About Austa
Austa Murray is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with 22 years of experience helping people manage anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, and relationship problems. She supports concerns that include parenting strain, grief, LGBT issues, ADHD, and phobias. Her aim is to move at a pace that feels manageable and to build a trusting connection so people can get the support they need.
She prefers a compassionate, non-judgmental style and focuses on listening first.
Background and approach
Sessions often start where the person feels stuck, then move toward practical skills and clearer thinking. Austa blends strong listening with direct tools people can use between sessions. Her approach pulls from attachment-based ways of understanding relationships, client-centered listening, and cognitive behavioral techniques for changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors.
She also uses dialectical behavior ideas for emotion regulation and relationship work influenced by the Gottman Method when appropriate. These methods are mixed to fit each person’s needs rather than applied the same way for everyone.
Austa has worked across individual, group, and family settings, which informs how she helps people talk through parenting challenges, blended family stress, abandonment or attachment issues, and recovery from abuse. She emphasizes building insight while teaching coping strategies. People who meet with Austa can expect a collaborative plan that names goals and tracks progress.
She uses clear language and practical exercises to address communication problems, codependency, commitment fears, and life transitions. Sessions are offered from Illinois in English.
How her approaches translate to online care
Austa uses attachment-based work and client-centered listening to help people understand relationship patterns and feel heard. Attachment-based work looks at how early connections shape current trust and closeness, and it can help with intimacy-related issues, abandonment concerns, and blended family stress. Client-centered therapy focuses on creating a supportive space where the person leads the conversation and the therapist follows their priorities.She also draws on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to teach concrete skills for managing anxiety, phobias, and low mood. CBT breaks down unhelpful thoughts and behaviors into steps, then tests small changes to see what helps. Choosing which approaches to use is something the therapist and client figure out together based on needs, goals, and what feels comfortable. That collaborative planning helps match methods to problems like panic, worry, compulsive thinking, or relationship conflict.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls work well for in-depth sessions that mirror an office visit. Phone sessions are a good fit if bandwidth or camera use is a concern. Live chat and text messaging suit brief check-ins, skill coaching between sessions, or people who prefer written communication. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, school, or caregiving schedules while keeping the focus on progress and practical skill building.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 22 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
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