Hello, my name is Kirby Wohlander, and I've been in the field for more than 40 years. • I use a warm, inviting, strengths-based, sometimes humorous, skill-teaching approach, helping people to learn the skills they need to learn to cope with, manage, and eliminate their symptoms. • Most clients who come in are seeking help with the symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. With anxiety, we examine their current sources of anxiety and stress, and work with anxiety management skills and tools to quickly get the person to feel some relief. • Regarding depression, we explore underlying causes, while also using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques to identify negative thought patterns. Employing these, we collaborate in striving to help the client become more positive, optimistic, and hopeful about their future. I have seen much success using these approaches. • Trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) in 2018, I have done, and continue to do, a lot of trauma work, helping people who have been abused, neglected and/or have PTSD. • I have worked in an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program along the way, and am familiar with addiction-recovery issues, 12-Step programs, Smart Recovery, and the way these challenges can impact families and relationships. • I ran family service programs for the military for about 5 years, and have a pretty good understanding of military culture, and the challenges of military life, especially the Navy, with its long deployments. • Working for years with people seeking outpatient mental health services, such as those who might come to Grow, I have done much work with high-functioning people such as teachers, nurses, engineers, physicians, professors, other mental health professionals, students, and those doing other kinds of work. • Finally, because I have worked in psychiatric hospitals, and programs for the chronically mentally ill, I have seen all kinds of mental illness symptoms, and am comfortable working with folks who have severe bipolar symptoms, or challenges with psychotic symptoms, such as hearing voices, and unusual thinking.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
I see therapy as a collaborative effort. I welcome and encourage feedback about our sessions, often asking every few meetings, how the client feels the work is going, and if it is helping them. I want every client to feel heard, understood, supported and safe. My approach is to build a picture of the client's life, and to see things, especially the difficult ones, through their eyes. We can then examine how and why they see things as they do, and explore new ways of perceiving and experiencing what is happening to them. Through this process, and the skill acquisition mentioned above, it is hoped that the client will come to understand themselves, and their situation in new ways. Clients often leave each session with new things to try, a new way of seeing something, or a fresh understanding of a past event that provides them with both insight and relief in the present.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
Therapy is a journey, and as a therapist, I see myself as a guide to people making that trek. I have been down similar paths many times before, with many others, yet each path is unique, interesting, and sometimes surprising. I can walk with you, and use my skills to show you the way, keep you safe, and also encourage you to use what you find on this journey to help you in the present. I have heard many traumatic stories, and tales of trips to Emergency Rooms with panic attacks, and immensely sad narratives of grief. I am there with you, with warmth, confidence, courage, and the willingness to learn, and see anew, we gain a great deal along the way. What we garner, can change a person in positive ways, experience things in a new way, make doing what was once hard, possible, even easier. In the end, we complete the trip, renewed, wiser, in less pain, with fewer symptoms, and new approaches, attitudes, and confidence to face the future.
Describe the client(s) you are best positioned to serve.
Those who have experienced trauma, or been diagnosed with PTSD. Also, those having troubling anxiety symptoms. I have helped many clients cope with adult ADHD traits. Finally, people with depression.
About Kirby Wohlander, M.S.W.
Kirby Wohlander, M.S.W. offers therapy covered by Blue Shield of California - Medi-Cal, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan (Medi-Cal), CalViva Health (Medi-Cal), Central California Alliance for Health (Medi-Cal), Community Health Plan of Imperial Valley (Medi-Cal), Gold Coast Health Plan (Medi-Cal), Health Net (Medi-Cal), Health Plan of San Joaquin - Medi-Cal, L.A. Care Health Plan (Medi-Cal), Orange County Mental Health Plan (Medi-Cal), Partnership HealthPlan of California (Medi-Cal) and San Francisco Health Plan (Medi-Cal) in California.
Identifies as
Specializes in
Serves ages
Licensed in
Accepts
Appointments
VirtualMy treatment methods
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a research proven and effective way of helping people with depression and/or anxiety. Most of us have a critical inner voice that is filling our brains with messages that we are bad, wrong, not enough, not competent, even not lovable. CBT is a way of addressing that, and working with people in a gradual and compassionate way to identify what the inner voice is saying, how it influences one's general thinking, and then changing it. It is a process of actually reprogramming the brain to view and think about things in different and better ways. I have helped hundreds of clients use these methods successfully.