About Alia
Alia Smith is a California licensed marriage and family therapist with 15 years of experience. She focuses on practical ways to reduce anxiety, manage stress, and get through big life changes. Her approach centers on helping people build on strengths they already have.
Taking the first step can feel hard, and she offers steady support as someone to talk things through with. Alia works with people facing addictions, trauma and abuse, and mood concerns such as depression and bipolar disorder.
Background and approach
She also helps with relationship strain, attention and focus challenges like ADHD, and issues around self-esteem and body image. Panic attacks, paranoia, dissociation, and post-traumatic stress are also within her areas of focus. Her practice draws on several practical therapies.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and behavior to create small changes that add up. Dialectical Behavior Therapy teaches emotion regulation and distress-tolerance skills for intense moments. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy supports values-driven choices when life feels stuck.
Alia uses motivational interviewing to help people find their own reasons to change. Client-centered work keeps sessions focused on each person's goals and pace. Over her career she has worked across many settings and brings that real-world experience into sessions.
Sessions are offered in English and conducted from California. She aims to create a calm, respectful space where people can try new ways of coping and make steady progress toward clearer goals.
How therapy approaches work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them. It highlights personal values and small committed actions to move life in a chosen direction. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so people can try new coping strategies and see what changes. Dialectical Behavior Therapy provides concrete skills for managing intense emotions, reducing harmful reactions, and improving interpersonal effectiveness.Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist partners with each person to figure out which methods fit their goals and preferences. That process is collaborative - goals are set together and methods are adjusted over time based on what helps.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to fit different needs. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation from wherever someone is. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth or camera use is a challenge. Live chat and text messaging let people check in between sessions or use shorter, more frequent contacts for practical support. These options give flexibility and make it easier to keep therapy going alongside daily life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Codependency
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Guilt and shame
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Stress, Anxiety
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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