Our Services
How We Can Help
We serve adolescents and adults and offer individual and couple’s therapy. We are available for in person appointments in Sacramento and provide telehealth services throughout the state of California.
Addiction & Recovery
Addictions can develop for any number of things including drugs, alcohol, sex, and in recent times, phones. The subject of your addiction can be all consuming – it’s all you think about. You might get so wrapped up in it that your relationships start suffering, yet you still find it hard to stop. Therapy can help you better understand your patterns, identify what keeps them going, and learn ways to break down and rebuild your habits.
Anxiety & Panic Attacks
Do you find yourself stuck in endless loops of “what if” questions? Are you constantly thinking about a million different things all at once? Has it been hard to sleep because you can’t turn your brain off? These are just some of the experiences most people have when describing anxiety. Anxiety is a normal human reaction to increased stressors, and it usually goes away once the stressor is resolved. What makes this anxiety different is how much it takes over your life despite your best efforts to feel better. Even if you manage to find moments of calm, you live in fear of it starting back up again. Living in this heightened state takes a toll of both the mind and body. Therapy can help you understand anxiety and learn effective strategies for coping with your symptoms when they show up.
Anger Management
Do you describe your anger as going from 0 to 100? Have those around you said that you have problems with anger? Do you have a hard time controlling how you behave when angry, for example, getting into fights or damaging property in a fit of rage? Anger is a natural emotion that everyone experiences; the anger itself is not the problem but how you react. Therapy can help you understand your anger and learn more effective strategies for managing it when it comes up.
Career Counseling
Figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life is a stressful and overwhelming task. There’s a lot of uncertainty and you can’t be sure you’re making the “right” decision. Balancing your mental health with these important decisions can prove to be a challenge. Therapy can offer different perspectives, help you process your thoughts, and make peace with your decision, whatever it may be.
Couple’s Therapy/Relationship Counseling & Intimacy
“I just want to be heard and understood” – this is the single phrase that captures the essence of couple’s therapy. Many couples find themselves in therapy as a last resort. They have likely spent the last several months, if not years, arguing about the same things day after day. On the surface, the arguments sound different, but at their core, they are over the same unmet need. Couples get lost; they feel hurt, betrayed, disappointed, and they want nothing more than to get back to each other but can’t figure out how. When we are at odds with those we care about the most, it significantly impacts our ability to function. Therapy helps couples understand their patterns and learn better ways of interacting to reduce their conflict.
Depression & Suicidality
Depression has many different faces; for some, it shows up as limited patience and increased irritability. It might look like ambivalence or feeling lost or unsure about what you want or need. It might be constant crying spells or maybe not even being able to cry at all. You might have trouble sleeping or trouble staying awake, eating too little or eating too much. Regardless of how it appears, it makes things significantly harder and is disruptive to your life, relationships, and overall satisfaction with life. Given how disruptive and consuming depression can be, some people may develop suicidal thoughts or even attempt suicide. It is often said that the person does not necessarily want to die, but they want their pain to end. Therapy offers you a space to openly talk about these difficult experiences and learn healthy strategies for improving your symptoms.
Gender Identity & Sexuality
For some time, it felt like we were making progress in dismantling binary systems and accepting that sexuality and gender identity isn’t one or the other. It’s disappointing and frightening to see our efforts being reversed in current times. People who once felt free to be themselves are now feeling forced to go back into hiding. It’s more important now than ever to know where you have a space to safely be yourself, and Bonsai Counseling & Psychotherapy is one of those spaces.
I provide supportive, affirming care regardless of where you are on your journey. For individuals that may be curious about or questioning their sexuality and/or gender identity, I provide a judgment-free space in which you can explore your thoughts and feelings and grow into who you truly are. For trans individuals that are interested in undergoing medical transitions, whether you are starting hormones and/or considering surgery, I support you in exploring what this entails and preparing for whatever gender affirming treatment you are pursuing. Going through these changes can be exciting and scary at the same time and having support along the way can help alleviate some of your worries and feel better prepared for the next steps in your journey.
Incarceration & Reentry
There’s an old saying that goes: “If you do the crime, you do the time.” The expectation is that if someone commits a crime, they face their punishment, and then they’re done, right? For those that have been directly impacted by the criminal (in)justice system, they know all too well that the punishment seems like it never ends. Legal troubles affect people in all aspects of their lives, including their mental health. Having worked in correctional facilities and being impacted personally, I understand how difficult it is to get better and do better in systems that are not built to help people thrive and succeed. If you have been struggling to find your path following arrest or incarceration, know that I am here to support and guide you in rebuilding a life that you find fulfilling and keeps you out of the system.
Life Transitions
Change is hard, even if it’s something that you’re looking forward to. There’s a lot of uncertainty with change and there’s also loss. If you’re leaving your job for a better opportunity, it may be exciting but also sad as you leave your colleagues. If you’re graduating high school and going off to college, it can be scary moving away from home for the first time and being around different people. Even entering a different decade presents a different set of challenges – your 20s are different than your 30s and so on and so forth. Whatever transition you’re undergoing, therapy can help you process and adapt.
Parenting Support
Parenting can be tricky sometimes, and parents are faced with a different set of challenges as their child progresses through the life stages. As the child grows, they seek more autonomy, causing parents and their child to get into power struggles. The parent wants to ensure their child is safe while the child is curious about the world around them and wants the freedom to explore independently. Sometimes parenting challenges arise from differences in parenting styles between the couple, often revolving around discipline. Whatever the situation, therapy can help parents understand their parenting styles, identify unhelpful patterns, and develop the tools to navigate parenting challenges that may arise.
Personality Disorders
A personality consists of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of a person. When these characteristics negatively impact your ability to function on a day-to-day basis, usually over a long period of time, you may have a personality disorder. People with personality disorders often have a skewed view of the world that affects their inner experiences, relationships, and ability to function in the world. Therapy can help you develop a greater understanding of these personality characteristics and how they affect you as well as learn how to change unhelpful thoughts and behavioral patterns.
Self-Harm
For some people, self-harm is not an attempt to end their life but more so a way to relieve themselves of their emotional pain. If they‘ve been feeling emotionally numb, it can be a way to help them feel something. It might also be a cry for help; an attempt to be seen and to check if anybody cares. Whatever the reason, it’s an unhealthy coping skill that can result in serious harm, often by accident. Therapy can help you understand these behaviors and adopt a different way of coping with your emotions.
Stress Management
Life is stressful given how many responsibilities you have to manage: school, work, kids, home, and everything in between. Oftentimes you feel like you‘re constantly on the go and don’t have time for a break as you’re rushing from one thing to another. As the stress builds, your mental health begins to suffer; you’re exhausted, short-tempered, and sometimes unmotivated. Therapy can help you develop strategies for managing your stress and finding a balance between caring for yourself and handling your responsibilities.
Work & Career Issues
Work stress can be influenced by a variety of issues: workplace politics, differences in work ethics among colleagues, terrible bosses, unrealistic work demands and expectations, etc. It’s not uncommon for people to be deeply affected by these things as most people spend much of their time in these environments. Therapy offers you a space to talk about and explore how to best navigate these workplace challenges.
Treatment Approaches
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
The harsh reality of life is that bad things happen – it’s inevitable. What often makes these situations feel worse is the attention you give it. The more you focus on the problem or try to fight it, the less clear the solution is and the worse you feel. ACT is about learning to make space for and accepting all your thoughts and emotions just as they are and allowing them to come and go as they naturally do rather than becoming fixated or trying to change or force them away. The goal of ACT is to help you live a fulfilling, value-driven life even while facing unpleasant circumstances.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT focuses on identifying the negative, sometimes irrational, thoughts (called cognitive distortions) that affect how you feel and behave. CBT is about learning to shift your mindset by reframing or challenging your thoughts. In doing so, you will be able to approach situations with more clarity, make better choices, and feel better overall.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
DBT is a type of CBT that shares some similarities with ACT, particularly mindfulness and acceptance. The main difference is that DBT is more focused on building and mastering skills to improve emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. The term “dialectical” refers to the integration of two seemingly opposite concepts – acceptance and change. In other words, you can accept yourself for who you are while also changing maladaptive behaviors.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Particularly helpful for couple’s work, EFT focuses on attachment wounds and identifies insecurities and needs fueling conflict. Once those underlying needs are identified, individuals work on learning how to communicate them more effectively to change behavioral patterns and reduce conflict. EFT entails reducing reactivity, changing behavioral patterns, and integrating new skills to tackle disagreements that may arise down the road.
Humanistic/Person-Centered Therapy
Diagnoses may not always be helpful and can be more damaging than good. Humanistic therapy is a less pathologizing approach and instead looks at the individual holistically, emphasizing self-exploration, increased self-awareness, self-acceptance, and personal growth.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Perhaps you have noticed patterns but can’t fully explain or understand what’s happening or how to change it, or you had difficult experiences in childhood that you suspect contribute to your current experiences. Maybe you’ve tried techniques for symptom reduction but still feel like you need something more. Rather than focusing on immediate resolution of symptoms, psychodynamic therapy goes deeper and is helpful for those seeking to gain a greater understanding of their self.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)
Rather than dissecting problems of the past, SFBT is a goal-oriented approach that builds on your strengths and focuses on finding the solutions that will allow you to live the life you want. SFBT emphasizes that all change matters, no matter how small, and that you already possess the skills and resources needed to achieve your goals – it’s just a matter of identifying and honing them.
Culturally Sensitive Therapy
As a first-generation Mexican myself, I understand the impact culture has on the way we think and how we behave. Belief systems that were instilled in us from childhood don’t simply go away just because someone tells us it doesn’t have to be that way. I believe it’s important to look at the cultural context in which someone grew up to better understand how they came to be the person they are today.
Motivational Interviewing
Therapy is not about telling you what to do and how to do it but about providing guidance to help you find the answers that are already within. I often employ motivational interviewing strategies to do just that. Among other things, I ask open-ended questions to encourage deep thinking and provide reflective listening to demonstrate empathy and understanding.
Rates & Insurance
- Individual therapy — $165
- Couple’s therapy — $190
All sessions are about 53-55 minutes on average.
Extended sessions in 30-minute increments are available for $80 for individuals and $95 for couples.
Payments are accepted through credit/debit card and Zelle.
We are contracted with the following insurance carriers:
- Aetna
- Optum
- UnitedHealthcare/United Behavioral Health (UHC/UBH)
- Western Health Advantage
- Magellan EAP
Reduced Fees
Cancellation Policy
If you need to cancel, please reach out at least 24 hours in advance. A $150 fee may be charged for late cancellations or no show appointments.
Contact
Questions or ready to get started? Feel free to call or text (916) 520-3041 or send us an email at connect@bonsaicounseling.com. You can also complete our contact form.
If you prefer to book an appointment online, you can do so here.
We value your privacy. Please do not include any confidential or private information through text, email, or on any form found on this website.
