Individual Therapy in Los Angeles
Modern, depth-oriented therapy for high-functioning adults ready for something more than coping skills—real change at the level it actually happens.
In-person in Encino and Studio City. Virtual across California, Nevada, and Oregon. Prefer three focused weeks? See Individual Intensives.
I draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS), psychodynamic and attachment-based therapy, and practical tools from CBT.
You've been thinking about it for a while.
Maybe a year. Maybe several. The idea of therapy keeps surfacing—usually after a hard week, a hard conversation, or a quiet Sunday night where something underneath finally got loud enough to register.
And then you put it down. You're functioning. You're handling it. You've handled harder things. You'll figure it out, the way you've figured out everything else.
As an individual therapist in Los Angeles, I work with capable, driven adults who are starting to suspect that "handling it" isn't the same as living the life they actually want.
“I'll bring structure, honesty and real curiosity to every session. You bring whatever is true this week.”
Tanya Samuelian, LMFT
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A focused conversation to explore your goals, assess fit, and determine next steps for working together.
Who I Work With
My individual therapy practice in Los Angeles is focused on a specific kind of client:
High-functioning adults whose external lives look like they're working—and whose internal lives are asking for something more
Professionals, executives, founders, and creatives navigating success that costs more than it returns
High achievers whose drive has become inseparable from their dread
People doing their first real therapy—after years of thinking about it or after a brief unhelpful experience that didn't fit
The common thread: smart, capable people who are ready for the kind of work that doesn't just make them feel better in the moment but actually changes something underneath.
What I Help Clients Work Through
A non-exhaustive list of what tends to come up:
Anxiety in all its forms — high-functioning, generalized, social, panic, anticipatory
Overthinking and rumination — the loop that doesn't shut off
Perfectionism — and the toll it's been quietly taking
Burnout — active, recovering, or the patterns that keep producing it
Self-worth and identity work — particularly when success hasn't translated to feeling okay
Relationship patterns — the kind that keep repeating across partners
Emotional overfunctioning — being "the strong one" and the cost of being it
Life transitions — career changes, breakups, becoming a parent, moving, loss
Grief — including the kind that hasn't been named as grief
Attachment patterns — anxious, avoidant, or a mix, and how they shape your closest connections
Most clients arrive with one of these and discover, in the work, that several are connected. That's not the work getting bigger. That's the actual picture coming into focus.
How Individual Therapy Actually Goes
A few things distinguish my approach from generic therapy.
I’m an active participant, not a passive listener.
I don’t sit back and nod. I think alongside you—brainstorming, collaborating, and challenging you when something doesn’t add up.
It’s one of the things clients specifically come to me for: a therapist who is fully in the conversation.
You won’t be doing this work alone in the room.
We work with patterns, not just symptoms.
Most quick-fix approaches target what's on the surface—the anxious thought, the bad night, the difficult conversation. These are real and we work with them. But they're rarely the whole story.
Sustainable change happens when we work with the patterns underneath—the ones that produce the symptoms in the first place. The perfectionism. The overfunctioning. The nervous system that learned, somewhere along the way, that rest wasn't safe.
Address the engine, not just the smoke.
The relationship is part of the work.
This is what distinguishes therapy from coaching, advice, or talking to a friend with credentials.
The therapeutic relationship itself is one of the most active ingredients. For people whose patterns are relational—and most people's are—the experience of being in a consistent, attuned, professional relationship is part of what shifts the underlying template.
You don't have to "do therapy right." You just have to show up and let the work do what it does.
I integrate multiple modalities.
My approach integrates Internal Family Systems (IFS), psychodynamic and attachment-based therapy, evidence-based cognitive tools, and nervous-system-informed work. Different clients need different combinations at different times. The goal isn't loyalty to one school. It's giving you what the work actually requires.
In clients' words
“I’ve been in therapy before, but I always felt like I was talking about the same things without really getting anywhere. Working with Tanya was different. She helped me recognize patterns I hadn’t even realized were there.”
“I always thought therapy was for people going through something more serious. I was managing everything on the outside, but internally, I was overwhelmed. Looking back, I wish I had started sooner.”
“I kept telling myself I didn't really need therapy because nothing was technically wrong. I was just stressed all the time and thought that was normal. I'm really glad I finally decided to go.”
WHAT TO EXPECT IN SESSIONS
What individual sessions actually look like
Sessions are fifty minutes, weekly, in-person in Los Angeles or virtual across California, Nevada, and Oregon.
The work isn't linear. Some sessions are practical. Some open something. Some feel quieter and turn out to have moved more than you realized.
Private-pay, with superbills available for potential out-of-network insurance reimbursement. Fees are discussed in the initial inquiry.
If private-pay therapy is new to you, the short version: it protects your confidentiality, gives both of us clinical autonomy, and lets the work be directed by what you actually need rather than what insurance dictates.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A FIRST SESSION
What the first session looks like
The first session isn't a deep dive. It's an orientation.
You'll typically cover:
What's bringing you in — in your own words, at whatever pace works
A sense of your history — relevant background, without forcing you to recite a chronology
What you're hoping to work on — even if it's still forming
Questions about how I work — and how that fit feels to you
The logistics — frequency, fees, scheduling, what comes next
You don't need to come in knowing what to say. You don't need to have your story organized. You just need to come in. The first session's job is to start the relationship, not to solve anything.
If the fit feels right, you schedule another. If it doesn't, you find someone whose approach lands differently. Fit matters more than credentials, and good therapists know it.
HOW LONG THIS TAKES
How long individual therapy usually takes
It depends on what you're working with and what you want from the work.
Initial shifts in awareness often within the first month or two
Behavioral changes—where you start making different choices in real time—usually within the first three to six months
Deeper, identity-level change—where the underlying pattern stops feeling like who you are—tends to unfold over a longer arc, often a year or more
Maintenance and integration continues beyond that, often at a less intensive cadence
Some clients come in for focused, time-limited work on a specific issue and move on. Others stay because the work keeps opening doors. Both are valid. Neither is what therapy "should" look like.
What Individual Therapy Actually Is
In clinical terms, individual therapy is a structured, depth-oriented process between you and a trained clinician, focused on understanding and shifting the patterns running underneath your life.
It's not:
A blank-faced therapist nodding while you free-associate
A weekly venting session with no direction
A space where you talk about your childhood endlessly without anything changing
A place to be analyzed, diagnosed, or pathologized
It is:
Clinical work directed by your goals and the patterns at play
A process designed to produce sustainable, real-world change—not momentary relief
One of the few places in modern life specifically built for honest, unhurried, uninterrupted attention to you
Not ready to book yet?
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See the playbook →A Final Note
The thing about being functional is that you can keep being functional for a long time.
You don't have to wait until you can't.
Working with a thoughtful, modern therapist in Los Angeles isn't about being broken. It's about giving yourself the kind of attention you've been giving everyone else.
If you're considering individual therapy in Los Angeles, or virtual therapy across California, Nevada, or Oregon, I'd love to talk. A first consultation is the simplest way to find out if we're the right fit.
How to access → in-person in California and virtual in California, Nevada, and Oregon.
Related reading
Begin with a conversation.
A complimentary 15-minute phone consultation to talk through what's bringing you in and whether working together is the right fit.
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