Allie Kauffmann
My name is Allie Kauffmann and I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in working with eating disorders, body image distress, anxiety, and depression.
If you've ever felt "overly sensitive," overwhelmed by your emotions, or "too much," I'm excited to help you embrace your sensitivity and rich emotional life.
I'm passionate about supporting clients in gaining insight about their emotions and learning how to use these emotions to guide them towards living in alignment with their values to be their most authentic self. If you've ever felt "overly sensitive," overwhelmed by your emotions, or "too much," I'm excited to help you embrace your sensitivity and rich emotional life.
First session
In our first session I'll inquire about reasons you're seeking therapy and what goals I can help you work towards in our time together. I'll ask about your history with therapy and what has felt validating or invalidating in your past therapeutic experiences.
Strengths
As a provider, I aim to create safety and rapport with clients from the first session. I'm skilled at achieving a blend of emotional validation and honest, direct feedback so clients feel both encouraged and challenged. In my own struggles with anxiety, depression, and body image issues, I've unacceptable, "too much," and like my emotions were too big, too intense, and too overwhelming. In my own therapy, I began to realize that my emotions were a gift, not a curse, that I could use them for radical empathy and understanding rather than feeling controlled by them. I want to show clients that emotions are their greatest teacher. In struggling with my own body image issues, I've learned to feed myself intuitively, respect my body for what it can do for me, and recognize how diet culture and weight stigma were the real problem, not my body itself. Because of these experiences I can help clients use their emotions as a guide to reclaim a compassionate relationship with the body and self.
Ideal clients
As a member of the LGBTQ community, I work from a place of inclusivity and radical acceptance and enjoy working with clients who identify as part of the queer community to help them feel heard, understood, and celebrated in their identity, emotions, and selfhood. My dream client is motivated to begin the work of self acceptance, identity exploration, and challenging systems that aren't serving them. I've worked in the field of eating disorder treatment for the past 4 years and feel confident helping clients navigate body image struggles and any eating disorder behavior or diagnosis. Because eating disorders usually occur alongside other mental health struggles I can help clients identify where experiences of trauma, depression, and anxiety can exacerbate disordered eating symptoms and address the underlying emotions that drive these behaviors.
Treatment methods
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
I help patients gain insight about their emotions and how to use their emotions to choose behaviors that feel in line with their values and bring about the best outcomes. Through the use of mindfulness, emotional distress tolerance, and cognitive flexibility, you'll start to respond differently to your emotions and break unhelpful patterns of behavior.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
Top specialties
Other specialties
Serves
Licensed in
- CaliforniaLicense 140190