Shira Myrow, MA, LMFT
Couples Counseling & Marriage Therapy
I am a mindfulness-based psychotherapist in California (#93504) deeply committed to helping people transform painful experiences and dysfunctional relationships into secure, resilient narratives. I also have a special focus working with adult children of severely mentally ill parents who have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder.
As a therapist, my work with couples and individuals centers around identifying and uprooting entrenched negative patterns that color how you see yourself and your relationships. We’ll get to the root of the problem, put it into a new framework, and identify practical tools to help you move forward. Whether it’s habitual conflict, codependency, or complex trauma, these are waters I know well.
If you’re interested in some of the specific training I have to support your journey, I am trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy and in Gottman Method Couples Therapy (Level 3 Practicum and Gottman Referral Network), which uses mindfulness-based techniques to promote balance, resilience, and well-being. I use mindfulness often as well as narrative therapy, which helps you make new meaning of past experiences.
When you’re in crisis with a problem that needs immediate attention, the thought of reaching all the way back into your childhood for a solution can feel daunting and frustrating. We’ll focus on the urgent issues you’re facing right away and go from there at a pace that’s right for you.
Ana Genske, MA, AMFT
Ana is very invested in helping individuals integrate and live from a core of authenticity and self-knowledge. She is trained in the Comprehensive Resource Model, a modality that incorporates Guided Imagery, Inner Child Work and Somatic Awareness to promote healing and lasting change.
In her work with couples, she applies the attachment-based theory of Emotionally Focused Therapy to heighten self-awareness, and awareness of the authentic other, thereby facilitating clearer, more honest and vulnerable communication.
Ana obtained her Masters in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, and she is also a trained Hypnotherapist. She was born in Spain and educated in England and is therefore a culturally-sensitive therapist. She looks forward to helping you on your journey.
My Story.
As a daughter of a treatment-resistant schizophrenic mother, I found my way to psychology with the goal to make meaning out of my traumatic experience as a child. It also became important for me to learn how to relate to myself and others without having the foundation of a loving attachment figure.
In this sense — whether it's adults who are wounded around a traumatic past or couples and individuals striving to understand how to love — at its core, my work is relational and focused on healing attachment injuries. I am very much a believer that with the right guide, even the most difficult experiences can be transformed.
After years of working with clients, it became clear to me that talk therapy alone wasn’t enough to create lasting change. For me and my clients, the road to wellness can include many pieces. I've found meditation and mindfulness to be a profoundly transformative tool in the healing process.
My Approach.
The way that we see ourselves and the world is shaped by a web of internal stories that we unconsciously repeat over and over in our minds. It can create tremendous suffering in our relationships and in our lives. It may look like depression, anxiety, uncertainty or conflict within ourselves or with loved ones.
As poet David Whyte writes "We are shaped by our shaping of the world and are shaped again in turn." In other words, our experience is filtered through our unconscious beliefs and expectations. Many of those beliefs are patently false but we believe them anyway. It's what we know.
What if you could redefine and rewrite the inner narratives that don't serve you? Redeem the story about your self that is so confining and limiting? Repair your sense of who are you?
You could radically change your life.
My approach to therapy invites you to consider that often times the symptoms that you are struggling with may also be a function of a broader narrative that needs reframing. My approach is designed to empower you to heal long standing issues that are holding you back from living the authentic, balanced and functional life you deserve.
My practice focuses on mindful solutions that lead to meaningful change.