Alegra Kastens MA

Alegra Kastens, MA, is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist who received her Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. She is licensed in California and New York, and Florida for telehealth, seeing clients out of her Los Angeles office and via teletherapy in NY and FL.

She specializes in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, body-focused repetitive behaviors, body dysmorphic disorder, and eating disorders, utilizing evidence-based treatments. Her clinical work focuses on cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure and response prevention, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness skills training for adults and adolescents. Rather than utilizing one modality or tool, she incorporates multiple to meet the needs of each particular client and their symptoms.

As a queer and queer-affirming therapist, she strives to create a safe, affirming space for all. Her approach is relational, warm, collaborative, and affirming. She believes that we are whole people outside of symptoms and, as such, see and treat the whole person.

Prior to founding the Center for OCD, Anxiety and Eating Disorders, she worked as a psychotherapist at The OCD Center of Los Angeles, specializing in the treatment of OCD, BRFBs, and related disorders across the lifespan. She also trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, with an emphasis on exposure and response prevention, at the UCLA Adult OCD Intensive Outpatient Program, where she was a behavioral coach and assisted in providing hands-on ERP with clients experiencing moderate to severe OCD. Additional clinical experience includes her work as a counselor at The Maple Counseling Center in Beverly Hills, where she provided psychodynamic and attachment-focused therapy to adults.

Her passion for OCD and eating disorder treatment, education, and advocacy comes from her own personal experience with the conditions. She understands firsthand the relentlessness of OCD and eating disorders and how painfully they can hold one’s life captive. She also understands, from the inside out, that relief and recovery are real.

When she's not seeing clients, she's writing (a memoir about her lived experience with OCD), reading (give her all of the books), designing and decorating her home (you never know when a wall needs a new paint color), letting Coco and Ruby (her Pit Bull and Boston Terrier) rule her world, spending time with friends (we thrive in community), and going to therapy herself (therapists need therapy, too, and she happens to love it).