A life where you move with clarity knowing who you are, who you're becoming, and what stands in the way. Where you respond to life instead of just reacting. Where your patterns make more sense, your pain feels less lonely, and your choices feel more intentional.

What if healing didn’t mean becoming someone new but coming home to yourself?

Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California

You have wounds that need tending, patterns that once protected you but now ask to be unlearned, and new ways of being that want to be practiced.

It takes time to unravel what was passed down, and even more time to replace it with something new. But nothing is broken at your core. Nothing is wrong with you.

You deserved to be seen, understood, valued, and loved.
And therapy can be the space where all of that begins to unfold.


There’s nothing wrong with you

Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California

I believe meaningful therapy invites us into a deeper relationship with ourselves. It’s not about quick fixes or learning how to tolerate more of the same; it’s about understanding why we are the way we are, feeling what we’ve had to suppress, and learning how to do things differently.

Insightful, relational, and emotionally attuned therapy for people who want more than just coping

 Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California


In individual therapy we can work on...

Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California

high-achieving individuals

relational trauma and attachment wounds

moms

areas of specialty

Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California

The work we do is grounded in three interconnected layers:

how your early experiences shaped you

Access repressed emotions

practice new ways of being

01.

02.

03.

We begin by exploring your early relational world. Not because we’re looking to blame your parents, but because our earliest attachments shape how we learn to relate to others, to ourselves, to our needs, to conflict, to intimacy, to achievement, to everything.

No one grows up in a perfectly attuned environment. Even the most loving caregivers can miss things. And so, we adapt. We learn how to be safe, how to belong, how to stay connected. Maybe you learned to be the good one, the achiever, the invisible one, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, or the emotionally self-sufficient one. These survival strategies once served you, but now? They might be keeping you stuck.

In therapy, we begin asking:
  • What did you have to do to stay connected to the people you depended on? Who did you have to become to feel safe, accepted, or loved?
  • What needs did you have to mute to maintain closeness? What do you believe you’re allowed to need, or not need, from others?
  • How did your family handle conflict? Vulnerability? Boundaries?
  • What core beliefs about yourself were formed in that early environment? What parts of you were welcomed? What parts were ignored, criticized, or misunderstood?
  • What roles did you play that still show up in your adult life even when they no longer fit?

We begin to see that who you are is not fixed or broken. You’re not the problem. The ways you learned to be were intelligent responses to your environment. Now, you get to choose something new.



We look at how your early experiences shaped your sense of self

01

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Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves or rather loved in spite of ourselves.”

victor hugo
Once we understand the protective patterns that shaped you, we turn toward what got pushed aside along the way. Maybe it wasn’t safe to be angry or sad or playful or excited. Maybe you learned that needing too much made you a burden or that being so happy made others uncomfortable.

When we cut off certain emotions to stay close to others, those emotions don’t disappear. They live in the body, and they find ways to speak through anxiety, burnout, irritability, shame, perfectionism, shutdown or chronic over-functioning.
In therapy, we make space for those feelings to come forward - not just talk about them, but actually feel them, in real time, in a way that’s held, slow, and safe.

This is where healing begins: when you stop abandoning parts of yourself just to stay acceptable to others.

Together we’ll explore:
  • What feelings did you learn to suppress or disown? What emotions feel threatening or “too much”?
  • What does your body do when big feelings start to surface? Where do those emotions live in your body now?
  • Where do you feel disconnected from your emotional self or overwhelmed by it? What have those buried parts of you been trying to say?
  • How do you protect yourself from feeling too much, and how has that been both helpful and limiting?
  • What would it be like to give yourself permission to feel fully, without shame or apology?

We integrate the emotions you’ve had to set aside

02

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Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California

"What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us."

H.D. THOREAU
Insight and emotional release are powerful, but change happens in the small, everyday choices we make. Healing is not just about understanding; it’s about doing something different, in real time. Insight opens the door, but practice walks you through it. This layer of therapy is about integrating what you’ve learned into how you live. It’s not theoretical- it’s lived, practiced, tried on in real time.

Maybe it looks like:
  • Saying no without guilt
  • Allowing rest without earning it
  • Speaking up when something hurts
  • Receiving care instead of always giving it
  • Slowing down instead of speeding past your needs
  • Choosing a partner or job or life that aligns with who you are now and not who you had to be

This is where we ask:
  • What patterns do I want to shift?
  • What feels possible now that didn’t before?
  • What behaviors align with the version of myself I’m becoming?
  • Where can I experiment with being more honest, more soft, more bold, more true?
  • What happens when I choose something different, and how can I keep choosing it, again and again?

This is not about becoming a “better” version of yourself. It’s about becoming more you. More whole, more connected, more alive. Therapy becomes the space to try, fail, adjust, and try again until change becomes something that lives in your body, not just your head.

We practice new ways of being

03

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Individual therapy in Hermosa Beach and online in California

                                                                    In all the world, there is no one exactly like me. There are persons who have some parts like me, but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone choose it.

I own everything about me; my body including everything it does; my mind including all its thoughts and ideas; my eyes including the images of all they behold; my feelings whatever they may be… anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth and all of the words that come out of it polite, sweet or rough, correct or incorrect; my voice loud or soft; and all my actions, whether they be to others or to myself.

I am me.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By doing so, I can love me and be friendly with me in all parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and for ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is ME. This is authentic and represents where I am in that moment in time. When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting, and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.

I am me and I am okay.

By VIRGINIA SATIR