Individual Therapy for Adults in Pasadena & Studio City
Understanding yourself more deeply. Finding new ways of being in your life and relationships.
Sometimes life looks relatively fine from the outside, but internally, something doesn't feel quite right.
You may be successful, capable, and accustomed to managing things on your own, yet find yourself struggling with anxiety, self-doubt, loneliness, or a persistent sense of dissatisfaction. Perhaps you keep finding yourself in the same painful relationship patterns, feel responsible for everyone else's needs, or have difficulty knowing what you really want.
Maybe you're navigating a significant life transition, grieving a loss, or beginning to question beliefs about yourself that you've carried for a long time.
Or perhaps you can't identify exactly what's wrong. You simply know that the way you've been living, relating, or feeling isn't quite working anymore.
Therapy offers a space to slow down, become curious about your inner world, and begin to understand yourself in new ways.
Begin Individual Therapy
We offer individual therapy for adults in Pasadena and Studio City, as well as online throughout California. Our therapists work with anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, life transitions, and other emotional challenges.
Reach out to schedule a free 15-minute consultation and learn more about finding a therapist who feels like the right fit.
A Deeper Understanding of Yourself
Many of the patterns that shape our lives develop long before we're consciously aware of them.
The ways we learned to seek love, manage conflict, protect ourselves from disappointment, or earn a sense of belonging often become so familiar that we experience them as simply who we are.
You may find yourself repeatedly drawn to emotionally unavailable partners, struggling to set boundaries, feeling guilty when you disappoint others, or holding yourself to impossibly high standards.
Even when we recognize that these patterns aren't serving us, changing them can be surprisingly difficult.
Our approach to therapy is grounded in the belief that meaningful change begins with understanding. Together, we explore not only what you're experiencing, but how your feelings, relationships, personal history, and unconscious expectations have shaped the way you move through the world.
As you develop greater awareness and compassion for yourself, new possibilities for responding, relating, and making choices can begin to emerge.
What Can Individual Therapy Help With?
People seek therapy for many reasons, including:
Anxiety, excessive worry, and feeling overwhelmed
Depression, sadness, and emotional disconnection
Relationship difficulties and recurring interpersonal patterns
People-pleasing, codependency, and difficulty setting boundaries
Perfectionism, self-criticism, and feelings of inadequacy
Grief, loss, and major life transitions
Family-of-origin difficulties and painful childhood experiences
Identity, self-esteem, and questions about purpose or belonging
Parenting, motherhood, and changing family roles
Career stress, burnout, and difficulty finding balance
Trauma and difficult life experiences
A desire for greater self-understanding and personal growth
You don't need to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. Sometimes the wish to understand yourself more fully is reason enough to begin.
Our Approach to Individual Therapy
Our work is rooted in psychodynamic, attachment-based, and relational perspectives.
We believe that our emotional lives are shaped by our experiences and relationships, including the ones we may not consciously recognize as influential.
Rather than focusing exclusively on reducing symptoms, we are interested in understanding the deeper feelings, conflicts, and patterns that contribute to distress.
Therapy is a collaborative process. We pay attention to your history and the ways it continues to live in the present, while also making room for your immediate concerns, relationships, and everyday experiences.
Our therapists draw from a range of approaches, including psychodynamic and relational therapy, attachment theory, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and other evidence-informed interventions, depending on each clinician's training and the needs of the client.
Above all, we believe that the therapeutic relationship itself can become a meaningful space for discovery, growth, and change.
What Does Individual Therapy Look Like?
Therapy isn't simply a place to receive advice or learn how to think more positively.
It's an opportunity to explore parts of yourself that may be difficult to access in everyday life: feelings you tend to minimize, needs you have learned to ignore, and patterns that emerge in your closest relationships.
Some sessions may focus on a current conflict or an immediate source of distress. Others may involve exploring memories, examining longstanding beliefs, or noticing how familiar emotional experiences arise in the present.
Your therapist will help you make connections, consider new perspectives, and develop a more compassionate understanding of yourself.
Over time, this process can help you feel less governed by old patterns and more able to make choices that reflect who you are and what matters to you.
Meet Our Individual Therapists
Tracy Bitterolf, AMFT
Tracy works with adults navigating anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, life transitions, and challenges related to self-esteem and emotional well-being. Her approach is relational, collaborative, and attentive to the ways our experiences and relationships shape how we understand ourselves.
Sarah Wright, MA, AMFT, APCC
Sarah brings a thoughtful, depth-oriented approach to her work with adults, grounded in psychodynamic and attachment-based perspectives. She is particularly interested in relationships, identity, motherhood, desire, and the tension between who we have learned to be and who we might become. Her work invites curiosity, self-discovery, and a more compassionate relationship with oneself.
Rebecca Lesser Allen, PsyD
Dr. Rebecca Lesser Allen is a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Rebecca Lesser Allen, PsyD & Associates. Her work is grounded in psychodynamic, relational, and attachment-based approaches, with an emphasis on understanding the deeper emotional patterns that shape our relationships, sense of self, and experience of the world. She works with adults navigating relationship difficulties, anxiety, self-esteem, family-of-origin dynamics, life transitions, and the complexities of identity and personal growth. Her approach is thoughtful, collaborative, and rooted in the belief that meaningful change emerges through greater self-understanding and the experience of being deeply understood.
Learn More About Dr. Lesser Allen
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