person's goals and tailors interventions to fit individual needs. Suzanne integrates client-centered listening with evidence-based tools including cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness practices, and motivational interviewing to address symptoms and develop practical coping skills.
She also offers support around relationship challenges, commitment difficulties, personality-related struggles, and life transitions such as divorce and separation. Clients can expect a collaborative relationship that emphasizes encouragement, motivation, and gentle challenge as pathways to change.
Suzanne aims to help people build resilience, clarify priorities, and take meaningful steps toward greater well-being while honoring each person's unique story and pace of progress.
Therapeutic approaches you can use online
Client-centered therapy focuses on empathic listening and collaboration, helping clients explore their experience and make decisions that align with their values; it supports issues like depression, grief, and relationship struggles by emphasizing understanding and personal agency. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) involves identifying patterns of thought and behavior that contribute to distress and developing practical strategies to change them, which is useful for anxiety, stress, and mood symptoms. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) teaches emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness skills to help manage intense emotions and improve coping in challenging situations.Choosing the right approach is part of the therapeutic process and will be addressed collaboratively. The therapist works with each client to consider goals, preferences, and symptom patterns and then tailors a blend of methods to fit the individual's needs rather than applying a single fixed model.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging, making it easier to schedule sessions around work or caregiving responsibilities and to access care from different locations within Illinois. These formats support ongoing skill practice and consistent contact, allowing therapists and clients to adapt how they connect as needs change while focusing on progress and real-world problem solving.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 22 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English