Mona Saba Valeriano, MSW, Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Life is inherently challenging, and resisting that reality can deepen suffering. You may have long imagined becoming a parent, only to find yourself grappling with unexpected and complicated feelings towards yourself or your child. Or perhaps in an effort to avoid the pain of your past, you may have turned to food or alcohol or relied on patterns like people-pleasing or conflict avoidance—only to realize that, strategies that once helped you cope are now causing your harm. Whatever brings you here, I applaud your willingness to confront your relationship to trauma, depression, and anxiety and to initiating a first step. With 18 years of experience supporting individuals and couples through these challenges, among others, I would be privileged to walk alongside you in this work. Therapy with me is relational, collaborative, active, empathic, and experiential—at times direct and gently challenging. I tailor approaches to meet the individual needs of my clients and draw from depth-oriented and somatic approaches, including intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP), psychodynamic therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), Brainspotting, internal family systems (IFS), emotionally focused therapy (EFT), and Relational Life Therapy (RLF). I am trauma-informed and LGBTQ affirmative, and deeply value working with BIPOC and SWANA clients and couples navigating identity and cultural dynamics in a patriarchical and colonial culture. I am deeply enjoy working with parents and couples navigating ADHD in their dynamic.

Inara Center for Psychotherapy includes wonderful associates and me. While I typically meet with clients during daytime and weekday hours, my associates are often able to offer evening and weekend meeting times. Feel free to inquire directly with me, should you wish to work with my associates or me.

Prospective clients often ask about Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) because it's a relatively unfamiliar and somewhat obscure model. My main reason for pursuing additional training in it came from noticing a pattern with some clients who had been in long-term therapy either with other providers or with me. They had developed deep insight into the roots of their struggles and had analyzed family dynamics extensively, yet still felt stuck in the same Sisyphean patterns despite all that understanding. When I discovered ISTDP, it stood out as a more evocative and challenging model than others I had encountered. The therapist takes an active, engaged role in observing patterns of stagnation and inviting clients to become aware of what had previously been unconscious, and then to decide their willingness to change it. The approach focuses on feelings in the body in real time and works with the unconscious to explore emotions that may be suppressed, buried, or defended against, allowing them to be fully and experientially felt, and ultimately released, within a safe therapeutic relationship. In addition to training in this model, I also pursued my own therapy in ISTDP and had a truly life-changing experience. While ISTDP is not the only model I practice, it strongly informs the way I work. I welcome questions about this approach or any of the others I use.