Dr. Suzanne Degges-White is a licensed counselor with over twenty years of experience working with children, adolescents, and adults. She provides counseling and life coaching to individuals, couples, and families. She has worked with clients facing a variety of challenges from past trauma and abuse, to expected and unexpected transitions in life. These areas include working through anxiety, depression, grief, sexual identity development, career transitions, parenting of young children and adult children, and family relationships. She also has expertise in helping individuals manage friendships over the lifespan.
Suzanne’s basic theoretical belief is that people are capable of change and that they can learn to make choices that enhance overall wellness and personal development. She recognizes that change can be difficult and painful for clients as they grow and develop in new, more efficacious ways. In her counseling and consulting work, Suzanne employs a variety of therapeutic techniques to encourage clients to take new perspectives and engage in new behaviors that will help them better manage the challenges they face. Using a humanistic framework, and depending on the nature of the concern, she may use techniques from cognitive and behavioral theory, existential counseling, choice theory, and feminist theory.
Suzanne is also a professor and chair of the Counseling and Higher Education Department at Northern Illinois University. She is a former president of the Association for Adult Development and Aging and has published over 30 articles in academic journals. Suzanne has shared her expertise through multiple outlets including the BBC, NPR, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and multiple local and international newspapers, radio shows, and podcasts, including “Good Morning, America.” Her goal is to help others by encouraging them to make the choices in life that will bring the most meaning to their lives.
Suzanne Degges-White’s influence reaches beyond Choosing Therapy as she contributes her expertise to various reputable publications, including:
- Psychology Today
- Sisters & Brothers for Life: Navigating Adult Sibling Relationships (2017)
- Toxic friendships: Knowing the rules and dealing with the friends who break them (2015)
- Mothers and daughters: Living, loving, and learning over a lifetime. (2014)
- Friends forever: How girls and women forge lasting relationships (2011)
- Counseling the contemporary woman (2020)
- Group development and group leadership in student affairs (2020)
- Integrating the expressive arts into the science of counseling (2017)
- College student development: Applying theory to diverse practice (2017)
- Career counseling interventions for diverse populations (2016)
- Expressive arts interventions for school counselors (2014)
- College mental health counseling: A developmental approach (2013)
- Counseling boys and young men (2012)
- Integrating the expressive arts into the science of counseling (2011)
Professional Affiliations:
American Counseling Association, former member of the Governing Council
Association for Adult Development and Aging, former president
Education:
PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision: University of North Carolina at Greensboro
MS in Counseling: University of North Carolina at Greensboro
