About
Sheida Shavalian, LMFT
A licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over a decade of clinical experience, working with adults and couples across California.
My background
A space to understand, heal, and grow
I deeply respect the courage it takes to seek therapy. Choosing to turn inward and explore your emotional world is a meaningful investment in yourself — and I do not take lightly that you are considering doing that work with me.
I believe meaningful therapy begins with feeling truly seen and understood. My work offers a thoughtful, compassionate space to slow down, look beneath the surface, and develop a deeper understanding of yourself and your relationships.
As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I work with adults and couples navigating relationship difficulties, life transitions, emotional challenges, and patterns that may no longer serve them. Drawing from a psychodynamic approach, I look beyond immediate concerns to explore the experiences and relationships that have shaped the way you think, feel, connect, and move through the world.
Therapy is not simply about changing what is happening on the surface. It is about cultivating insight, developing a more grounded relationship with yourself, and creating the possibility for something different.
My approach is warm, thoughtful, and deeply individualized—because meaningful change begins with a therapeutic relationship in which you feel safe enough to be honest, curious enough to explore, and supported enough to grow.
“I am especially passionate about helping people who feel caught between worlds — emotionally, culturally or relationally — find clarity and belonging.”
How I work
Insight-oriented, relational, and tailored to you
Following my graduate training I pursued advanced study in psychodynamic therapy. I have practised this approach under clinical supervision and engaged in my own therapeutic work, which I consider essential to ethical practice, self-awareness and clinical effectiveness. Those foundations still shape how I listen.
In practice, that means we do not stop at the presenting problem. We look at how your early experiences and relationships have shaped the way you relate to yourself and to others, so that the patterns running underneath become visible — and, once visible, changeable.
To offer comprehensive, evidence-based care I have also trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and integrate structured, skills-based interventions when they are clinically useful. I am trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which I use to help clients process trauma, attachment wounds and distressing life experiences.
Every treatment plan is built around you — whether the work centres on emotional awareness, communication, self-esteem, boundaries or relationship growth. The goal is meaningful, lasting change.
Credentials
Training & qualifications
I am committed to continuous learning, and to providing individualised, integrative care that meets clients where they are.
- Licence Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT), California — #155235
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Education
MA, Marriage and Family Therapy — University of Southern California
BA with Honours, Clinical Psychology — Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran - Experience Over a decade of clinical practice across private practice, outpatient and inpatient settings
- Modalities Psychodynamic · Client-centred · Attachment-based · EMDR · CBT · Emotionally Focused Therapy · Gottman Method · Humanistic
- Works with Adults, couples and families
- Languages English and Farsi (Persian)
- Also Clinical Director & Lead Therapist, Asana Recovery, Costa Mesa
A note on style
Warm, direct, empowering
Clients often tell me that therapy with me feels both gentle and honest. I will hold what you bring with care, and I will also say the true thing when it needs saying. You can expect to be met with empathy — and to be taken seriously enough to be challenged.
Let’s begin with a conversation.
A brief, no-cost consultation is the simplest way to find out whether we are a good fit.