Individual Therapy

If you’re here, you’ve realized it’s time to make a change.

At Sawtelle Psychotherapy Group, individual psychotherapy welcomes you into a collaborative and personalized experience designed tailored to your unique definition of “wellbeing.”

Our therapists specialize in coupling strong and safe therapeutic relationships with evidence-based therapies. Working alongside you means co-developing a plan for your therapy that is comprehensive, adaptable, and generalizable so that you’ll take your therapeutic gains everywhere you go.

You’ve made the first step. We’re here to help you with the rest.

Life can be tough. Getting support doesn’t have to be.

In individual therapy, we may focus on…

Through individual therapy in West Los Angeles and virtually in California, New York, Florida, and Vermont, we help clients achieve behavioral, emotional, and cognitive change so they can stop suffering and start enjoying the lives they’ve worked hard to build.

…so that you can feel like you…

  • Better understand your patterns

  • Can approach your mind with curiosity

  • Know how to identify and trust your intuition

  • Can be vulnerable with yourself and others

  • Navigate the world with more flexibility

  • Have an accessible, personalized toolkit of coping strategies

  • Know how to deal with conflict healthily

  • Meet your own needs

  • Know your values and live in line with them

  • Can tolerate discomfort and uncertainty

  • Can set loving boundaries with yourself and others

  • Don’t have to act on your urges

  • Are comfortable in your identities

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Our Areas of Expertise

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a present-focused type of therapy that’s been proven to treat most mental health conditions (in fact, it’s the most studied psychotherapy modality in the world!). Using CBT techniques, we’ll find connections between your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and body sensations. We’ll explore more adaptive ways of coping and set you up to practice in between sessions so that you become your own CBT expert.

Approaches We Use in Individual Therapy With Adults

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

Founded by a former comprehensive DBT therapist, SPG’s philosophy and approach to therapy is deeply rooted in DBT principles. This means we emphasize skill-building (think: learning how to tolerate distress and communicate more effectively) and specialize in working with those who’ve been chronically invalidated by loved ones or environments. Together, we’ll create a tailored, personalized treatment plan based on the skills you want to learn and your long-term goals.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

CPT is a short-term form of CBT that specifically treats adults who have experienced trauma. In using this modality, we’ll help you identify and challenge unhelpful thoughts and change your beliefs about yourself and the world, particularly as they relate to themes like safety, trust, power and control, esteem, and intimacy.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Using ACT principles, we’ll help you build insight into patterns of psychological inflexibility getting in the way of living in line with your values. With that, it should come as no surprise that ACT is a modality designed to be flexible. This means that regardless of what we’re talking about or working on, there will be opportunities to weave in ACT themes like being present, accepting and differentiating from your thoughts, committing to action, and values clarification.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

ERP is a form of therapy we use with clients experiencing OCD, phobias, health anxiety, panic attacks, and more. We’ll collaborate to create a plan in which you’ll be gradually exposed to something (an experience, sensation, or thought) that you fear, all the while helping you decrease avoidance strategies that have kept your fears alive.

Narrative Exposure Therapy

NET is another modality we use to treat trauma symptoms and PTSD that emphasizes the idea that our memories are constantly being rewritten by new experiences and that the stories you tell yourself about your life influence how you see the world, your experiences, and your wellbeing. We’ll harness the power of storytelling together to help you consolidate fragmented trauma memories into a coherent narrative that helps you foster a clearer sense of your identity.

Habit Reversal Training (HRT)

HRT is a modality we use to help clients reduce or eliminate unwanted habits like skin picking, hair pulling, cheek or nail biting, and more. We’ll explore everything you’ve tried to do to kick the habit before, help you build thorough awareness of the behavior, and then collaborate to create alternative behaviors, change your environment, reinforce progress, and build self-compassion.

Motivational Interviewing (MI)

MI is a goal-oriented approach that supports clients build the motivation needed to make healthy changes in their lives. With an emphasis on our collaboration and your agency, we’ll help you identify barriers to motivation and change and even use any resistance that shows up as a tool to move you closer to your end goal.