Danielle Torres
Hi, I'm Dani, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist working with high performers, athletes, teens, and adults. My practice starts with an honest audit of your values. Not the ones you think you should have, the ones you actually matter to you. From there, we explore identity: who you are, what you stand for, and where the gap sits between that person and the goals you've been chasing. That gap is where burnout quietly takes root, especially when your motivation comes from external factors rather than internal ones. I also walk with clients through grief and loss, because performance and emotional pain often coexist, and both deserve space. In session, you'll get warmth, honesty, non-judgment, and humor. I'll validate your story, then warmly, move us from talking about it to taking action. Insight alone doesn't change a life. Together we'll focus on what's actually within your control and build a life by your own design. You don't need to have anything figured out when you arrive. All are welcome here.
First session
The first session is about getting to know each other. I'll ask what brought you here, what you're hoping to change, and what's worked or hasn't in the past. You're welcome to ask me anything too because fit matters. My hope is that you leave feeling something you may not have felt in a while: that this is doable. Not that everything is solved, and not that you have a plan mapped out. Just that you're not carrying it alone anymore, and that the path forward is clearer than it was an hour ago. More than anything, I want you to leave feeling empowered, and grounded in the sense that you are capable of handling this journey. Healing isn't something that happens to you, it's something you actively participate in. By the end of our first session, I want that to feel true, not just like something a therapist says. You'll also have a clearer picture of what working together would actually look like, and a sense of whether I'm the right fit for you. If I'm not, I'll help you find someone who is.
Strengths
I bring both warmth and honesty into sessions, because you need both for change to occur. I'm the kind of therapist who will sit quietly and hold space when you need it. I'll let the silence be there. I'll let the hard feelings be there. But I'm also the kind of therapist who will ask the harder questions, and move us from talking about the story to rewriting it. You'll never be rushed here, but you'll also never be left sitting in the problem alone. What makes my sessions unique is that I've been on the other side of being underestimated and judged. I know what it's like to have your confidence chipped away by someone else's limited view of you. I know how long a belief like "I'm not good enough" can follow you. That experience taught me to look for what's missing. Together, we will find the unmet need under the symptom, and the external pressure under the burnout. I also know performance and pain can coexist. Grief doesn't pause for goals, and goals don't pause for grief. I hold room for both. My clients get a therapist who validates where they've been, challenges where they're stuck, and stays anchored to what's actually within their control.
Ideal clients
My ideal client looks successful on the outside and feels stuck on the inside. They're often high performers — athletes, professionals, first-generation students, who have spent years chasing goals partially or entirely defined by someone else. They've achieved, maybe even exceeded, what was expected. But somewhere along the way, they lost the thread of what they actually want. They're burned out, anxious, or quietly disconnected from themselves, wondering if the life they built is actually theirs. I also work with clients navigating grief and loss, identity, questioning and exploring gender, parenting, career changes, depression, and anxiety. Grief and performance often coexist, and I hold space for both. My ideal client is ready to do more than vent. They want a therapist who will listen, validate, and then gently push. They're open to looking honestly at their values, their patterns, and the gap between where they are and where they want to be. Much of my work centers on identity and values, building a picture of your ideal self and preferred future, then closing the distance between that vision and your daily life. That's the work I care most about, and it's where I see clients come alive. They may be a teen figuring out who they are, an adult redefining success on their own terms, or someone in transition who needs a space to question without judgment. Many are looking for a therapist who understands that culture, identity, and family shape everything, and who won't treat those parts of them as an afterthought.
Origin story
I became a therapist because someone once took the time to truly see me, and it changed my whole perspective on myself and my abilities. In high school, I lost a friend. It was my first encounter with grief, existential anxiety and depression. I missed school, my grades suffered, and I ended up repeating Junior English during my Senior year. During Senior year, my guidance counselor asked what I wanted to do after high school. I said college, and he told me maybe college wasn't the best fit for me. That moment greatly affected my sense of self for years. I carried the belief that I wasn't good enough, smart enough, or motivated enough to pursue higher education. It wasn't until graduate school that a professor reflected back what should have been obvious: that belief was never true. I had taken the community college route, earned a bachelors and earned my way into a master's program at Pepperdine, and proven that my abilities have always been enough. I don't carry resentment from that experience. I carry perspective. I know what it feels like when it seems people are not taking the time to understand you. That is the gap I try to fill, by being the person who sees you, believes in your potential, and helps you believe in it too.
Ongoing work together
Therapy with me isn't a weekly debrief. It's a working relationship that builds towards awareness, acceptance, and accountability for your freedom to choose. Early on, we'll map where you are and where you want to be — your preferred future — and identify the patterns, beliefs, and external pressures keeping you stuck. From there, sessions tend to move between three things: making sense of what's happening, making room for what you feel, and taking action on what's within your control. Some weeks we'll sit with the hard stuff. Some weeks we'll build toward something concrete. Most weeks, a little of both. I blend CBT and mindfulness with existential, solution-focused, and positive psychology approaches, so our work stays flexible rather than formulaic. I don't run the same protocol on every client, because no two people need the same thing. Progress won't always look like feeling better. Sometimes it looks like catching a pattern you used to repeat automatically. Saying no without a paragraph of justification. Noticing a trigger before it runs you. Grieving something you'd been avoiding. Knowing what you actually want instead of what sounds impressive. That's how you'll know it's working. Not because the hard parts disappear, but because your relationship to them changes, and your choices start sounding more like you. We'll check in on progress together, too. You should never have to wonder whether therapy is doing anything. If something isn't working, we name it and adjust.
Treatment methods
Person-centered (Rogerian)
My work is rooted in a person-centered, humanistic with elements of solution focused, mindfulness, and cbt. my approach is centered around the belief that you are the expert on your own life, and that growth happens when you're met with genuine warmth, unconditional positive regard, and honesty rather than judgment. In practice, I lean heavily on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and where you fall on the pyramid. Before we can talk about goals or growth, we have to understand what's actually true for you: what you value, whether your daily choices align with those values, and where the friction sits between what you're doing and who you are. That friction is usually where symptoms take root, such as burnout, anxiety, depression and disconnect. From there, we build goals that support your values rather than societal or family influences. When goals are anchored to what genuinely matters to you, motivation becomes internal and sustainable. Fulfillment goes up and burnout goes down. A big part of this work is naming fears and feeling capable enough to sit with the feelings underneath them (The ones we work so hard to avoid because we're afraid they'll come true). Confidence isn't the absence of fear or the guarantee of a good outcome. It's knowing you can handle any outcome, even an outcome you didn't want. It's trusting that you can move through the experience you've been avoiding, rather than organizing your life around preventing it. That's the shift we're working toward: not a life without fear, but a life no longer run by it.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
Other specialties
Doesn't specialize in
Licensed in
- CaliforniaLicense 164639