Susan Strain

Newly relocated to Tennessee from Western North Carolina, Susan comes to the Ranch with extensive experience working in both inpatient and outpatient settings, dealing with a wide range of populations and psychiatric conditions. She is a member of the Academy of Certified Social Workers, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist.

Susan Strain completed her undergraduate degree at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and her MSW from Rutgers University in 1982. A proponent of the bio-psycho-social model of illness and recovery, Susan’s sees the illness and the recovery process as multi-dimensional; both involving the biological, psychological, social and spiritual aspects of an individual’s life.

She uses a blend of motivational, cognitive/behavioral and insight oriented approaches. Susan believes that therapy is ultimately about balancing a full understanding and acceptance of the present reality while moving toward desired change. She see the role as therapist to be an agent of change by providing and modeling self- understanding, self-acceptance and self-compassion while maintaining the challenge to develop new ways of being in the world and feels strongly that the ambivalence about change is a natural and an expected part of the recovery process.

She is very excited to be a part a healing community that shares her treatment philosophy and values an individualized, compassionate approach to the treatment of eating disorders in particular. The Ranch provides the warmth, emotionally safety and clinical expertise where clients can explore how deeper issues are expressed in their relationship with food and body and struggles over food, appetite and hunger can be understood as the symbolic expressions of ambivalence over need, desire and vulnerability.