Austa Murray

Austa Murray is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with over 22 years of experience helping people cope with stress, anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, and relationship concerns. She supports those dealing with parenting stress, grief, intimacy-related problems, and challenges tied to identity and LGBT concerns. Austa aims to start where each person is so work moves at a comfortable pace and feels manageable.

She uses a trauma-focused lens alongside attachment-based ideas to understand patterns that repeat in relationships. Sessions often include listening, teaching coping skills, and building insight so people can try different ways of responding. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques are combined with client-centered, strengths-based care to make concrete changes.

Austa describes her style as compassionate, non-judgmental, and educational. She draws on developmental perspectives and practical exercises rather than only talking about feelings. This helps people practice new skills between sessions and notice change over time.

She has experience with a wide range of concerns, including abandonment, adoption and foster care issues, caregiver stress, codependency, dissociation, domestic violence, and bipolar-related struggles. Her background includes individual and group work across varied mental health settings, which informs a flexible approach to different needs.

In therapy, Austa collaborates to create a plan that fits each person’s goals and pace. She focuses on clear steps, coping strategies, and building a stronger sense of self and safety after difficult experiences.

Approaches that shape online work

Austa uses Trauma-Focused Therapy to help people process and reduce the impact of traumatic events. This approach focuses on understanding how past harm affects current thoughts, emotions, and relationships and on building skills to manage strong reactions.

She also uses Attachment-Based Therapy to look at how early connections influence current relationship patterns. This work helps people identify repeating dynamics, strengthen emotional connection to themselves, and change how they relate to others.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist collaborates with each person to choose methods that fit their goals, needs, and comfort level. That decision is revisited over time so techniques can shift as progress is made.

Confirm the available session options before booking, as formats are not listed in this profile. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life, allow for shorter check-ins when time is limited, and reduce travel time. The therapist will discuss what works best for scheduling, attention, and practice between sessions so therapy can be most useful for everyday life.