LCSW, 6 years of experience
My name is Alyssa (she/her) and I am a licensed therapist who provides holistic, trauma-informed virtual therapy throughout California. I work with older teens and young adults to navigate life transitions, build a healthy sense of self, increase confidence and resiliency, and address the roadblocks that hold us back in life. I offer client-centered individual therapy. My practice is LGBTQ+ affirming.
In our first session together, we will get to know each other and we will explore your strengths, challenges, and what brings you to therapy. We will start building a therapeutic relationship and identify what initial goals you would like to address.
My therapeutic strengths shine through in the authenticity, warmth, compassion, humor, and extensive (and intensive) experience I bring into my work. I excel at meeting my clients where they are at, working as a team to set goals, and providing consistent support, validation, and encouragement throughout our time together.
I love working with teens and 20-somethings. This is a time of huge transition, and it can be difficult to balance the demands of school, work, and relationships. It's hard enough to figure out who are you, who you want to be, and how to be a human in this world-- add in anxiety, depression, unresolved trauma, or other mental health challenges and it can feel overwhelming at best. My job is to help my clients identify what is keeping them stuck and take small consistent steps towards building a life that feels worth living.
As a clinical social worker, I approach my work with a strengths-based perspective. While it is important to acknowledge what is wrong or not working, it is just as critical to identify and build on our strengths.
I primarily utilize CBT for: (1) teaching my clients about the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behavior, (2) identifying cognitive distortions (thought errors), and (3) restructuring unhelpful thinking patterns.
I pull from a variety of therapeutic modalities to tailor treatment to each individual client. I incorporate components of cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, solution-focused therapy, and somatic-based therapy. Regardless of what tools are being used in a session, my approach is grounded in compassionate, trauma-informed care.
I use DBT in my practice to teach the core skills of mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT is wonderful at addressing current distress, as well as working more longterm on changing the way we think about the world, ourselves, and others.
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn-- these are physiological nervous system responses. I utilize somatic-based tools like Emotional Freedom Technique (aka "tapping") with my clients to help physically restore safety to the nervous system.