Licensed to practice in California and accepts 21 insurances. Specializes in Bipolar Disorder, LGBTQ, Personality Disorders and 6 more.
(He/They)
Often rebooked
Clients say this provider is
I’m Allan, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who believes therapy—especially for kids—doesn’t have to mean sitting on a couch talking about feelings for 50 minutes. Sometimes the best conversations happen over LEGOs, games, art, play, or while doing something that makes it easier to simply be yourself. Online, it could mean processing trauma, playing online therapeutic games with children (or adults if you want to). I especially enjoy working with children and teens, including kids who are anxious, overwhelmed, navigating trauma, struggling with big emotions or behaviors, or having a hard time putting what’s happening inside into words. I use play, creativity, humor, and evidence-based approaches to build connection and help kids develop skills without therapy feeling like another place where adults are telling them what to do. I also work with adults navigating trauma, mood concerns, relationships, identity, major life changes, and life’s more complicated chapters. My style is warm, humorous, direct, and genuinely human. I draw from DBT, EMDR, Trauma-Focused CBT, play-based interventions, Theraplay-informed practices, narrative therapy, and trauma-informed care, adapting therapy to the person in front of me rather than expecting them to adapt to therapy. My professional experience includes inpatient psychiatry, juvenile justice, child welfare, family services, and community mental health, so I’m comfortable working with both everyday struggles and situations that feel especially complicated. Whether we meet in my Eureka office or online, my goal is to create a space where you—or your child—feel safe, understood, and comfortable showing up exactly as you are. My practice is LGBTQIA+ and gender-diverse affirming and neurodiversity-affirming. And yes, there are credentials behind the LEGOs.
First sessions can be awkward. You’re meeting a stranger and somehow supposed to explain your entire life in an hour. Kids may be wondering, “Why am I here?” while parents are silently hoping I have a magic therapist wand hidden somewhere. (Sadly, I do not. I checked.) So we start by getting comfortable. With kids and teens, I don’t expect them to walk in and immediately tell me their deepest thoughts and feelings. We might play a game, build something, draw, joke around, or talk about absolutely anything except therapy for a while. Connection comes first. The important stuff tends to follow. Parents will have opportunities to share what they’re seeing, what’s been difficult, and what they hope will change. Together, we’ll begin figuring out what your child needs and how I can help. Adults get the same low-pressure approach—minus the assumption that you don’t want LEGOs. Those are available to everyone. Whether we meet in person or online, you can ask questions, tell me what has or hasn’t worked before, and even tell me you’re not sure what you need yet. You don’t need to arrive with the perfect words or perfectly defined therapy goals. My goal for session one is simple: understand what brought you here, start building trust, and make sure you leave feeling heard, respected, and a little more comfortable about coming back.
One of my biggest strengths is connecting with people who aren’t exactly thrilled about being in therapy—especially kids and teens. I don’t believe therapy has to feel clinical, uncomfortable, or like one more adult asking, “And how does that make you feel?” I bring humor, creativity, patience, and a healthy willingness to be a little ridiculous when it helps someone feel comfortable. With kids, that might mean games, LEGOs, art, play, or finding ways to practice emotional regulation without announcing, “Today we’re practicing emotional regulation!” With teens and adults, it often means creating a space where you can be honest without worrying about saying the “right” thing. I’m also comfortable with complicated. My background includes inpatient psychiatry, juvenile justice, child welfare, family services, and community mental health. I bring that experience into the room while still treating you as a person—not a diagnosis. My approach is collaborative, trauma-informed, strengths-based, and practical. I’ll meet you where you are, help you understand what’s underneath the struggle, and work with you to build skills that actually make sense in real life. Most importantly, I bring authenticity. You’ll get a therapist who is warm, direct, curious, occasionally funny, and genuinely invested in helping you—or your child—feel understood and move forward.
We both want to see growth happen and work towards making that happen.
Cash - $175 per session
Aetna
Aetna - Allied Benefits
Aetna - ASR Health Benefits
Aetna - Lucent Health
Aetna - Luminare
Aetna - Moda
Aetna - WebTPA
Aetna – HealthEZ
Amerihealth Administrators
Amerihealth NJ Medicare Advantage
Anthem
Blue Cross
Blue Shield
Carelon Behavioral Health (Commercial)
IHSS Healthy Workers
Independence Administrators
Independence Blue Cross
L.A. Care Covered
L.A. Care Covered Direct
L.A. Care PASC-SEIU
Sutter Health Plan
I use DBT to help clients understand big emotions without letting those emotions completely take over the steering wheel. We work on practical skills for managing distress, regulating emotions, improving relationships, setting boundaries, and getting through difficult moments without making the situation even harder. With kids and teens, DBT doesn’t have to look like sitting down with a worksheet and memorizing therapy vocabulary. We might practice skills through games, real-life situations, humor, play, or conversations about what actually happens when emotions go from 0 to 100. The goal is to make the skills understandable and usable outside my office—not just something that sounds good during therapy. With adults, I use the same practical, collaborative approach while exploring patterns, relationships, emotional responses, and the balance between accepting where you are and working toward meaningful change. As a DBT-trained therapist, I incorporate mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness while adapting these tools to the individual in front of me. DBT is not about getting rid of emotions—it’s about learning how to experience them without handing them the keys.
I use EMDR to help clients work through experiences that still feel “stuck”—the memories, emotions, beliefs, or reactions that your brain seems determined to keep bringing up long after the danger or experience has passed. EMDR can be especially helpful when someone understands logically that they’re safe, capable, or not to blame, but their emotions and body haven’t quite gotten the memo yet. Rather than requiring clients to repeatedly tell every detail of a difficult experience, EMDR helps the brain process what happened so the past doesn’t continue to feel quite so present. With children and teens, I adapt EMDR to their developmental level using creativity, play, drawing, stories, games, movement, and age-appropriate language. We build trust and coping skills first, and I never expect a child to jump straight into processing difficult memories simply because they showed up for therapy. With adults, I use the same collaborative and carefully paced approach, particularly when working with trauma, painful experiences, negative beliefs, and emotional patterns that seem difficult to change. As an EMDR-trained therapist, my goal isn’t to erase what happened. We can’t delete memories like unwanted files. The goal is to help those memories become something you remember rather than something you continue to relive.
I use play therapy because kids don’t always have the words to explain what’s happening inside—and honestly, asking a child to sit across from a stranger and discuss their emotional functioning for 50 minutes is a pretty big ask. For children, play can be a language. Games, toys, LEGOs, art, imagination, stories, and movement give kids ways to communicate, explore experiences, practice skills, and work through emotions without relying entirely on words. Sometimes the most meaningful moments in therapy happen while we’re building something, playing a game, or having a conversation that seemingly has nothing to do with the reason they came to therapy. My approach combines child-led play with more therapist-directed activities when helpful. I follow the child’s interests, reflect emotions and themes that emerge, and create opportunities to build emotional awareness, regulation, problem-solving, confidence, and connection. When a child needs more structure, I may intentionally choose games or activities that help us practice things like handling frustration, tolerating disappointment, managing impulses, communicating needs, or recovering when things don’t go as planned. Most importantly, I focus on the relationship. Kids usually don’t care how many letters come after my name—they care whether I’m someone they can trust. Play may look like we’re “just playing,” but there’s a lot happening underneath. My job is to understand that language, join children in their world, and use it to help them grow.
I provide gender-affirming therapy for children, teens, and adults who are exploring or navigating gender identity, expression, relationships, family, and the experience of simply being themselves in a world that doesn’t always make that easy. My role isn’t to tell you who you are—you’re the expert on that. My job is to provide a safe, curious, and judgment-free space where you can explore what feels authentic to you without pressure to fit into someone else’s expectations or have everything figured out. With children and teens, I create space for age-appropriate exploration through conversation, play, creativity, and whatever helps them communicate most comfortably. I can also work with parents and caregivers to better understand their child, strengthen connection, navigate questions, and create a home environment where their child feels heard, loved, and supported. For adults, therapy may include exploring identity, coming out, relationships, family dynamics, dysphoria, self-esteem, boundaries, minority stress, or experiences of discrimination and rejection. Gender-affirming therapy with me isn’t about putting you into another box. There are already plenty of those. It’s about making room for you to understand yourself, build confidence, develop tools for navigating difficult situations, and feel more comfortable being exactly who you are.
I use mindfulness-based therapy to help clients slow things down enough to notice what’s happening—in their thoughts, emotions, bodies, and surroundings—before automatically reacting. And no, you don’t have to sit cross-legged, clear your mind, or become really good at meditating. Mindfulness is about learning to be present and curious about what you’re experiencing without immediately judging it, fighting it, or letting it take over. We may use grounding, breathing, sensory awareness, movement, observation, or other practical strategies to help build that skill. With children and teens, mindfulness rarely means asking them to sit quietly and “think about their breathing” for an eternity (which, to a kid, may be approximately 30 seconds). Instead, I incorporate mindfulness into games, play, movement, sensory activities, and everyday situations. Kids can learn to notice when their bodies are getting overwhelmed, recognize emotions earlier, and create a little more space between feeling something and reacting to it. With adults, mindfulness can help with emotional regulation, anxiety, trauma responses, stress, impulsivity, and getting unstuck from thoughts that seem to run on repeat. The goal isn’t to have an empty mind. Brains are terrible at that. It’s learning to notice what your brain is doing, stay connected to the present, and choose what you want to do next instead of always running on autopilot.
3 ratings with written reviews
March 4, 2026
Really understanding and helping me the feelings I’m targeting. After my sessions I always feel a lot better
November 18, 2025
Daniel does a really good job being open and honest. He knows how to listen and where to challenge me. Every follow-up he has all the details of what we've talked about. Revisits the topics we need to work on and helps move me forward. He has been a huge help
March 24, 2025
Allan curated a safe place for me to open up to him with just his initial energy.