Some people choose a career in therapy. Deanna didn’t so much choose it as follow it. The kind of work that finds you rather than the other way around.

She studied Psychology and Sociology at the University of California, Irvine and went on to earn her Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy at the University of San Diego. The education mattered. But what she built on top of it matters more.

Deanna works with the full range of what brings people into a therapist’s office. Anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, shame, addiction, domestic violence, relationships that have fractured under pressure. She doesn’t arrive at each session with a predetermined method and fit the person into it. She pays attention to who’s sitting across from her, what they’re carrying, what they’ve already tried, and what they need right now. Her approach draws from multiple evidence-based frameworks, but the through line isn’t technique. It’s attentiveness.

She operates from a belief that most people already know what’s wrong. What they haven’t had is a space safe enough to say it out loud. Creating that space where someone can be honest without bracing for judgment is something Deanna is genuinely good at. Clients describe it in different ways, but they tend to come back to the same thing: they felt like they could finally tell the truth in her office.

That’s where the work starts.