Hi! My name's Aliyah - I'm a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) based out of the beautiful foothills of Northern California. I've been practicing for six years since receiving my Masters of Science degree in social work from the University of Texas at Austin. I offer a calm, stable, compassionate, thoughtful, and non-judgmental presence for clients as they ride through life's transitions.
First sessions typically include introducing myself, my background, my general approach to therapy. followed by me hearing from you, the client, as to what brings you to therapy, your experience with therapy in the past (if any), what's been helpful and what hasn't. From there we can begin to develop therapy goals and craft together how we would like therapy to take shape between us.
Cool and calm, creative, curious and humble are the traits that I've found to be most helpful for me in my role as a therapist.
I've worked with adult clients across a wide variety of life stages, types of mental illness, severity of symptoms, as well as demographics. A common thread among my therapeutic relationships I've noticed is that I work well with clients who are ready to approach their therapeutic journey alongside me with openness and curiosity.
Attachment-based
Examining family of origin (FOO) experiences and relationships to get to better understand relationships in the present.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
For clients who prefer integrating a more systematic/pragmatic approach to therapy, this treatment method involves examining relationships among thoughts, feelings and behaviors and their influences on each other, and supplies strategies for intervening in the cycle to break limiting patterns. This approach involves homework/worksheets.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
Developed as a treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder, this method can be helpful used across diagnoses and involves developing healthy coping strategies, mindfulness, and examining the dialectical nature of the human experience.
Cognitive Processing (CPT)
Developed as a trauma processing therapy by the VA, this method offers an alternative to trauma treatment using a structured protocol that draws from CBT methods. This approach also includes homework.
Grief Therapy
My training in Grief Therapy in graduate school has come up throughout my therapy practice to support clients not only in bereavement/processing death loss, but through coping through a myriad of other types of losses as well.