Therapists in Oakland, CA

Life isn't always easy. Whether you're dealing with an existing challenge, a current stressful situation, or you're turning a page to start a new chapter of your life, I believe we all can benefit from someone helping us to manage these changes and transitions. My therapeutic goal is to help you better manage your life's challenges and to provide you with tools and strategies to achieve your personal goals.

"Reaching out is the first step. I invite you to take that first step and CALL me at 510-652-1902. I look forward to talking with you."

You have lost so much in your life, but your biggest loss has been your sense of self. Early on, you learned that it wasn’t safe to be who you are, or be in your skin or your body. So you run away from yourself and become an overachiever in work and in relationships. This hustling for worthiness has left you feeling abandoned and exhausted. You want to trust. You want to heal. You want to be able to dive deep into the beauty of life and laughter that you know is around you. Without knowing yourself, what your heart sounds and feels like - how will you build satisfying relationships and create a life that truly fills you up?

Through the experience of the expressive arts, I center the expansion of the imaginative realm in the therapy space through the use of art-making, writing, movement, somatic awareness, mindfulness and creative play. In my practices, I prioritize holistic embodiment— nurture of the Mind, Body, and Spirit— as well as empowering my clients to grab hold of their deepest desires through a lens of justice, creativity, imagination, and radical vulnerability. As a deeply relational therapist, I feel passionately about supporting clients in connecting to their stories and empowering them on the journey of stepping fully into their truth.

My goal is to help you become more authentic in your relationships, find and live your values, and bring more peace and growth into your life. I work with a variety of individuals, but my focus is African American men in their first five years of marriage. I also work with men who want to grow in terms of how they show up in their relationships. I am trained in DBT, Gottman, Narrative Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness based approaches.

Are you struggling with overwhelm, gender identity questions, stuckness, shame, or patterns that don’t feel good? I am a queer, trans clinical social worker providing individual telehealth therapy to adults living in California. I partner with folks in navigating anxiety, PTSD, substance use, gender alignment, and other areas of concern. I help folks feel more at home in their bodies and aligned with their authentic self. I tend to connect most effectively with folks who are trans, queer, fellow helping professionals, students, recent graduates, artists, witchy, and/or spiritually inclined.

I offer culturally sensitive, trauma-informed psychotherapy to support folks. I help bring awareness, healing, and transformation in times of need, difficulties, and transitions. I have deep commitment and curiosity for my clients. Working with me, you'll find someone who is warm, open, spacious and engaged, and playful at times.

I help people manage their mental health by creating a safe space to process difficult emotions because: "...being human's hard - on the boulevard." - André L. Benjamin

Please see website: phyllislorenzmft.com

We all need support at some point in our lives, yet asking for help can be one of the hardest things to do. Everyone deserves to live their best life, use their voice and be free in their body. As humans our sense of self is shaped by old stories, the environment we grew up and live in, relationships, past traumas, impacted socio-political-economic and cultural influences, that may have clouded our vision of ourselves or who we want to be. My service as a therapist is to help you speak your truth. Find your way back to yourself. Reinvent, rediscover, tell and rewrite your story. Change is a moment by moment process.

Do you find yourself currently struggling? Whether it be with anxiety, depression, relationship challenges, general life, or work stressors, therapy is a safe space to explore and develop skills to cope with life’s stressors and work total personal goals.

I believe in the value of building a trusting and safe therapeutic relationship to tap into your internal strength, self-expertise, and self-expression to promote growth and support healing. I work from a Person-Centered foundation utilizing approaches and interventions such as Narrative Therapy, Attachment Therapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and others to meet the needs of each individual client.

Starting therapy can be daunting. Perhaps you are in crisis and feeling overwhelmed. Or you have long meant to get help with an issue, but it feels hard to know where to start. I am skilled at helping people find the part of themselves that most urgently needs to be attended to.

Everyone struggles at some time in their lives with situations that are emotionally overwhelming. Making the decision to seek professional help is a positive first step towards healing. My goal is to create a compassionate space that will welcome your healing, personal growth and development while getting to the heart of the matter, making genuine change possible.

I provide psychotherapy for adults, teenagers and children, consultation regarding parenting issues, and play therapy for children with behavioral or emotional issues. My work with adults has covered a broad spectrum - from people who are having problems with relationships or need help with stress management and coping skills, to people suffering from anxiety disorders and depression. I specialize in women's issues and life transitions. My goal is to help people get through difficult and challenging times and see opportunities for growth.

What would it be like to be understood? No really?! The journey truly starts when we first seek to understand ourselves. Through personalized, identity affirming intervention and an unconditional judge-free zone, I implement healthy relationship building with each one of my clients first. As a result, trust can be established and influences you to be empowered yet vulnerable, ultimately leading to healthy behavior modification and a deeper awareness of how to thrive even through adversity.