Adam Williams
You might be at a turning point. Drained by work or the people around you, disconnected from whatever used to give things meaning, or trying to find your footing after a major life change. Maybe anxiety creeps in, thoughts get stuck on repeat, or there's a heaviness you can't quite shake. These are the kinds of crossroads I help people navigate. I'm a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Sacramento. My background spans community mental health, residential treatment, and crisis intervention, with a focus on addiction recovery, trauma, and complex life transitions. Before that, 15 years in the arts and nonprofit world gave me a close-up view of the burnout that people who give a lot of themselves often carry quietly.
Get to know me
In our first session together, here's what you can expect
The first session is a chance to explore what's bringing you to therapy and start to get a sense of what you're actually hoping for. It's also simply a chance for us to get a feel for each other. You don't need to have it figured out before you arrive. Most people don't.
The biggest strengths that I bring into our sessions
Years working in addiction and crisis settings taught me what actually matters in a therapeutic relationship. Candor, real listening, curiosity about what's underneath, and enough humor to make hard work sustainable. I bring all of that regardless of what you're dealing with. I adapt to what you actually need, whether that's structure and focus or something more open-ended, and the work adjusts as you do.
The clients I'm best positioned to serve
The clients I work best with aren't necessarily people who have it all figured out, but people who are done coasting and ready to actually engage with the work. If that sounds like you, the specific challenges are almost secondary. That said, people come to me when they're dealing with anxiety, depression, substance use, compulsive patterns that feel hard to stop even when you want to, relationship conflict, or a general sense of being disconnected from what matters. This includes people whose challenges are tangled up with ADHD, where the diagnosis is part of the picture but not the whole story. I also have extensive trauma experience. For many clients it's woven into everything else they're carrying, and that's exactly how I work with it. If any of this resonates, feel free to reach out to schedule a first appointment.
Anxiety
Depression
Life Transitions
ADHD
Addiction
Men's Issues
Man
Adults (18 to 64)
Elders (65 and above)
California
Aetna
Location
VirtualMy treatment methods
Psychodynamic
Sometimes the roots of what we're struggling with aren't immediately obvious. Psychodynamic therapy goes deeper, exploring the unconscious patterns, unresolved experiences, and protective defenses we've built up over time that may be quietly shaping how we think, feel, and relate. It's exploratory work, but for many people it's the approach that finally helps things make sense. Clients often describe it as "getting to the bottom of things."
Attachment-based
Like it or not, our earliest relationships shape how we "do" relationships throughout our lives. Those patterns have a way of showing up in our closest connections, often when we least expect it. Attachment-based work helps individuals identify the cycles of disconnection that can take hold, understand where they come from, and shift them toward greater security in themselves and in their relationships. If you find yourself stuck in the same arguments, feeling distant from the people you love, or struggling with anxiety, low self-worth, or a sense of disconnection, this tends to be where things start to shift.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy was originally developed for people whose emotional experiences feel intense, overwhelming, or hard to manage. It has since proven useful across a much wider range of challenges than it was originally designed for, which is part of why I draw on it so often. DBT organizes its skills into four areas: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Rather than applying the full model rigidly, I draw on whichever skills are most relevant to what a client is working on. For some people that means learning to get through hard moments without making things worse. For others it's about navigating relationships more skillfully, managing emotional intensity, or building a more stable foundation day to day. These are skills that translate across almost every challenge my clients bring in.
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy starts from a different premise than most. The goal isn't to eliminate difficult thoughts and feelings. It's to change your relationship with them. ACT builds skills for stepping back from unhelpful thought patterns, tuning into the present moment, and getting clearer on what actually matters to you. The point is to free up energy for the people, work, and experiences that make life feel worth showing up for.
Trauma Informed Care
Trauma-informed care isn't a specific technique so much as an orientation. A way of understanding that many of the patterns people struggle with, whether that's difficulty trusting others, emotional reactivity, avoidance, or a persistent sense of being on guard, often make complete sense in light of what someone has been through. It's an orientation I've worked from throughout my career, across crisis, residential, and outpatient settings. Working from this lens means we don't pathologize your responses. We try to understand them. It also means the pace and direction of the work is something we navigate together, with your sense of safety leading the way.