Dr. Katarina Thomas
Supportive family-focused therapist with decades of experience
- Credentials
- LMFT
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed in
- California
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Katarina
Dr. Katarina Thomas is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 35 years of experience practicing in California. She focuses on family and parenting concerns alongside a broad range of emotional and life challenges.
She aims to make the first step toward change feel manageable for worried parents and caregivers. Her style is warm and straightforward. She creates space for people to speak honestly without fear of judgment.
Sessions emphasize practical conversation, steady support, and realistic steps that can be tried between meetings.
Background and approach
Dr. Thomas blends several established methods to meet each person where they are. She draws on cognitive behavioral therapy to address unhelpful thought patterns.
She uses client-centered techniques to follow the client’s lead and build trust. Existential ideas help when questions about meaning, choice, or life direction are central. Over a long career she has helped people with stress, anxiety, relationship and family struggles, self-esteem, grief, trauma, mood disorders, and substance issues among other concerns.
She also works with issues like attachment, commitment, control, and forgiveness when these affect family life. Therapy with Dr. Thomas is collaborative.
She helps parents identify concrete changes and coping strategies they can use at home. Conversations are practical and focused on daily life and relationships, not on jargon or long lecture-style sessions.
Therapeutic approaches and how they work online
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and making space for each person’s perspective. The therapist follows the client’s concerns and helps them feel heard, which is useful when family stories or parenting worries dominate conversations.Cognitive behavioral therapy targets specific thoughts and behaviors that get in the way of daily functioning. It uses concrete exercises and simple homework to reduce anxiety, improve sleep, or change unhelpful reaction patterns.
Existential therapy addresses questions about meaning, choice, and responsibility. It can help when life transitions, grief, or a sense of emptiness are part of the problem, offering a way to clarify priorities and values.
Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist collaborates with each client to test methods that fit their needs and preferences. That means sessions can shift between listening, skill-building, and reflection based on what helps most.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to stay connected. Video and phone sessions let clients keep a regular schedule without travel. Live chat and text messaging provide shorter, timely check-ins between meetings. These options make it easier to balance therapy with parenting, work, and daily life while keeping the focus on practical progress.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Existential Therapy
Takes the larger questions seriously: meaning, choice, mortality, responsibility. Suited to periods when the difficulty is less a symptom than a sense that something has to change.
Frequently asked questions
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What is her general approach to therapy?
How much clinical experience does she have?
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating disorders
- Family of origin issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Katarina
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point