I knew I wanted to do this work when I was fourteen.
My parents were divorcing and they sent me to therapy. I remember sitting in that office thinking: I could do this job. Not because it looked easy, but because something about it felt like the most honest room I had ever been in.
I went straight from college to graduate school, determined. I started my practice in 2015, in my early twenties, before therapy was something people talked about openly. Getting to do this work is the greatest gift of my professional life. It matters. I believe in it. I do not take a day of it for granted.
That said, I have not had everything figured out along the way. I know what it means to look at a life you built carefully and honestly and realize it needs to be rebuilt. I have done my own version of that work. I bring that into the room with every client who is sitting across from me doing theirs.
Outside of the office you will find me with a stack of five books on my nightstand, in a hot yoga class, or somewhere on a mountain. I believe in the things I ask my clients to consider: movement, nature, rest, and paying attention to what the body already knows.
My Approach
I am trained in Internal Family Systems, Emotionally Focused Therapy, the Gottman Method, EMDR, cognitive and behavioral approaches including CBT, DBT, and ACT, and OCD-informed treatment. I also hold specific training in somatic modalities, including the Trauma Resiliency Model and Embodied Parts Work through Embody Lab.
That last piece matters to me more than most of what is on my resume.
Early in my career I worked in addictions treatment, and what I learned there shaped everything that came after. Trauma was at the core of almost every case I saw. And at the core of trauma was not the mind but the body. The story people told about what happened to them was rarely where the work actually lived. The work lived in what their nervous system was still carrying.
That has informed how I practice ever since. I do not believe that talking about something is always the same as changing it. Real change is somatic. It lives in the body, not just the insight.
I work with the whole person: mind, body, and the parts that do not always have language yet.
What It’s Like to Work With Me
I am direct. I will ask the questions you have been avoiding and challenge what is keeping you stuck. I will also sit with you in the genuinely hard stuff without making you feel like something is wrong with you for being in it.
Clients tell me they appreciate that I am both honest and warm. That I do not let them off the hook but also do not make them feel judged for being human. That is what I am going for.
I work with people who are motivated, self-aware, and ready to do real work. Not because I am not equipped to handle complexity, but because that is where I do my best work and where my clients make the most meaningful progress.
ABOUT AMANDA —
Training and Credentials
Licensed Clinical Social Worker, California, license number 82020
Master of Social Work, University of Southern California, 2014
Bachelor of Arts, Human Development and Family Studies, Minor in Psychology, University of Connecticut, 2012
Clinical supervision active since 2020
Trained in: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Gottman Method Level 1, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), CBT for OCD (Mass General), Trauma-Focused CBT, EMDR Levels 1 and 2, Trauma Resiliency Model Level 1, Somatic Parts Work (Embody Lab), ADHD Current Research and Practices (Kings College London)
Listed on: Psychology Today, Therapy Den, OutCare Health OutList, Kink Aware Professionals (KAP)