Kirby Wohlander, M.S.W.
My name is Kirby Wohlander, and I've been in the field for more than 40 years. I use a warm, strengths-based, sometimes humorous, skill-teaching approach, helping people learn to cope with, manage, and eliminate their symptoms. Most clients seek help with anxiety and/or depression. For anxiety, we examine current stressors and apply practical management tools to bring quick relief. For depression, I combine exploration of underlying causes with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to identify negative thought patterns and help clients become more positive and hopeful about their future. Trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) in 2018, I do extensive trauma work with people who have experienced abuse, neglect, and/or PTSD. I've also worked in alcohol and drug rehabilitation, giving me familiarity with addiction recovery, 12-Step and Smart Recovery programs, and how these challenges affect families and relationships.
Because I have worked in the field for a long time, I have been influenced by many schools of thought, and acquired many therapeutic approaches, tools, and techniques.
For about five years, I ran family service programs for the military and developed a solid understanding of military culture — particularly Navy life and the strain of long deployments. I'm well-versed in the unique challenges service members and their families face. Much of my career has been spent working with high-functioning outpatient clients: teachers, nurses, engineers, physicians, professors, other mental health professionals, and students, among others. Finally, my experience in psychiatric hospitals and programs for the chronically mentally ill has given me broad exposure to severe mental health conditions. I'm comfortable and experienced working with clients managing serious bipolar symptoms or psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices and unusual thinking. Across all of these areas, my goal remains the same: to meet each person where they are and give them the tools they need to thrive.
First session
My primary emphasis is on building a trusting relationship with each client, so they feel safe sharing their deepest concerns, knowing they will be treated with care, gentleness, and compassion. I use an eclectic approach rooted in a psychodynamic orientation, drawing on techniques from Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Solution Focused Therapy, anxiety management skills training, and CBT. This broad toolkit allows me to tailor my approach to each individual's unique needs. My social work background shapes how I see each client — not in isolation, but as a person embedded in a larger environment. Symptoms often arise from what's happening at home, in the family, at work, in society, or from influences rooted in the past. Understanding this full picture is essential to helping people heal. Ultimately, my goal is to offer clients new ways of seeing themselves and their situations, equip them with practical coping skills, and help them build lasting stra
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.
Ideal clients
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.
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.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
Top specialties
Other specialties
Serves
Licensed in
- CaliforniaLicense 6835