I am a licensed clinical psychologist, specializing in working with children, adults, and families who have experienced complex trauma, family relational challenges, and family stressors. I provide individual therapy to adults struggling with the impacts of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and life stressors. I specialize in supporting women and new mothers experiencing perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. I also provide parent support intertwined with therapy, with the goal of supporting parents in understanding their own mental health, such that they can bolster the emotional health and resilience of their children.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
During our first session we will review the general administrative and ethical logistics for our sessions. I will describe my therapeutic style in more detail and explain how I structure sessions. I allow clients to choose if they'd like to start the first session in a more open-ended, unstructured fashion, or, if they'd like more structured questions. The goal with either approach is for me to gather the appropriate background information that allows us to have a shared understanding of your experiences. We will begin working on shared treatment plan goals during the first few sessions as well.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
As your therapist, I am very attuned to you and your experience during our sessions. I work diligently to not only actively listen and take notes about our conversations, but I will also pose questions and statements that support clients in thinking deeper. I am an empathic, compassionate listener, that will also work to express connections and themes as they become apparent. I find that I have a great memory regarding client's history, and clients have reflected this to me, which allows me to make connections with my clients on a more meaningful level. Lastly, I am organized, thorough, and reliable in all my communication and scheduling. I genuinely care about my clients and truly feel honored that they allow me into deep, challenging parts of themselves.
About Lindsey Ayala
Specializes in
Licensed in
Accepts cash
Appointments
VirtualMy treatment methods
Attachment-based
I center my understanding of client's and their presenting challenges through an attachment-lens. Our early childhood experiences and our earliest attachments set the framework for how we move through the world as adults. These early experiences also shape how we present in adult relationships and as parents. I use this lens to aid client's in how they understand themselves, including their behaviors, challenges, and emotions.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
I have experience utilizing cognitive behavioral therapy tools to support client's ability to recognize their own thought processes, that can often include cognitive distortions and areas of anxiety. I work with clients to use these tools as a means to integrate ways that they can combat their problematic thinking styles, and think about scenarios and thoughts in a more grounded way. This can be done through the use of various worksheets that help client's work through their thought processes both inside and outside of session.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Before one can utilize cognitive-based tools, one must ground themselves. This starts through the use of mindfulness-based tools. I have experience supporting clients in cultivating what mindfulness-based approaches feel most accessible and supportive to them that can aid them in finding a grounding, calm presence. This presence can then allow them to do the deeper work, be it psychodynamic work and/or cognitive-behavioral work.
Trauma Informed Care
I center my understanding of client's through their own lived experiences, which may often include traumatic experiences either past or present. I approach clients in a manner that allows me to gain an understanding of their traumas and how they may be impacting their life currently. I have experience working with clients who have active Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, general impacts from trauma, and complex/chronic trauma in making sense of their experiences, understanding themselves within those experiences, and finding a path forward. Clients are more than their experiences and can move through very challenging, traumatic incidents with the appropriate support.
Psychodynamic
The main underlying approach of my work is psychodynamic. This approach takes into account the underlying mental and emotional forces impacting a person, which can often steam from early childhood experiences. One of my clients previously told me that I aided them in understanding the matrix of their own mind, as I work to blend together an understanding of past and present experiences, and underlying emotions and thoughts, on current life functioning and mental health.