LP, 4 years of experience
New to Grow
Hi! I'm Dr. Chelsea Acker, a licensed clinical psychologist with expertise working with children and adolescents. I'm experienced with a range of concerns, but I have specialized training in treating trauma, suicidality, and early psychosis. In 2019, I graduated from the PAU-Stanford PsyD Consortium, where I trained at the Stanford School of Medicine's psychiatry department and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital's program at a local high school. I attended internship (our version of residency, more or less) at the UC Davis Medical Center, where I received world-class training in the treatment of childhood trauma and early psychosis, both separately and together. I then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Chicago Child Trauma Center, where I continued to build my expertise in the treatment of childhood trauma. After that, I worked at Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, for two and a half years, where I specialized in working with children and adolescents with complex, persistent symptom presentations, who had often been hospitalized multiple times for safety concerns and struggled to make progress with previous therapists.
During my first appointment with you or your child, my focus is on learning more about what prompted you to seek care, what your goals are, and how I can best help you achieve those goals. I also want to make sure that you leave with a sense of who I am and what therapy with me would look like, so you can make an informed choice about whether you'd like to move forward together. In terms of the structure of our first session, I always start with discussing your rights as a patient, as well as confidentiality and limits around it. Then I will ask more about your symptoms, as well as everything else that makes you the person that you are - your family, your hobbies, your background, and what matters to you! If I'm working with a child, I'll typically spend some time with the you alone, some time with your child alone, and some time with both of you together. We'll also discuss up front how much of what your child talks about in therapy will be shared with you and come to an agreement that everyone feels comfortable with.
As a therapist, I combine adherence to scientifically proven interventions with an approachable, down-to-earth attitude. I bring a playful style and a sense of humor to my work, as well as a deep appreciation and affection for my clients. While I adjust aspects of my approach to fit each client and their needs, in general I tend to take a role that is both active and collaborative. I'll encourage you or your child to do difficult and sometimes uncomfortable things, because growing and changing is hard work that often requires us to look at painful memories or go outside of our comfort zone. That said, you're the expert on you! You know what matters enough to you to go through discomfort and what level of challenge you can handle, and you're the one who has had a lifetime of experience with the way that you think and feel. I've found that therapy is most effective when both of us are actively working together and sharing suggestions and observations to figure out what will be most helpful for you, put it into action, and celebrate your successes as you do the difficult but important work of growing into the person you want to be.
While I find almost all clients interesting and enjoyable to work with, I have the most experience working with trauma, depression, anxiety, and early psychosis. That said, much of my work has been with diagnostically complex clients who often needed support with a range of concerns, including autism, bipolar disorder, substance use, eating disorders, OCD, and ADHD. While most of my experience has been with children, I also enjoy working with adults, particularly young adults, parents, or adults struggling with childhood trauma.