Our Specialties

We have expertise in childhood trauma and believe in a holistic customized approach that targets the root of the problem. While childhood trauma includes extreme experiences such as physical or sexual abuse, violence, and death of a loved one, it also includes any event that was experienced as emotionally painful or distressful.

When we are struggling with relationships with friends, co-workers or romantic partners, it is usually connected to our formative years and relationships with our parents or caregivers. Learning to connect to your inner child and giving “her/they/him” a voice can lessen the charge of past wounds, supporting greater self-compassion and resilience.

Exploring our earlier childhood experiences allows us to understand if and how they are still showing up and impacting our life now. Therapy will help you understand these connections and help you work on healing those earlier experiences so that they remain in the past where they belong.

Therapy will meet you where you are in your journey. Your therapist will listen and hear your story compassionately and help you process the traumatic event. Healing looks different for everyone and we are here to support exploring what healing can look like for you. As trauma experts, our therapists are trained in different modalities to process trauma including EMDR.

Being constantly bombarded with social media and diet culture can cause low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy. We are constantly seeing unrealistic images of perfection, pressuring us to keep up with the latest trends to feel that we belong. Even when we try to step away from diet culture and accept ourselves, we may feel guilted and shamed by others who judge our bodies.

Our goal at SAMA Psychotherapy is to help you regain a peaceful relationship with food and learn to love your body for what it can do. Through self-esteem work and intuitive eating skills you can gain back the connection to your body and learn to listen to what you need. Through parts work therapy you will also learn to explore and be curious about the part of you that struggles with an eating disorder and learn all the ways that this part has protected you in the past, but is no longer needed. You will learn to release these parts that you no longer need, so that they can rest and remain in the past.

So many people have depression but the reasons can vary widely. It’s common to feel guilt or shame for being depressed, and thinking that you don’t have a valid reason for feeling so down.

Depression can be our body's way of letting us know that something is wrong. It can also be our body's way of telling us that it is time to process certain feelings or emotions.

Therapy provides a safe and supportive space for you to process your feelings so that you don’t have to do it alone. Providing your emotions with a voice after they have been shut down for so long can break their hold and create space to experience your full range of emotions.

Anxiety may be the way that your body learned to protect itself when you were younger or due to unpredictable and stressful experiences such as a traumatic event. This can be true if you grew up in an environment where you didn’t feel that you had much control or agency, or if you experienced a traumatic event where you felt a loss of control (ex. a car accident). To avoid threats, your body may become hyper-vigilant to any changes or unpredictable circumstances.

The good news is that there are effective treatments for anxiety. Therapy can help you process and be curious about the source of your anxiety and what it may be protecting you from. You will also learn positive coping skills in how to control your anxiety and the other ways it may be manifesting itself and impacting your life and your relationships. This might look like perfectionism, overworking, poor boundaries and low self-esteem.