Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, MFC 53474 Office in Arroyo grande & coming soon in Santa Maria!
"My quest is to help clients explore and consciously realize that healthy positive changes are possible and deserved. Together we will collaborate, explore, develop trust, and learn how to make the changes you are desiring. I am compassionate, warm, and direct, and you can expect me to be engaged and be present in our sessions. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of your healing and change process. I am dedicated to hearing your story and helping you remove any roadblocks to your wellness.
I am an experienced, licensed therapist in the art of marriage, family, and individual psychotherapy. I have been helping a wide-range of clients for over 15 years, who are seeking balance, relief, peace, a greater understanding in relationships, or whatever appears to be “in the way” of achieving a better way of living life.
My background includes working with eating disorders, trauma, depression, anxiety, grief, and abuse using EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy), mindfulness, self-compassion work, Cognitive and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (CBT and DBT), and deep listening.
I seek to help women who are dealing with infertility issues. After my own journey of becoming a mother at the awesome age of 43 and 45,I am passionate about helping women who are battling or healing from the impact of infertility issues. We can use EMDR, resolve past trauma, and do relaxation techniques among other interventions to help with infertility.
I have a MA from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. In our sessions I implement Depth psychotherapy approaches/ techniques such as dream analysis, guided meditation, exploration of the unconscious through writing a new narrative, and art.
We all deserve to live in wellness, with therapy people are able to achieve self-acceptance, forgiveness, self-awareness, resilience and can go on to materialize a new way of living a meaningful life. I look forward to discussing how we can work together."
-Pam
Pia Byron
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, MFC 140049 Office in Los Osos
"Couples fascinate me - romance, connection, intimacy, and love. These states of being are exciting, seductive, transcendent, mysterious, and so very challenging. They’re supposed to be. A relationship with a partner provides chances to grow and mature — as a unit together and as a human yourself.
Couples have issues and grievances. I suspect that at times in your relationship, each of you become an island: disconnected, reactive, defensive, and adversarial, unable to see or hear anything except “it’s me against you.” In the heat of battle your triggered selves appear, and instinctively fight, retreat, or freeze. Like ghosts from your formative years, your own family and society have played a major role in shaping you and your relational behavior. Sometimes, our deeply ingrained childhood experiences can manifest in unhealthy ways in our adult lives and relationships. If you’re ready to take this opportunity to acknowledge, confront, and ultimately mature yourselves, how do you start? What now?
Discover relational patterns and their origins. Once upon a time, in your earliest relationships and environments, you learned your own version of self-esteem and boundaries. Back then, it was strength and armor. But how does it play into the dynamic of your relationship today?
Make this exploration together. Being witness to your partner is practice in vulnerability and compassion. As partners, you can support each other in seeing and healing old traumas, growing wiser and maturing in the process. Together, you can learn how to continually listen, speak, and move from harmony to disruption to repair. I was trained in psychotherapy at California Institute of Integral Studies, focusing on Somatic psychotherapy. This form of therapy merges our intellect (ideas) and body (sensations). It uncovers not only thoughts and beliefs, but also behavior and embodied attitudes. It addresses how we show up in entirety. I’ve practiced therapy at counseling centers in San Francisco, and worked with kids and families within various school settings and equine therapy centers. I have found this Somatic approach to therapy deepens the impact of self-learning and healing, and can really transform how you show up in relationships."