Susan Gibbs is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with a Master of Science in Counseling and Clinical Health Psychology.

Susan brings over 20 years of clinical and educational experience to her work addressing School Avoidance and School Refusal. Her background spans community mental health, crisis and outpatient counseling, and school-based services, giving her a practical, systems-minded approach that equips students, parents, and educators with concrete tools for success by helping to bridge education and mental health.

Susan maintains a private practice serving children and families, consults on the DREAMS grant through Rutgers University UBHC-TAC, and delivers School Refusal trainings for the New Jersey Children’s System of Care. In addition, she is an Advanced Trainer for the Nurtured Heart Approach and shares her expertise as an Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Psychology at Rowan University and at Rowan College of Burlington County.

In 2008, two years after completing my Master’s Degree, I had the opportunity to attend my first ever Nurtured Heart Approach®  with my clinical supervisor and mentor. From just the description of the training, I was hooked. It made so much sense!  Not energizing the negative, energizing the positive, and clarity. All things that I was striving for in my own clinical practice, and what I hoped to achieve with my own family, should I have been blessed with children. 

I was able to integrate the NHA philosophy into the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Solutions-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) techniques that I used on a daily basis (Beck, 1979; Berg, 1994; Shazer, 1985). For me, it married very well with other evidence-based practices, and kind of “filled in the holes” when working with families who did not completely “buy-in” to traditional CBT. I also feel that it was a way to join with parents who may have been feeling as though they were doing something wrong or being judged. Essentially, it encouraged a common language with parents without blaming any one person’s parenting.  

As time progressed, I married and had my own children. I remember trying one or two of the things my parents said when disciplining me, and to my amazement, those things did not work. And they did not feel good to me when I was saying them. I recall how I pivoted and tried a couple of Nurtured Heart statements, and “Voila” - magic. It was beautiful. I felt awkward and clunky when first starting with the NHA but as time progressed, my own inner wealth built. I was able to recognize my greatness in the moment without feeling like a braggart or snob. With training and practice, it became second nature. As a colleague shared with me, the language “rolls off” my tongue. 

Fast forward a decade or 15 years, and my mentor introduced me to Trauma-Informed Care, the Polyvagal Theory (PVT) and nervous system regulation (Porges, 1994; Dana, 2018). In my humble opinion, this too, married well with NHA. and in putting all three together - CBT with the NHA and PVT, I feel as though I have a complete approach for helping children, adolescents, adults and families grow to become their best selves. 

And as society has changed with technology, I understand more and more about PVT, neurobiology, and how our children and young people’s nervous systems are heavily influenced and developed (or underdeveloped) by our engagement with technology (Haidt, 2024).  I believe that the increase in acceptance or labeling of “anxiety” is closely tied with our engagement with technology.  Not only has the world gotten smaller in some ways, but as children who were raised with phones, screens and/or social media at the tip of their fingers or even next to their beds at night, our young people and burgeoning professionals have carried the fear of and behavior associated with “what if” into major areas of functioning - work, family, friends, and even leisure/recreation - to their disadvantage (Haidt, 2024; Wilson & Lyons, 2014).  

And that’s where a consistent approach to School Refusal clicked for me. Because while every child is different, every family funcctions a little or a lot differently, there are some common factors that serve as building blocks in getting our children and teens to school on a regular basis.

Individuals, families, clinicians, and school personnel.