About Brenda
Brenda Wicks is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in California who focuses on anxiety, stress, depression, and related concerns. She brings 23 years of clinical experience to sessions. Brenda aims to create a calm, respectful space where clients can talk about what matters most to them.
She works with people facing grief, addiction, relationship and intimacy issues, and parenting challenges. She also supports those coping with trauma, ADHD, bipolar mood concerns, and career or life transitions.
Background and approach
Her practice includes attention to attachment and abandonment issues, codependency, and caregiver stress. Brenda’s style is warm, interactive, and nonjudgmental. She listens first and tailors each conversation to a person’s needs.
Sessions are practical and aimed at helping people recognize patterns and try different ways of coping. Her approach blends client-centered listening with evidence-informed strategies. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) are used to teach skills for managing strong emotions and changing unhelpful thinking.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) and mindfulness practices help people reconnect with their feelings and calm their bodies. Over her career Brenda has worked in a variety of mental health settings and with people affected by traumatic events. She aims to guide clients through difficult moments and toward clearer next steps.
If someone wants steady support while learning practical tools, Brenda offers that kind of collaborative care.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Brenda uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to help people manage anxiety, stress, and strong emotions. CBT focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing new, more helpful ways of thinking. DBT teaches concrete skills for regulating emotions, tolerating distress, and improving communication.She also draws on client-centered principles that prioritize listening and tailoring the process to each person. Finding the right approach is a collaborative process - the therapist and client will try different methods and agree on what fits best for the client's needs and goals.
Online sessions are available as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to match the rhythm of a client’s life. Video is useful for full conversations and visual cues, phone works well when bandwidth is limited, live chat allows shorter check-ins, and text messaging supports ongoing notes or brief reflections between sessions. These options make scheduling easier and let people access therapy from wherever they are in California.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Grief
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 23 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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