IN-PERSON & ONLINE THERAPY IN CA

Feel more connected to your body

and build rewarding relationships

Counseling Services for Adults · Teens · Healers

Feel heard. Find clarity. Get support.

🪻

Feel heard. Find clarity. Get support. 🪻

You notice life isn’t looking the way you wanted it to.

You’re feeling exhausted in your relationships and aren’t sure how to change them. You feel you’re giving too much of yourself to others and feel like it’s never enough.

You’re setting impossible standards for yourself and feel irritable, stressed, and anxious when trying to complete them. You’re rushing through tasks, feeling like you haven’t completed even one of them.

You feel like you’re walking differently in the world and can’t find any relief.

You want to change something, but you just can’t pinpoint what that is or how to change it.

I work with adults and teens struggling with:

  • Feeling scattered

  • Not knowing what your wants and needs are

  • Using substances as a coping skill to deal with stress

  • Adolescents struggling during their teen years

  • Feelings of stress, anxiety, and irritation

  • Childhood trauma

  • Obsessive thoughts

  • Trauma from interacting with medical or educational systems

You can feel better.

You can build a life you are excited to live. You can diminish the amount of exhaustion you’re feeling in your relationships and make changes in how much of yourself you give. 

You can feel supported and loved for the way you look at the world. We can pinpoint together what it is that you’d like to understand and change. 

I help adolescents and adults feel more connected to themselves, understand where their belief systems are coming from, and support them to enact change.

Using holistic and body-based methods such as EMDR and Internal Family Systems, we can create a bond to your body and system that will allow you to feel freedom from heavy behaviors and create fulfilling connections.

I’m Jackie

Let’s be uncomfortable together!

Many times we can feel discomfort when growing and changing. I am the therapist who can hold space for you throughout this journey. 

I can help you feel better NOW. As your therapist, I am here to do this with you. Each step of the way, we will check in and come up with ways in which you will feel resourced to cope and enjoy this process. I am along for this therapy ride with you and meeting you at your pace. I create unique therapeutic experiences, where each session is modified toward what you need. 

Diversity & Culture

You want to work with a therapist who:

  • Prioritizes your identities

  • Offers an inclusive therapeutic environment

  • Creates a safe environment to process feelings of invisibility, being misunderstood, and systemic expectations

  • Understands the pressures of acculturation and assimilation, the feelings of having to “fit in” with the prominent societal narrative

  • Incorporates traditions, values, beliefs, stories, and familial history

My Specialties

I work with adolescents, adults, and healers who are

People pleasers

Finding themselves taking care of others before taking care of themselves.

Feeling critical of yourself and second-guessing your passion for the healing profession.

Struggling with feeling scattered, disconnection in relationships, and anxiety.

Feeling the inability to complete tasks unless done perfectly.

How I Help

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)

With bilateral stimulation (alternately stimulating the right and left side of your brain in a way that enhances your brain's natural processing), we can reduce the effects of past memories. We desensitize the feelings and emotions connected to these memories and reprocess them to experience relief from the symptoms you are experiencing.

IFS (Internal Family Systems)

We can work together to create relationships with all of the parts of your system. We are able to non-judgmentally acknowledge these parts, allowing us to befriend and lessen the impact they’re having on you. From there, we can nurture, soothe, and listen to their stories, minimizing the feelings of anxiety, stress, grief, and more. 

Somatic Therapy

With somatic practices, you begin to tune in to the feelings and sensations you may be holding in your body. Together, we can work to help expel this energy from your body through movement, tapping, and breathing. This work also pairs well with bilateral stimulation and getting to know your parts.

Skill Building

Throughout the process of therapy, I will give you resources to build a skills toolkit. We will engage in meditative practices, guided breathing, and visualizations. You are encouraged to utilize these skills, as well as any others you feel support you, outside of our sessions.

Ready to get started?

Let’s schedule a free 20-minute phone consultation. It is important for you to feel comfortable and I’ll help you decide if I am the correct fit for you.

You can email me at jackiealvaradocounseling@gmail.com schedule. 

If you would like to work together in person, you can find me in downtown Walnut Creek. I am located at:

2363 Boulevard Circle, Suite #2

Walnut Creek, CA 94595