Hi, I'm Claudia.
Life asks a lot of us. Between responsibilities, caring for others, work, and simply getting through the day, it's easy to lose touch with our needs, our values, and the things that bring us meaning. I believe therapy offers a chance to slow down, understand ourselves more clearly, and move through life with greater intention. Together, we'll explore the patterns that no longer serve you and make space for a life that feels more grounded and authentic.
As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker offering individual therapy to adults in NYC, I work with people navigating trauma, anxiety, burnout, relationship challenges, and life's many transitions, including many new parents adjusting to the demands and identity shifts that come with early parenthood. My approach is relational, depth-oriented, and trauma-informed, rooted in the belief that healing happens not by fixing what's "wrong" with us, but by meeting ourselves with curiosity and compassion. I tailor therapy to each individual, drawing from psychodynamic psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment theory, somatic practices, and systems thinking to help clients understand the roots of their struggles and create lasting change.
My own experiences of healing and becoming a mother have deepened my appreciation for the ways life can reshape us. Growing up in a second-generation immigrant family has also shaped my understanding of how culture, relationships, and broader social systems influence the way we see ourselves and move through the world. I believe our minds and bodies carry an inherent wisdom, and that healing often begins the moment we start truly listening to it. I welcome conversations around identity, race, gender, sexuality, privilege, and belonging, and I strive to create a warm, inclusive space where clients from all backgrounds, including LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, neurodivergent, and ENM/poly communities, feel genuinely seen, understood, and supported.
If something here speaks to you, I'd love to connect and learn more about your story.
High-Achieving Adults Who Feel Stretched Thin
From the outside, everything looks fine, maybe even impressive. But underneath the performing and achieving, there's often exhaustion, anxiety, or a quiet sense that something needs to shift. If you're used to holding it all together but finding that your usual strategies aren't working anymore, you're not alone. Often, these patterns of perfectionism and over-functioning developed for good reason, they may have once provided safety, stability, or a sense of control. In therapy, we take a thoughtful, compassionate look at how these patterns formed, what they've protected you from, and how they may now be limiting your capacity to feel grounded, connected, and at ease.
I work with adults navigating burnout, anxiety, relationship and intimacy challenges, the identity shifts of parenthood, and life's harder transitions, people who have the insight to know something's off, but haven't yet found their way back to themselves.
Depression, anxiety, stress and burnout
Depression and anxiety don't always look the way you'd expect. Sometimes it's a persistent low mood or racing thoughts that won't quiet down; other times it's irritability, numbness, or a quiet sense of disconnection from your own life, even when things look fine from the outside. Chronic stress and burnout often build slowly, the result of doing too much for too long, until rest, motivation, and ease feel increasingly out of reach.
In our work together, we'll get curious about what's underneath these patterns, not just the symptoms, but what they're protecting you from and what they're asking you to pay attention to. Therapy offers a place to slow down, understand your own nervous system, and build a path back toward feeling regulated, present, and more like yourself.
Relationship & intimacy challenges
Relationships often reveal our deepest patterns, how we attach, how we communicate, how we protect ourselves from being hurt. Many of my clients are so used to holding things together for everyone else that their closest relationships, the ones meant to feel safest, end up carrying the most strain. These patterns can show up as conflict, disconnection, difficulty trusting, or challenges with intimacy, and they often intensify during major life transitions.
In therapy, we'll explore what's shaping these dynamics, where they came from, what they're protecting, and how they may be keeping you from the kind of connection you actually want. Together, we'll work toward relationships, with a partner, family, or yourself, that feel safer, clearer, and more genuinely fulfilling.
Women's wellness & maternal support
Motherhood is one of life's biggest transitions, and it rarely unfolds the way we expect. Whether you're navigating fertility, the physical and emotional shifts of pregnancy, the vulnerability of postpartum, or the ongoing demands of raising a child, each stage can bring up questions about identity, capacity, and what you're allowed to need. Therapy offers a place to process what you're carrying, at any point in that journey, and to be met without judgment, whether that means grief, ambivalence, anxiety, or the simple exhaustion of doing so much for someone else.
I offer support for the transition into parenthood, for loss and uncertainty along the way, and for the identity shifts that come with becoming someone's parent. Whatever stage you're in, you don't have to hold it together perfectly to deserve care.
Therapy Shaped Around You
I don't believe in therapy as a formula. Each person's path to healing is different, shaped by their own history, relationships, and way of moving through the world. My approach is relational and depth-oriented. I care about who you are beneath the surface, and I build our work together around real trust and connection. From there, I draw on a range of frameworks to support whatever change you're looking for.
Relational
At the heart of my relational therapy approach is the belief that healing happens in connection. The therapeutic relationship itself can be a powerful tool for change, and by building trust together, we create a space where old relational patterns can be understood and new, healthier patterns practiced.
Psychodynamic
Psychodynamic psychotherapy explores how our past, particularly early relationships and childhood experiences, continues to shape our present thoughts, feelings, and patterns, often outside our conscious awareness. By bringing these unconscious dynamics into the light, we create the possibility for real insight and lasting change.
Trauma-Informed
As a trauma-informed therapist, I stay attuned to the many ways trauma can shape a person's life, sometimes obviously, often quietly. Trauma isn't always a single, clearly defined event; more often, it's woven into our history in ways that are ongoing and layered. My trauma-informed approach meets this complexity directly, rather than assuming trauma always has a clean beginning, middle, and end.
Narrative Approaches
Narrative therapy is grounded in the idea that we are not defined by our problems; we are the authors of our own stories. I often draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS) alongside narrative work, helping you get curious about the different parts of yourself, the protector, the inner critic, the wounded part, and understand the role each has played in your story. Together, we'll explore the narratives you've inherited or internalized about who you are, and create space to author a story that feels more true to who you're becoming.
Support That Goes Beyond Talk Therapy
Some of the most meaningful shifts happen outside of conversation alone, which is why my approach isn't limited to a single framework. Alongside my core methods, I draw on additional tools when they're the right fit for you, including:
Somatic & Polyvagal-Informed Approaches
Working with the breath, sensation, and pacing to help release what talking alone can't reach.
Mindfulness & Contemplative Practices
Supporting insight, presence, and a calmer relationship with your own mind.
Existential & Meaning-Centered Work
Exploring questions of purpose, identity, and what makes life feel meaningful, especially during transitions.
Background & Education
In private practice, I've worked with a wide range of New Yorkers, professionals stretched thin, new parents adjusting to a different life, and people stuck in patterns they can't quite explain. Much of what brings people to therapy traces back to an overwhelmed nervous system and old ways of coping that no longer fit. This often surfaces most clearly during transitions, when who you've been and who you're becoming don't yet line up.
Earlier in my career, I worked as a trauma therapist and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and related forms of gender-based violence, providing crisis intervention and trauma-informed care centered on safety, healing, and self-determination. I also trained in a community mental health clinic, supporting adults, children, couples, and families through anxiety, depression, grief, identity, and relationship challenges.
My path to this work actually started outside of a therapy room. I spent years in the non-profit sector as an immigrant rights advocate, an experience that continues to shape how I practice today, informed by the intersections of liberation psychology and healing justice, frameworks that treat personal healing and collective change as connected processes rather than separate ones.
My clinical training spans a range of modalities, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), Somatic & Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and attachment-based psychotherapy. I've completed PESI's Somatic Trauma Therapy Certificate Course and Treating Complex Trauma with Internal Family Systems Certificate Course, along with training in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) and psychedelic integration support through Fluence. I also draw on psychoanalytic study, trauma-informed parenting frameworks, and gender-affirming care, and I continue ongoing training in mindfulness, existential work, and inner child-focused approaches.
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
State of New York
Master's Degree in Social Work
Hunter College
Bachelor of Arts in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Binghamton University
