Austa Murray, LCSW

Austa Murray is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) practicing in Illinois with 22 years of experience. She works with people facing anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, relationship strain, parenting stress, and codependency concerns. She also supports those dealing with grief, anger, ADHD, and the effects of caregiving and blended family dynamics.

Austa begins by listening to what a person wants to address. Sessions move at a pace the client finds comfortable. She aims to build a working connection and uses both talk and skill practice to help people manage symptoms and daily challenges.

Her work uses attachment and trauma perspectives to understand how relationships and early experiences affect current patterns. She draws on cognitive behavioral ideas to notice and change unhelpful thoughts and on dialectical behavior therapy skills for emotion regulation and distress tolerance.

Austa also brings client-centered methods, which focus on the person’s goals and lived experience, and elements of the Gottman Method when relationship patterns are part of the concern. She integrates these approaches rather than relying on a single method.

In sessions she offers practical tools and straightforward explanations of psychological concepts. The emphasis is on learning skills that can be used outside the session, understanding personal patterns, and making small changes that fit everyday life.

How therapeutic approaches guide online work