Find a Therapist in Lakewood, WA

If you’ve ever felt like too much, or not enough, because of where you come from, what you carry, or how the world sees you, you’re not alone. Maybe you’re navigating the invisible weight of generational trauma. Maybe chronic illness has shaped your days in ways others don’t understand. Maybe you move through life holding pieces of multiple cultures, never quite feeling like you belong in any of them. Or maybe you’ve just gotten really good at performing—at showing up, holding it all together, and never being fully seen. If any of that sounds like you, I want you to know: therapy can be a place where you don’t have to explain everything to be understood. I’m Savannah Delgado, but most people call me Sav. I became a therapist by first becoming a question-asker. From a young age, I found myself wondering, “Why do people do what they do?”—especially when those choices caused pain. I didn’t want to repeat the patterns I saw. I wanted to understand them, interrupt them, and heal them. That desire led me into the healing professions—and now, to clients like you, who are ready to break cycles without breaking themselves. I work especially well with: Individuals and families carrying intergenerational trauma, cultural complexity, or family system wounds Clients navigating grief, chronic illness, emotional overwhelm, or identity invisibility Queer folks reclaiming safety, expression, and truth within oppressive or rigid systems People healing from codependency, perfectionism, or being “the strong one” I bring lived experience from my intersections: being raised between Hispanic, Native, and colonized cultures; navigating chronic illness; and learning how to hold grief and joy at the same time. I get what it feels like to not fit into neat boxes. I know how deeply it matters to be met by someone who just gets it. My approach blends warmth, attunement, and honesty. I draw from family systems therapy, somatic tools, client-centered work, and solution-focused practices. I often use metaphor, body-based regulation, and deep listening to help you explore what lives beneath the surface. In our work together, I’ll support you in rebuilding what you didn’t break, but now have the power to heal. As one of my clients once said, “Being queer... the world sucks. Other queer people? They just get that.” I want you to feel that kind of resonance in our sessions. I’ll put my hands underneath your hands to help you hold what feels heavy.

If you are experiencing persistent anxiety, chronic worry and unease, or the fatigue of depression that diminishes your sense of the future, you are seeking help beyond skills and advice. The distress you feel may be connected to addiction, relationship ruptures, complex trauma, long-term burnout, or the aftermath of sudden life transitions— or even relates back to moments in your childhood. I offer virtual psychoanalytic sessions to individuals across Washington, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Georgia. We begin with the unconditional welcome to speak what feels most real for you—freely, gradually, and without censorship. Dreams, fantasies, passions, and memories. Crises, complaints, and those stagnating repetitions that always return. You are invited to read deeply into yourself and to voice the 'other scenes' that appear between the lines of daily experience. We will take what troubles you and opens its interior dimensions through the spoken encounter of each session. This depth-oriented approach calls into question the very causes of your distress. Over time, this sustained discovery gives rise to renewed energy and singular knowledge of oneself, making possibilities for desire to be woven into your life in creative ways. If you are ready to invest in lasting change and bring new choices within reach, contact me today.

A relationship in which one partner is autistic and the other is neurotypical can be lonely for both partners. You can feel isolated and hurt, which often leads to a fear that nothing can ever change for the better. As a specialist in working online with neurodiverse couples, I offer you a unique understanding of the dilemmas and challenges encountered by each of you. You can learn to identify the differences between you and understand the effects of these differences. Our work together includes creating strategies for effective communication in a blame-free environment where you can begin to show compassion not only to your partner but to yourself. If you have children, we can include parenting concerns. Often, a parent begins to see autism in himselfherself only after one of the children has been diagnosed. Family considerations are key to our work together. Sometimes, couples are confused about their relationship goals: one partner wants to leave and the other wants to stay. Individually, we will look at each partner's hopes, dreams, and needs, and then come together to see what is possible. Our work includes a frank assessment of the difficulties and the rewards involved in this unique relationship. I will support you with education and skills development along the way. If you choose to work with me, we will focus on your specific concerns and issues as they arise. I will offer you supportive education and strategies as we look at your lives together. My role is slightly different than you may be accustomed to if you have worked with a therapist previously because of the additional emphasis on clinical education. My goal is to be certain you understand the neurodiverse relationship in terms of what can change and what cannot change so that you move in directions that are productive, while offering you suggestions for communication skills and strategies. I help partners understand their own way of being in the world and their partner's, as well as how to create news ways of communicating that can lead to a stronger relationship and increased intimacy. Please contact me by email. I am not able to return phone calls.

If you've gotten this far, you've already done a good deal of the needed work. You've recognized that you're not getting everything you want from life. You've decided there is action to take and a need for more support. I'm honored to work with people that have made a commitment to themselves. I believe the most powerful ingredient of therapy is the relationship. So, I work to join with my clients in order to work toward their goals. It's through the relationship that people can heal from past hurts, commit to change, and rediscover love and satisfaction in relationships and life.

I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 33 years of experience helping individuals, couples, and families from a broad range of ethnic, cultural, physical health, gender, socio-economic and sexual diversity. My experience includes many persons and families challenged by high conflict and multiple interlaced problems. I have extensive experience helping children, teens, and adults struggling with anxiety, depression, and the impact of grief, trauma and challenging relationships andor a family member's chemical dependency. My work is focused on helping relationships function well, whether I am assisting individuals, couples or families. My commitment is to listening closely and finely adapting my work to the unique person coming in for help. I use a variety of approaches that are collaborative and respect the inner knowing and ability of the client. Empowerment & respect are very important features of my approach. I also offer consultation and supervision to other professional therapists and have done so for 27 years.

I believe that the struggles that bring you to therapy are often symptoms of deeper unsettledness. Thus to address the current symptoms of your distress we may need to look beneath the surface and reflect on your life up to this point. That data is then used to enhance your awareness and to help you deliberately and consciously choose who you want to be and how you would like to move forward. I believe that your past relational experiences are immeasurably influential upon the development of your beliefs, ideas, thoughts, and choices. Based on this premise, we will explore the intricacies of these relationships and their influence on your specific struggles in an effort to identify, understand and address the sources of these struggles. We will explore how your way of relating contributes to the nature of your relationships, with the hope of cultivating awareness, compassion, and volition. By seeking and attending to the source of your distress we will address the symptoms as well as the roots. Our relationship is the primary context for change. My role as a therapist is to create a safe space for you to discover and live out your truest self. We will work together to identify barriers that may stem from past experiences or limiting beliefs that keep you from relating most authentically with others. And we will work together to develop strategies and tools that may help you along the way toward greater authenticity and contentment.

I love serving people with their change process. I have 38 years of counseling experience and several years prior as a special educator, and I offer experience with work-life balance, leadership, and career consulting. Always learning, my knowledge base is very broad. I like to apply it selectively, dependent on a careful assessment of your needs, and the feedback I get from you; presence for me is very important. Supporting people to be creative, skillful, and integrated is an art. The context for healing comes out of relationship, so I will do all I can to help you to mastery, whether it be a relationship to yourself or to others. I am extremely empathic and naturally offer trust. It is always an honor to work with those who come through my door.

If there is one constant in life, it's change; a new child, a new job, a new relationship, marriage, or the loss of any of those. I enjoy helping people navigate uncertain times, helping them to find a way through, take a new tack, or tap into hidden strengths. Sometimes we can change the situation; sometimes we must change ourselves, tearing down limiting beliefs and narratives to create new beliefs and narratives that honor our true self, our true values, and our goals. And yet other times we must learn to make peace with what we cannot change. I can help you to distinguish between what can and cannot be changed so that you can reduce the struggle and be more empowered and equipped to move forward in your life as it is. If you are looking here you have most likely been struggling. Whatever you're wanting help with, I am likely helping people with those very same issues every day. Let's work together to create the change you would like to see in your life. Let's make today, the first day of the rest of your life.

We are human. I believe we all encounter circumstances--internal, external and relational--in which we feel stuck, overwhelmed, helpless or unsure of how to move forward. As a therapist, I am committed to helping individual adults, children and youth, couples and families identify patterns of thoughts, behavior and interactions that inhibit fulfillment. I work together with people to identify goals and to evaluate our work in therapy. Ideally, therapy is a temporary commitment, a place to bolster internal resources and identify more effective tools and ways of interacting and coping. As a family therapist, I believe our families, friends, peer groups, colleagues influence our lives in powerful ways. Therefore, incorporating partners, family members and/or other relevant peers into therapy (when appropriate) can be valuable.

Our relationships with others--partners, friends, family, co-workers, and community members--add meaning to our lives. I use a family systems approach, which means I explore your past and present relationships, so you can function better and increase fulfillment. Whether I meet with just you or your entire family, I look at how current and past interactions may contribute to current challenges, as well as ways relationships can help resolve a problem. My work helps you uncover underlying issues, so you gain greater insight and find solutions, rather than just looking at symptoms. We will look at relationship patterns, triggers and coping strategies, and how they affect you and others in your life. I want to help you address current issues so you can cultivate stronger relationships. I rely on techniques from a variety of perspectives, including emotionally focused therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Understanding and addressing the dynamic of ADHD in relationships is also a specialty area.

I specialize in helping adults who struggle with perfectionism, anxiety, complex trauma, codependency, and grief. My therapy style is relational, trauma-informed, and grounded in systems-oriented psychodynamic work, with additional training in object relations, mindfulness-based self-compassion, and CBT. I grew up in the American South, where cultural fractures and early experiences with loss, addiction, and mental illness shaped my deep respect for boundaries, self-awareness, and the need for ongoing care. In our work together, I offer warmth, honesty, and practical insight to help you untangle old patterns, strengthen your sense of self, and build more connected, fulfilling relationships.