# Luna Psychotherapy & Counseling > Individual psychotherapy for adults exploring trauma, relationships, and long-standing patterns. Online sessions in Pennsylvania and Virginia. ## Practice - Clinician: Cristina Luna, LPC - Licensed in: Pennsylvania and Virginia - Clients: adults, individual therapy - Format: Telehealth only (secure video). No in-person office. - Rate: $160 per 50 minute session - Insurance: I currently do not accept insurance but I can provide a superbill, a document that you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. - Booking: https://lunapsychcounseling.clientsecure.me/contact-widget - Email: cristina@lunapsychcounseling.com - Phone: (215) 434-9232 ## Verified listings - Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/cristina-luna-philadelphia-pa/1242656 ## Approaches - [EMDR Therapy](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/emdr-therapy/): A therapy that helps the nervous system finish processing experiences that got stuck. - [Trauma-Informed Therapy](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/trauma-informed-therapy/): Working in a way that assumes what happened to you shaped how you are here, and doesn’t ask you to override it. - [Psychodynamic Therapy](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/psychodynamic-therapy/): Looking at where a pattern came from, not only at how to manage it. - [Relational Therapy](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/relational-therapy/): Using what happens between us as real information about what happens everywhere else. - [Feminist Therapy](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/feminist-therapy/): Taking seriously that some of what you are carrying was handed to you. - [Strengths-Based Therapy](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/strengths-based-therapy/): Starting from what you already survived and already know how to do. ## Specialties - [Trauma & PTSD](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/trauma-ptsd/): For experiences that ended a long time ago and still arrive in the present. - [Domestic & Intimate Partner Violence](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/domestic-violence-intimate-partner-violence/): For what a relationship did to you, whether you are still in it or long out of it. - [Multicultural & Latina Identity](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/multicultural-identity/): For the parts of yourself that don’t translate the same way in every room you’re in. - [Anger Management](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/anger-management/): For anger that is costing you the people you care about. - [Codependency](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/codependency/): For losing track of where you end and someone else begins. - [Women’s Issues](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/womens-issues/): For what gets asked of women and rarely named as a demand. ## Areas served - [Pennsylvania](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/) - [Virginia](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/) - [Philadelphia](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/philadelphia/) - [Woodbridge](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/woodbridge/) - [Arlington](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/arlington/) - [Pittsburgh](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/pittsburgh/) - [Fairfax](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/fairfax/) - [Lancaster](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/lancaster/) - [Montgomery County](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/montgomery-county/) - [Richmond](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/richmond/) - [Manassas](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/manassas/) - [Mt. Airy & Germantown](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/mt-airy-germantown/) - [Alexandria](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/alexandria/) - [Bucks County](https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/bucks-county/) ## Notes - Sessions are conducted in English. Clients are welcome to use Spanish or Spanglish during sessions. Spanish-language therapy is not offered. - Sessions are available to residents of Pennsylvania and Virginia only, per state licensure. - This site is not for emergencies. In a crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or 911. ============================================================ # APPROACHES ## EMDR Therapy https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/emdr-therapy/ A therapy that helps the nervous system finish processing experiences that got stuck. EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — is a therapy that helps people process difficult or traumatic experiences that are stuck in the nervous system. It uses gentle, guided back-and-forth stimulation, such as eye movements or tapping, while you focus on aspects of an experience, allowing the brain to reprocess it so it feels less distressing and has less impact on your present life. I completed my master’s in clinical counseling with a focus on trauma in 2020 and became trained in EMDR. I use it alongside the relational and psychodynamic work I do rather than instead of it — the relationship we build is what makes the reprocessing possible. Who this tends to help: - A memory that still lands in your body when something reminds you of it - Knowing intellectually that something wasn’t your fault and not believing it - Reactions that feel out of proportion to what is actually happening now - Feeling stuck in the same place after years of talk therapy - A single event you can point to — and also a long stretch of years you can’t What a session looks like: We don’t start with reprocessing. The first few sessions — usually about three — are for me to understand your experiences and what you need, and for both of us to get a feel for working together. Before any reprocessing begins, we build resourcing: ways to steady yourself that you can use inside a session and outside of it. When we do begin, you’ll hold an image, a belief and a body sensation in mind while I guide sets of bilateral stimulation. We pause often. You are in control of the pace throughout, and you can stop a set at any point. Sessions are held online by secure video. EMDR adapts well to video — the bilateral stimulation is done with on-screen movement or with self-tapping, and many clients find their own home a steadier place to do this work than an unfamiliar office. When this is not the right starting point: EMDR can be a helpful approach for many people, but determining whether it’s the right fit takes time. EMDR is never off the table, but some situations—such as significant dissociation, active crisis, or significant life stress—may mean we start with other supportive work first. We’ll make decisions together and revisit EMDR whenever it feels appropriate. Q: What is EMDR? A: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy that helps people process difficult or traumatic experiences that are stuck in the nervous system. It uses gentle, guided back-and-forth stimulation (such as eye movements or tapping) while you focus on aspects of an experience, allowing the brain to reprocess it so it feels less distressing and has less impact on your present life. Q: Is EMDR for me? A: EMDR can be a helpful approach for many people, but determining whether it’s the right fit takes time. In our first few sessions (usually about three), I focus on understanding your experiences and needs. EMDR is never off the table, but some situations—such as significant dissociation, active crisis, or significant life stress—may mean we start with other supportive work first. We’ll make decisions together and revisit EMDR whenever it feels appropriate. Q: Does EMDR work over video? A: Yes. EMDR is well established in telehealth, and all of my sessions are held online. The bilateral stimulation is done with guided on-screen movement or with self-tapping, which you learn in session. What matters more than the format is the preparation we do beforehand and being somewhere private where you won’t be interrupted. Q: Do I have to describe everything that happened? A: No. EMDR does not require you to narrate an experience in detail. I need enough to help you identify the memory and the belief attached to it — not the whole account. Many people find this is the part that makes the work possible when talking about it has not been. Q: How many sessions does EMDR take? A: It depends on what we’re working with. A single recent event can sometimes resolve in a handful of reprocessing sessions. Experiences that ran over years, or that shaped how you see yourself, take longer. I would rather give you an honest answer after a few sessions together than a number now. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Trauma-Informed Therapy https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/trauma-informed-therapy/ Working in a way that assumes what happened to you shaped how you are here, and doesn’t ask you to override it. Trauma-informed is a phrase used loosely enough that it can stop meaning anything. In practice, it means I am paying attention to your nervous system as much as to what you are telling me, and that the pace belongs to you. It also means I don’t treat your responses as symptoms to be corrected. Hypervigilance, numbing, the impulse to keep things light — these made sense somewhere. I’m more interested in when they made sense than in getting rid of them. Who this tends to help: - Having been through something you don’t usually talk about - Feeling unsafe in your body without being able to say why - Having tried therapy before and found it went too fast - Not being sure whether what you experienced counts as trauma What a session looks like: We go at a pace you set. I check in about how something is landing rather than moving straight on. If a session opens something up, we spend the end of it closing it back down — you should be able to leave and go about your day. I will tell you what I’m doing and why. Surprises are not therapeutic. Q: What if I don’t know whether what happened to me was trauma? A: That’s a common place to start and not something you need to resolve before coming in. I’m less interested in whether an experience qualifies as trauma than in how it is affecting you now. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Psychodynamic Therapy https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/psychodynamic-therapy/ Looking at where a pattern came from, not only at how to manage it. Psychodynamic work is interested in the parts of your life that repeat. The same kind of relationship, the same argument, the same feeling arriving in situations that look different on the surface. Rather than treating those patterns as bad habits to be replaced, we look at what they were for — what they protected, who taught them, what they cost. People tend to find that a pattern loosens once they can see it clearly, in a way it never did while they were only trying to stop it. Who this tends to help: - The same relationship ending the same way, with different people - Understanding a pattern perfectly well and repeating it anyway - Wanting more than tools and coping strategies - Feelings that seem to belong to something older than the current situation Q: Is this the kind of therapy that goes on for years? A: It can, and it doesn’t have to. Depth-oriented doesn’t mean open-ended. We’ll talk about what you want from the work and revisit it as we go. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Relational Therapy https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/relational-therapy/ Using what happens between us as real information about what happens everywhere else. Relational therapy takes the position that people are shaped in relationship and heal in relationship. What happens between the two of us in a session is not a rehearsal for real life — it is real, and it is usually a fairly honest sample of how you are with other people. That means I will sometimes say what I notice happening between us. Not to catch you out, but because it is often the most immediate material in the room. Who this tends to help: - Feeling close to people and lonely at the same time - Being the one who takes care of everyone - Difficulty knowing what you want in a relationship, only what they want - Bracing for people to leave ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Feminist Therapy https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/feminist-therapy/ Taking seriously that some of what you are carrying was handed to you. A feminist approach means I don’t treat distress as though it happened in a vacuum. Power, gender, culture, money and immigration status shape what people are dealing with and how much room they have to deal with it. Practically, it also shapes how we work together. I don’t hold myself as the expert on your life. You are — I have training, and you have the actual information. Who this tends to help: - Being told you are too much, or too sensitive, for long enough that you believed it - Carrying the emotional work of a family or a workplace - Anger you have never felt allowed to have - Wanting a therapist who won’t treat culture as a side note ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Strengths-Based Therapy https://lunapsychcounseling.com/approach/strengths-based-therapy/ Starting from what you already survived and already know how to do. Most people arrive in therapy with a list of what is wrong with them. They arrive having already got through a great deal, usually without much acknowledgement, and rarely counting it. A strengths-based approach doesn’t mean looking on the bright side. It means we work from what is already there — the capacities you built, often in circumstances that required them — rather than starting from a deficit. Who this tends to help: - Feeling like therapy would just be a list of your failures - Having got through hard things without ever calling it resilience - Being competent everywhere except in your own estimation ------------------------------------------------------------ # SPECIALTIES ## Trauma & PTSD https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/trauma-ptsd/ For experiences that ended a long time ago and still arrive in the present. Trauma is not only what happened. It is what your body learned to do afterwards, and kept doing after it stopped being necessary. I completed my master’s in clinical counseling with a focus on trauma and I have worked with survivors since 2018 — first in domestic violence crisis work, then in ongoing therapy. I draw on EMDR as well as relational and psychodynamic work, and we decide together which of those to use and when. What this can look like: - A memory that still lands in your body when something reminds you of it - Sleeping badly, or sleeping fine and waking up braced - Feeling numb, or watching yourself from slightly outside - Being startled by things other people don’t notice - Knowing it wasn’t your fault and still feeling that it was - Avoiding places, people or conversations that come near it How I work with this: We start slowly. Before working with what happened, we build a way for you to steady yourself when it comes up — inside a session and outside one. Some people are ready to begin reprocessing within a few weeks; others need longer, and that is not a setback. You do not have to tell me everything to be helped. EMDR in particular does not require narrating an experience in detail. Q: Do I need a PTSD diagnosis to work on trauma? A: No. Plenty of people carrying the effects of what happened to them do not meet criteria for PTSD, and the effects are no less real. You do not need a diagnosis to start. Q: Will I have to talk through the worst of it? A: Not in detail, and not before you are ready. With EMDR I need enough to identify the memory and the belief attached to it, not the full account. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Domestic & Intimate Partner Violence https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/domestic-violence-intimate-partner-violence/ For what a relationship did to you, whether you are still in it or long out of it. My path to becoming a therapist began when I worked with survivors of domestic violence in crisis. It is where this work started for me and it remains a specialty. Intimate partner violence is not only physical. Control over money, over who you see, over what you are allowed to believe about yourself, does its own lasting damage — and is often harder to name afterwards precisely because there was nothing to point to. What this can look like: - Managing someone else’s moods as a full-time job - Second-guessing your own memory of what was said - Losing track of what you used to like, or who you used to see - Being out of it for years and still flinching at a raised voice - Not being sure whether what happened to you counts How I work with this: We go at your pace, and I will not press you toward any particular decision about a relationship. That is yours. What I can do is help you get your own account of what happened back — which is usually the thing that was taken first. If you are still in the relationship, we will talk about safety in a practical way, and I will be honest with you about what therapy can and cannot do while it is ongoing. Q: I already left. Isn’t it too late to be affected by it? A: No. A large part of my work is with people who left years ago and find it still shaping how they are in relationships, at work, and with themselves. Leaving ends the situation; it does not by itself process it. Q: Is it safe to do this by video? A: It can be, and it depends on your situation. You need somewhere private where you will not be overheard, and a device that is not monitored. We can talk through this before we begin, and I would rather you tell me the practical constraints than work around them silently. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Multicultural & Latina Identity https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/multicultural-identity/ For the parts of yourself that don’t translate the same way in every room you’re in. I remain attentive to how cultural backgrounds and multicultural identities can complicate our understanding of ourselves and our relationships. As a Latina, I bring both personal experience and empathy to this work. Throughout my career I have worked closely with the Latino population, and as a daughter and granddaughter of immigrants, my interest in multicultural identities is both personal and professional. I also have extensive experience supporting clients from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In practice this means you should not have to explain your family to me from first principles, or decide how much context to supply before you can say the actual thing. What this can look like: - Being a different person in your family’s house than everywhere else - Guilt about choices that are normal to your friends and not to your parents - Being the one who translates — documents, appointments, feelings - Carrying what your parents went through without having been there - Loving your family and needing distance from them at the same time How I work with this: Culture is not a topic we cover in one session and then set aside. It runs through the work, because it runs through your life. A note on language: sessions are held in English. Clients are welcome to incorporate Spanish or Spanglish during sessions if that feels more natural — for many people some things only exist in one language. As a Latina with extensive experience working with the Latino community in both languages, I bring cultural awareness and lived understanding to my work. I do not offer therapy conducted in Spanish, and I would rather say that plainly than have you find out in a first session. Q: Do you provide sessions in Spanish? A: Sessions are held in English. Clients are welcome to incorporate Spanish or Spanglish during sessions if that feels more natural. As a Latina with extensive experience working with the Latino community in both languages, I bring cultural awareness and lived understanding to my work. I also have extensive experience supporting clients from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Q: Do I have to be Latina to work with you on this? A: No. I work with clients from many ethnic and cultural backgrounds. What I offer is a therapist who treats culture as central rather than as background detail. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Anger Management https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/anger-management/ For anger that is costing you the people you care about. I started my clinical work in 2018 with individuals who had acted harmfully toward their partners and families. That work shaped how I understand anger: rarely as the actual problem, usually as the visible end of something older. This is not a class and it is not a court requirement I can sign off. It is individual therapy for someone who does not like who they become and wants to understand it rather than only contain it. What this can look like: - Going from fine to furious with nothing in between - Saying things in an argument you would never say otherwise - People around you managing their words to avoid setting you off - Feeling ashamed afterwards and defensive when it’s raised - Being calm everywhere except at home How I work with this: We look at what is underneath it — usually fear, shame, or a much older sense of not being safe — and at what happens in the seconds before. Understanding a pattern is not an excuse for it, and I will not treat it as one. I have worked with people who have caused real harm in their relationships. I can hold that honestly without contempt, which is often what makes it possible for someone to actually talk about what they did. Q: Can you provide court-mandated anger management? A: No. I offer individual psychotherapy, not a certified or court-ordered anger management program, and I cannot provide documentation for a court requirement. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Codependency https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/codependency/ For losing track of where you end and someone else begins. Codependency gets used as an insult often enough that people are reluctant to claim it. What it usually describes is someone who learned, early and for good reason, that other people’s needs were the safest thing to pay attention to. That is a skill. It is also exhausting, and it tends to produce relationships in which you are indispensable and unknown. What this can look like: - Knowing what everyone else wants for dinner and not what you want - Feeling responsible for moods that are not yours - Saying yes and resenting it - Anxiety when someone is upset with you that is out of proportion to the stakes - Being drawn to people who need fixing How I work with this: We look at where this was learned and what it was for — because it was for something. Then, slowly, at what it is like to have a preference and say it out loud, which for many people is genuinely harder than it sounds. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Women’s Issues https://lunapsychcounseling.com/specialties/womens-issues/ For what gets asked of women and rarely named as a demand. A great deal of what women bring to therapy is not pathology. It is the accumulated cost of being responsible for other people’s comfort, and of having that expectation described as personality. I work from a feminist and relational perspective, which means we can take seriously that some of what you are dealing with is structural without that becoming a reason to do nothing about it. What this can look like: - Being the default person for everyone’s logistics and feelings - Apologising as punctuation - Anger you were never allowed to have and now can’t locate - Feeling invisible in a life you built - Changing shape depending on who is in the room How I work with this: We work on what is yours to change and get clear about what is not. Both matter — a lot of women arrive having been told everything is theirs to fix. ------------------------------------------------------------ # AREAS SERVED ## Pennsylvania https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/ Pennsylvania is where I trained and where my practice began. I am licensed here and see adults anywhere in the state by secure video. About this area: I built this practice in Philadelphia, and most of what I know about doing this work I learned here — first in domestic violence crisis services, then in clinical work with people who had acted harmfully toward their partners and families, and then in private practice. Pennsylvania is several very different places. What arrives in a session from someone in Northwest Philadelphia is not what arrives from someone in Bucks County or outside Pittsburgh, and the differences are not only about money. They are about how close the nearest available therapist is, whether the people around you talk about therapy or don’t, and how much anonymity you have. Seeing someone by video, rather than parking outside an office in a town where you know people, matters more in some parts of this state than others. Working online means I am not limited to the neighborhoods within driving distance of Philadelphia. If you are in a part of Pennsylvania where the nearest trauma-trained therapist has a six-month waitlist — which is most of it outside the southeast corner — that constraint does not apply here. Q: Do you see clients in person in Philadelphia? A: Not at present. All of my sessions are held online by secure video, for clients throughout Pennsylvania and Virginia. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Virginia https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/ I am licensed in Virginia and see adults anywhere in the state by secure video. My work centers on trauma, relationships, and the patterns that outlast the situations that created them. About this area: Virginia is a difficult state in which to find a therapist, and the difficulty is well documented. The Commonwealth meets roughly 22 percent of its psychiatric workforce need, and only about one in five Virginians receive the care they need. In practice this shows up as waitlists measured in months — in Hampton Roads, in Charlottesville, and in much of Northern Virginia. It also shows up in a way that is directly relevant to how I practice. Virginians go out of network for mental health care roughly six and a half times more often than they do for physical health care. I don’t take insurance and I provide a superbill for reimbursement; in Virginia that is close to the norm rather than an exception, largely because in-network availability so often does not exist. Working by video removes the part of this that is about geography. Someone in Prince William County has the same access to me as someone in Richmond or on the Eastern Shore. It does not remove the cost, and I would rather be straightforward about that than not. Virginia is also a genuinely multicultural state, particularly along the Route 1 and I-66 corridors in the north, where immigrant and second-generation families make up a substantial share of the population. A large part of my career has been spent working with the Latino community, and much of what I hear in that work — obligations that run in several directions at once, translating for a family since childhood, holding a history you did not live through — is common in Virginia and rarely met by someone who does not need it explained. Q: Do I have to live in Virginia to work with you? A: You need to be physically located in Virginia or Pennsylvania during our sessions, because that is where I am licensed. Where you are matters more than where your mail goes — if you live in Virginia but travel often, it is worth mentioning early so we can plan around it. Q: Do you take Virginia insurance plans? A: I do not accept insurance. I provide a superbill you can submit to your insurer for out-of-network reimbursement. Many Virginia plans reimburse a portion of out-of-network mental health care; it is worth calling the number on your card and asking specifically about out-of-network outpatient mental health benefits before we begin. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Philadelphia https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/philadelphia/ Philadelphia is where my practice is based and where this work began for me. I see adults across the city by secure video. About this area: I started here. My first clinical work was with survivors of domestic violence in crisis in this city, and then with individuals who had acted harmfully toward their partners and families. Almost everything I understand about how relationships injure people, and about how people carry that afterwards, I learned in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods where people tend to stay, which produces a specific pattern in the therapy room: many of my clients are living within a few miles of the family they are trying to get some perspective on. That proximity is often genuinely good — and it means the work of separating what is yours from what was handed to you happens with the source still very much present, at Sunday dinner. That is a different task than doing it from a thousand miles away, and it deserves to be treated as one. It is also a city with real and unevenly distributed hardship, and a long institutional memory of it. People here are frequently carrying things that were never framed as trauma because they were ordinary in the place they happened — a neighborhood in a hard decade, a household organized around someone’s drinking, violence that everyone knew about and no one named. Recognizing that as something worth working on, rather than as just how it was, is often the first piece of the work. My sessions are held online rather than in person. For people in Northwest Philadelphia in particular — Mt. Airy, Germantown, Chestnut Hill, where I know the area well — that means the practical calculus of getting to an appointment across town on a weekday afternoon simply does not apply. Q: Do you see clients in person in Philadelphia? A: Not at present. All of my sessions are held online by secure video, for clients across Pennsylvania and Virginia. Q: What does a session cost? A: My rate is $160 per 50 minute session. I do not accept insurance, but I can provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Woodbridge https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/woodbridge/ I work with adults in Woodbridge and across Prince William County by secure video. I am licensed in Virginia, and I specialize in trauma, intimate partner violence, and the long patterns that relationships leave behind. About this area: Woodbridge is not a commuter suburb in the way that phrase usually implies. It is a working community along the Route 1 corridor with its own gravity — and it is also a place where a very large number of people spend two to three hours a day getting somewhere else. Between Fort Belvoir, Quantico, and the federal and contractor workforce that runs up I-95 toward Washington, a great many households here are organized around a commute that leaves almost nothing at either end of the day. That has consequences I hear about often. Therapy that requires a drive to an office, at a fixed hour, in this traffic, is not a realistic proposition for many people in Prince William County — which is part of why the county’s residents are so consistently underserved despite living beside one of the wealthiest regions in the country. Sessions by video remove that particular obstacle entirely. The hour is the hour, not the hour plus the Beltway. Woodbridge is also one of the most Latino places in Virginia — close to half of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, well above the county’s own high share and far above the state’s. That is the population I have spent much of my career working with. What comes up in that work is specific: obligations that run toward parents and children at the same time, having been the family’s translator since you were nine, carrying a history of migration you did not personally live through and cannot put down, and a strong pull not to air family business outside the family. Finding a therapist who does not need any of that explained from the beginning is genuinely hard here, and it is a large part of why I wanted to be licensed in Virginia. I should be direct about one thing rather than let it be discovered later: my sessions are held in English. Clients are welcome to bring Spanish or Spanglish in when that is what a thing actually lives in, and as a Latina who has worked with the Latino community in both languages I can follow you there. But therapy conducted in Spanish is not what I offer, and if that is what you need, you deserve to know before a first session rather than during one. Q: Are you located in Woodbridge? A: No — I don’t have an office in Virginia, and I don’t see clients in person anywhere. I’m licensed in Virginia, which means I can work with you wherever in the state you are, including Woodbridge and the rest of Prince William County. Everything is by secure video. Q: Do you offer therapy in Spanish? A: Sessions are held in English. You are welcome to use Spanish or Spanglish during sessions if that feels more natural, and as a Latina who has worked with the Latino community in both languages I bring cultural understanding to that. But I do not offer therapy conducted in Spanish, and I would rather tell you that now. Q: What does a session cost? A: My rate is $160 per 50 minute session. I do not accept insurance, but I can provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance company for out-of-network reimbursement. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Arlington https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/arlington/ I work with adults in Arlington by secure video. I am licensed in Virginia, and my work centers on trauma, relationships, and patterns that have been running for a long time. About this area: Arlington is one of the highest-income jurisdictions in the United States, and a substantial share of its residents work in or adjacent to government, defense, consulting, law, and policy. That produces a particular kind of person in a therapy session: highly capable, well resourced, extremely used to being the one who handles things, and quite often unable to say what they actually want. The work I do here tends to arrive labeled as burnout. Underneath that, more often than not, is something older — an early sense that being useful was the condition of being kept around, or a family where competence was the only currency that got recognized. Achievement is a very effective place to hide, and it stops working eventually, usually somewhere around the point where the achievement no longer produces the feeling it used to. There is a specific difficulty about being in therapy in Arlington that is worth naming: a lot of people here hold clearances, work in politically exposed roles, or move in professional circles small enough that discretion is a live concern rather than an abstract preference. Meeting by video, from your own home, removes the waiting room — which for some people is the actual barrier, not the therapy. Arlington also has no shortage of therapists, and I would rather be useful about that than pretend otherwise. What is harder to find here is someone trauma-trained who will work at depth rather than in coping strategies, and who will take seriously that a high-functioning life and an unprocessed history sit together very comfortably. That is the work I do. Q: Do you have an office in Arlington? A: No. All of my sessions are online by secure video. I’m licensed in Virginia, so I can work with adults anywhere in the state, Arlington included. Q: Can we meet outside of standard working hours? A: My current hours are Tuesday and Friday, 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM. If those don’t work with your schedule, it’s worth asking — but I would rather tell you honestly that I can’t fit you than book something neither of us can sustain. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Pittsburgh https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/pittsburgh/ I work with adults in Pittsburgh and across Allegheny County by secure video. I am licensed in Pennsylvania, and my work centers on trauma, relationships, and patterns that have been running a long time. About this area: Pittsburgh is a city that spent seventy years losing people and has just started gaining them again — the city added roughly 4,600 residents between 2020 and 2025, the largest numeric gain of any municipality in Pennsylvania, even as the wider metro of about 2.4 million continued to shrink. That combination produces a specific split. There are people here whose families have been in these neighborhoods for four generations, and people who arrived three years ago for a job at a hospital, a lab, or a robotics company, and the two are often sitting in the same room not quite understanding each other. Education and health care is by a wide margin the largest employment sector in the region, at roughly 267,000 jobs. A great deal of what I hear from this city comes from inside that: clinicians, residents, researchers, nurses and grad students who spend their working lives attending to other people’s crises and have no framework for their own. Caregiving professions select for people who are good at not needing anything, and that is usually a skill learned early and at some cost. The practical problem in Pittsburgh is not that people do not want therapy. It is that the wait is real — appointment waits in this region run anywhere from three weeks to six months depending on specialty, and demand is growing against supply at something like four and a half to one. Trauma-specific work is harder to find than general talk therapy, and being told to call back in the spring is its own small injury when you have finally decided to ask for help. Working online, I am not adding to a local waitlist; my availability is my availability regardless of which end of the state you are on. Pittsburgh is also, famously, a city of neighborhoods where everyone knows someone. That has a warmth to it and it has a cost, and the cost is privacy. Meeting from your own home rather than a waiting room in Shadyside removes a barrier that, for some people, is the actual barrier. Q: Are you based in Pittsburgh? A: No — I'm in Philadelphia, and I don't have an office anywhere. I'm licensed in Pennsylvania, which means I can work with adults anywhere in the state, and everything is by secure video. Being on the other side of the state makes no difference to a session. Q: How soon could I start? A: That depends on what I have open, but it is not governed by a Pittsburgh waitlist. If I don't have something workable I'll tell you at the consultation rather than put you in a queue. Q: What does a session cost? A: My rate is $160 per 50 minute session. I do not accept insurance, but I can provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance company for out-of-network reimbursement. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Fairfax https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/fairfax/ I work with adults across Fairfax County by secure video. I am licensed in Virginia, and my work centers on trauma, relationships, and patterns that have been running for a long time. About this area: Fairfax County is the largest jurisdiction in Virginia and one of the highest-earning in the country, and it is also one of the most internationally rooted. Somewhere near a third of residents were born outside the United States, and the county holds long-established Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Salvadoran and Afghan communities alongside the federal and contracting workforce it is better known for. That mix produces a particular set of things in a therapy room. A great deal of what I hear from this county has to do with achievement and what it was supposed to buy. Fairfax runs on credentials — clearances, degrees, the school your children test into — and it is an environment where being extremely capable is unremarkable rather than notable. People arrive exhausted by a standard that keeps moving, and often unable to say what they would want if the standard were not there. Second-generation adults here carry something more specific. Parents who moved for their children’s opportunities are owed something that is never quite nameable, and the debt shows up as a career chosen for someone else, a marriage negotiated across two sets of expectations, or a low constant guilt that does not respond to reasoning. I work with multicultural identity as a central concern rather than as background, which in this county is less common than it should be. Fairfax also has no shortage of therapists, and I would rather be useful about that than pretend otherwise. What is harder to find is someone trauma-trained who will work at depth instead of in coping strategies, and who takes seriously that an accomplished life and an unprocessed history sit together very comfortably. Sessions are online, which for people whose evenings are already spent on the Beltway is often the difference between starting therapy and continuing to mean to. Q: Do you have an office in Fairfax? A: No. All of my sessions are online by secure video. I am licensed in Virginia, so I can work with adults anywhere in the state, Fairfax County included. Q: Can you see me if I hold a security clearance? A: Yes. Seeking mental health treatment is not in itself disqualifying, and current federal guidance is explicit that it is viewed favourably rather than as a liability. I am not able to advise you on your specific reporting obligations — your security officer is the right person for that — but plenty of cleared professionals are in therapy. Q: What does a session cost? A: My rate is $160 per 50 minute session. I do not accept insurance, but I can provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance company for out-of-network reimbursement. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Lancaster https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/lancaster/ I work with adults across Lancaster County by secure video. I am licensed in Pennsylvania, and I specialize in trauma, intimate partner violence, and culturally attuned work with Latino clients. About this area: Lancaster County contains two quite different places, and which one you live in changes what therapy is like to find. The townships — Manheim, Warwick, Lititz — are comfortable, well-served and quiet about their difficulties. The city is younger, poorer, and one of the most internationally settled small cities in the country: Lancaster has taken in refugees at among the highest per-capita rates in the United States, and roughly two in five city residents are Hispanic or Latino, predominantly Puerto Rican families with several generations here. That second Lancaster is the one I most want to be useful to, and it is the one least likely to find someone like me. Much of my career has been spent working with the Latino community, and what comes up in that work is specific: obligations running toward parents and children at the same time, having been the family’s translator since childhood, a strong pull not to take family business outside the family, and a history of migration — yours or your parents’ — that does not stay in the past simply because the move is finished. Finding a therapist who does not need that explained from scratch is genuinely hard in this county. Lancaster is also a place where a lot of people know each other, and where the Plain communities give the whole county a particular relationship to privacy and to keeping things within a household. That is not a criticism — it is a real feature of life here, and it means the cost of being seen walking into an office on Duke Street is higher than it would be in Philadelphia. Meeting by video from your own home removes that entirely, which for some people is the actual barrier rather than the therapy itself. One honest note about fit. My rate is $160 a session and I do not take insurance; I provide a superbill for out-of-network reimbursement. In Lancaster city that will be out of reach for many of the people I have just described wanting to work with, and I would rather say so directly than have you find out at a first appointment. The county resources below include services that take insurance and offer sliding-scale fees. Q: Do you offer therapy in Spanish? A: Sessions are held in English. You are welcome to use Spanish or Spanglish during sessions if that feels more natural, and as a Latina who has worked with the Latino community in both languages I bring cultural understanding to that work. But I do not offer therapy conducted in Spanish, and I would rather you know that now than discover it in a first session. Q: Are you located in Lancaster? A: No. I don't have an office and I see everyone online. I am licensed in Pennsylvania, so I can work with adults anywhere in the state, Lancaster County included. Q: What if I can't afford $160 a session? A: Then I am not the right fit right now, and that is worth knowing early rather than late. The Lancaster County resources listed above include services that accept insurance and offer sliding-scale fees, and they are a better starting point than a therapist you cannot sustain. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Montgomery County https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/montgomery-county/ I work with adults across Montgomery County by secure video. I am licensed in Pennsylvania, and I specialize in trauma, relationships, and the long patterns that outlast the situations that made them. About this area: Montgomery County holds about 868,000 people and a median household income of roughly $114,000 — third highest of Pennsylvania’s sixty-seven counties — and it is far less uniform than that figure suggests. The Main Line townships along the county’s southern edge are among the wealthiest places in the state; Norristown, the county seat, is a working city with a very different set of problems; and between them sit the postwar suburbs and the corporate corridor around King of Prussia, which is now the largest office market in suburban Philadelphia. The professional population here works in pharmaceuticals, defense, financial services and law, and a lot of it commutes nowhere at all any more, which has changed what people bring to therapy. Working from a house in Blue Bell or Lafayette Hill has removed the commute and also removed the seam between work and home, and I hear a great deal about a life that looks entirely successful from outside and has no edges left in it. There is something else particular to this county, and it is worth naming plainly because it goes unsaid locally. In a place where the schools are excellent, the houses are well kept and appearances are maintained carefully, difficulty tends to be handled privately. People arrive having managed something serious alone for years — a marriage that ended a long time before it ended, a parent’s drinking, a childhood that was materially comfortable and emotionally unattended — because the environment offers no obvious permission to say it out loud. Affluence is not protective against trauma. It is quite good at hiding it. Practically, Montgomery County is also one of the few markets in Pennsylvania where out-of-network therapy is a normal expectation rather than a barrier, which is worth being straightforward about: my rate is $160 a session, I don’t take insurance, and I provide a superbill for reimbursement. If that is workable for you, the thing that is genuinely harder to find here is someone trauma-trained who will work at depth rather than in coping strategies. Q: Do you have an office in Montgomery County? A: No. All of my sessions are online by secure video. I'm licensed in Pennsylvania, so I can work with adults anywhere in the state, Montgomery County included. Q: Do you take insurance? A: I do not. My rate is $160 per 50 minute session, and I provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance company for out-of-network reimbursement. It is worth calling the number on your card and asking specifically about out-of-network outpatient mental health benefits before we begin. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Richmond https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/richmond/ I work with adults in Richmond and the surrounding counties by secure video. I am licensed in Virginia, and I specialize in trauma, intimate partner violence, and the long patterns relationships leave behind. About this area: Richmond is a city that has spent the last decade in an unusually public argument with its own history, and that is not incidental to the therapy that happens here. When the place you live is actively reconsidering what it was, the question of what you inherited and what you are obliged to carry stops being abstract. I hear versions of it often from people who grew up here — about family, about what was said and not said at the dinner table, about what it means to love a place that harmed people you know. The city’s working population skews younger and more creative than Northern Virginia’s: nonprofits, VCU and the medical campus, agencies, restaurants, artists holding two or three sources of income together. That produces its own pressures. There is less money here than two hours north, and more people whose work is bound up with their identity in a way that makes burnout feel like personal failure rather than overwork. Richmond is also meaningfully less saturated with therapists than the Washington suburbs, and considerably less well served relative to its need. Waitlists are real, particularly for anyone looking for trauma-specific work rather than general talk therapy. Being online removes the geography from that — I have the same availability for someone in Church Hill as for someone in Arlington — though it does not remove the cost, and I would rather say that plainly. I should also be direct about fit. I do not take insurance and provide a superbill for out-of-network reimbursement. In a city where a lot of people are managing on nonprofit and service wages, that will not work for everyone, and the local resources below include options that do take insurance and sliding-scale referrals. Q: Are you based in Richmond? A: No. I don't have an office in Virginia and I see everyone online. I am licensed in Virginia, which means I can work with adults anywhere in the state, Richmond included. Q: Do you take insurance? A: I do not. My rate is $160 per 50 minute session, and I provide a superbill you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement. If that isn't workable, the resources listed above can point you toward in-network and sliding-scale options in the Richmond area. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Manassas https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/manassas/ I work with adults in Manassas and Manassas Park by secure video. I am licensed in Virginia, and I specialize in trauma, intimate partner violence, and culturally attuned work with Latino clients. About this area: Manassas is a city rather than a subdivision, and the difference shows. It has its own downtown, its own school division, and a civic identity that predates the suburban growth around it by a couple of centuries — and it now sits inside one of the most rapidly diversified parts of Virginia. Close to 44 percent of Manassas residents are Hispanic or Latino; in neighboring Manassas Park the figure is nearly 47 percent, the highest of any locality in the Commonwealth. That has produced something I do not often see: a place where being Latino is unremarkable at the grocery store and at your child’s school, and still isolating in a therapist’s office. Cultural fluency has arrived in the civic life of this city faster than it has arrived in its mental health care. People here are frequently the first in their family to consider therapy at all, negotiating that against a strongly held sense that difficulty is handled within the household, and then find that the available clinician needs the entire context explained before the actual conversation can begin. What comes up in that work is specific and it repeats. Being the family’s interpreter since childhood — at the pharmacy, at the bank, at parent-teacher conferences — and never having had a version of yourself that was not useful. Parents whose sacrifice is beyond question and whose expectations are therefore beyond negotiation. Immigration histories that stay present in a household long after the paperwork is settled, sometimes in people who did not personally live them. And, for many families here, a low constant vigilance about status that shapes what gets said out loud, including to a therapist. Manassas also carries a particular relationship to history, being what it is, and I mention it because clients raise it: living somewhere whose name is nationally synonymous with a battle produces an odd relationship to the past, and for immigrant families building a life on that ground, questions about belonging are not abstract. A note on language, because it should not be discovered in a first session: my sessions are held in English. Clients are welcome to bring Spanish or Spanglish in, and as a Latina who has worked with the Latino community in both languages I can follow you there. Therapy conducted in Spanish is not what I offer. Q: Do you offer therapy in Spanish? A: Sessions are held in English. You are welcome to use Spanish or Spanglish during sessions if that feels more natural, and as a Latina with extensive experience working with the Latino community in both languages I bring cultural understanding to that work. I do not offer therapy conducted in Spanish, and I would rather tell you now than have you find out in a first session. Q: Are you located in Manassas? A: No. I don't have an office in Virginia and I see everyone online. I'm licensed in Virginia, which means I can work with adults anywhere in the state, Manassas and Manassas Park included. Q: What does a session cost? A: My rate is $160 per 50 minute session. I do not accept insurance, but I can provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance company for out-of-network reimbursement. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Mt. Airy & Germantown https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/mt-airy-germantown/ Northwest Philadelphia is where my practice has been based. I work with adults in Mt. Airy, Germantown and the surrounding neighborhoods by secure video. About this area: Mt. Airy has spent seventy years being deliberate about itself. The neighborhood organized to integrate rather than flee in the 1950s and has held onto that identity since, and the result is a place with an unusually strong sense of its own values and an unusually high proportion of people — teachers, social workers, clergy, nonprofit staff, artists, therapists — whose work is bound up with those values. Germantown next door is older, poorer in parts, historically weightier, and carries a great deal that has never been fully reckoned with. Both produce something specific in a therapy room. When your community is organized around care and principle, the cost of admitting you are not doing well is higher, not lower. People here are often the ones others rely on, professionally and personally, and have no practice at being the one who needs something. Burnout among helping professionals is one of the more common things I see from this part of the city, and it rarely arrives named as burnout — it arrives as irritability, numbness, or a sense of having become someone you would not have chosen. There is also a proximity problem that is particular to Northwest Philadelphia. This is a neighborhood where people know each other: at the co-op, at the farmers market, at the school, at the meeting. That closeness is much of what makes it a good place to live, and it makes anonymity nearly impossible. Walking into a therapist’s office on Germantown Avenue is a public act. Meeting by video from your own house is not, and for a fair number of people that is the actual barrier rather than the therapy itself. This is the neighborhood I know best, and my practice began here. That does not make me the right therapist for everyone in it — but it does mean I don’t need Mt. Airy or Germantown explained to me, and for some of what comes up, that saves a session or two. Q: Do you see clients in person in Mt. Airy? A: Not at present. All of my sessions are held online by secure video, for clients across Pennsylvania and Virginia. Q: I might know you, or know someone who sees you. Is that a problem? A: It's a fair question in a neighborhood this connected, and worth raising at a consultation. What I can tell you is that confidentiality is absolute, and that if a dual relationship would make the work compromised or awkward for you, I will say so and help you find someone else. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Alexandria https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/virginia/alexandria/ I work with adults across Alexandria by secure video. I am licensed in Virginia, and my work centers on trauma, relationships, and patterns that have outlasted the situations that made them. About this area: Alexandria is two cities that share a zip code range and not much else. Old Town and Del Ray are affluent, walkable and professionally dense — federal employees, lawyers, consultants, association staff. The West End and Arlandria are working neighborhoods with large Central American communities, particularly Salvadoran families who have been here for decades. The median household income figure for the city sits above $130,000 and describes almost nobody’s actual experience of living here. I work with people from both, and what they bring is genuinely different. From the eastern half it is usually some version of a life that functions impeccably and costs more to maintain than anyone can see: a career built on being reliable, a marriage negotiated around two demanding jobs, a low-grade dread that arrives on Sunday evening and has no obvious cause. High-functioning people are very good at deferring the question of whether any of it is what they wanted, and Alexandria is full of environments that reward the deferral. From the West End it is more often the thing I have spent much of my career on: obligations running in several directions at once, having been the family’s translator since you were a child, and a history of migration that stays present in a household long after the move is finished. Alexandria has one of the more established Latino communities in Northern Virginia, and established does not mean settled — a second generation raised here is still negotiating between two sets of expectations, usually alone. The practical note is the same for both halves. My rate is $160 a session and I don’t take insurance; I provide a superbill for out-of-network reimbursement. For much of eastern Alexandria that is an ordinary way to pay for therapy. For much of the West End it is not, and I would rather say so plainly than waste your time — the resources below include services that take insurance and offer sliding-scale fees. Q: Do you have an office in Old Town? A: No — I don't have an office in Virginia at all. All of my sessions are online by secure video. I'm licensed in Virginia, so I can work with adults anywhere in the state. Q: Do you take insurance? A: I do not. My rate is $160 per 50 minute session and I provide a superbill you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement. If that isn't workable, the Alexandria resources above are a better starting point than a therapist you can't sustain. ------------------------------------------------------------ ## Bucks County https://lunapsychcounseling.com/therapy/pennsylvania/bucks-county/ I work with adults across Bucks County by secure video. I am licensed in Pennsylvania, and I specialize in trauma, relationships, and the long patterns relationships leave behind. About this area: Bucks County runs about forty miles from the Philadelphia line to the edge of the Lehigh Valley, and it changes character several times on the way. Lower Bucks — Levittown, Bensalem, Bristol — is the postwar working county, built fast for steel and manufacturing workers whose industries left. Central Bucks around Doylestown and Newtown is affluent, professional and heavily invested in its school district. Upper Bucks is still substantially rural. Calling all of it one market is a convenience, not an accurate description. What is common across it is distance. Bucks is a county where getting to an appointment is a genuine calculation — a therapist in Doylestown is forty minutes from Quakertown and an hour from parts of Lower Bucks in traffic, and that is before an hour of therapy and the drive home. A weekly commitment that costs three hours is a commitment most people quietly stop keeping. Meeting online removes the arithmetic entirely, and in a county shaped like this one that is not a small thing. The other common thread is generational. This is a place people stay: adult children living twenty minutes from the house they grew up in, in-laws at Sunday dinner, a family business, a parent aging nearby. That proximity is often genuinely good and it means the work of separating what is yours from what was handed to you happens with the source still very much present. It is a different task than doing it from a distance, and it deserves to be treated as one rather than as a failure to individuate. Central Bucks in particular has the pattern I see in comfortable places generally: difficulty is managed privately and competently for years before anyone names it. Nothing about a well-kept house in Doylestown is protective against what happened to you at nineteen. It is only good at making it look like nothing did. Q: Do you have an office in Bucks County? A: No. All of my sessions are online by secure video. I'm licensed in Pennsylvania, so I can work with adults anywhere in the state, anywhere in Bucks County included. Q: What does a session cost? A: My rate is $160 per 50 minute session. I do not accept insurance, but I can provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance company for out-of-network reimbursement. ------------------------------------------------------------ # ABOUT I’m Cristina, a therapist who works with adults using trauma-informed, relational approaches as well as EMDR. My path to becoming a therapist began when I worked with survivors of domestic violence in crisis. I started my clinical work in 2018 with individuals who had acted harmfully toward their partners and families. This work shaped my passion for trauma therapy and deepened my understanding of how relationships can be both profoundly rewarding and deeply injurious. I completed my master’s in clinical counseling in 2020 with a focus on trauma and became trained in EMDR. Throughout my career, I have worked closely with the Latino population, and as a daughter and granddaughter of immigrants, my interest in multicultural identities is both personal and professional. I also hold a master’s in American Studies and Material Culture. My background in the humanities continues to influence how I listen to and hold my clients’ stories—I’ve always valued people’s experiences, and I look forward to understanding yours. My approach I understand therapy as a journey of self, and I feel privileged to be part of that process. In my sessions, I strive to create a safe, supportive environment that honors your healing. I draw from relational, psychodynamic, feminist, and strengths-based approaches, as well as targeted treatments like EMDR to help you relate differently to your life experiences. I specialize in trauma and intimate partner violence; I have extensive experience working with survivors and partners who have acted harmfully towards their partners and families. I remain attentive to how cultural backgrounds and multicultural identities can complicate our understanding of ourselves and our relationships. As a Latina, I bring both personal experience and empathy to this work. I will honor your story by listening with curiosity, compassion, and warmth. I hope we can work together to build the insight, tools, and strength to help you shape your life moving forward. ------------------------------------------------------------ # FAQS If what you want to know isn’t here, ask me. I would rather answer it before a first session than during one. Q: Do you accept insurance? A: I currently do not accept insurance but I can provide a superbill, a document that you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. Q: How much does a session cost? A: My rate is $160 per 50 minute session. Q: What can I expect in my first session? A: The first session is an opportunity to start getting to know one another. I’ll want to understand what’s brought you to therapy and what you’d like to work towards. We’ll also go over logistics like scheduling, cancellations, and billing. You’ll have space to ask questions and get a feel for how I work, so you can decide whether this feels like the right fit for you. Q: What is EMDR? A: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy that helps people process difficult or traumatic experiences that are stuck in the nervous system. It uses gentle, guided back-and-forth stimulation (such as eye movements or tapping) while you focus on aspects of an experience, allowing the brain to reprocess it so it feels less distressing and has less impact on your present life. For more information on EMDR, please visit the EMDR International Association’s website at: https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/ Q: Is EMDR for me? A: EMDR can be a helpful approach for many people, but determining whether it’s the right fit takes time. In our first few sessions (usually about three), I focus on understanding your experiences and needs. EMDR is never off the table, but some situations—such as significant dissociation, active crisis, or significant life stress—may mean we start with other supportive work first. We’ll make decisions together and revisit EMDR whenever it feels appropriate. Q: Do you provide sessions in Spanish? A: Sessions are held in English. Clients are welcome to incorporate Spanish or Spanglish during sessions if that feels more natural. As a Latina with extensive experience working with the Latino community in both languages, I bring cultural awareness and lived understanding to my work. I also have extensive experience supporting clients from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Q: Where do sessions take place? A: All sessions are held online by secure video. You will need somewhere private where you won’t be interrupted, and a reliable connection. I am licensed in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and you need to be physically located in one of those states during our sessions. Q: Who do you work with? A: Adults, individually. I do not currently offer couples therapy, family therapy, or work with children and adolescents. ------------------------------------------------------------