About Maritza
Maritza Alvarez-Pena is a bilingual licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) based in California. She offers calm, practical support for people feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, trauma, parenting strain, or depression. Maritza speaks English and Spanish and aims to make starting therapy straightforward and understandable.
She draws on 23 years of clinical experience to help people untangle patterns that cause pain. Sessions focus on concrete steps you can try between meetings, simple ways to ease anxiety, and new ways to handle difficult emotions.
Background and approach
The tone is warm and direct, with attention to everyday life demands and family concerns. Maritza uses a mix of approaches to match what each person needs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps identify unhelpful thoughts and test new behaviors.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy supports values-based choices when anxiety or avoidance show up. Attachment-based ideas look at how early connections shape current relationships. People often seek her help for abandonment worries, attachment problems, parenting stress, chronic illness, caregiving strain, and complicated grief.
She also works with issues like communication struggles, codependency, and adjustment to major life changes. The work aims to reduce distress and increase the ability to handle hard moments. Her background includes a master’s degree in psychology counseling and a California LMFT license.
Maritza emphasizes a collaborative, down-to-earth style that focuses on what matters most to each person. If you want steady, experienced guidance through anxiety or life transitions, she offers that steady support.
Therapeutic approaches and online options
Maritza commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in her online practice. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on spotting unhelpful thoughts and testing small behavioral changes to reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people clarify their values and take committed action even when difficult feelings are present.She also draws on Attachment-Based Therapy to understand how early relationship patterns influence current worries and communication problems. That approach helps identify patterns that keep people stuck and opens possibilities for safer, more satisfying connections with others.
Finding the right mix of methods is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to choose approaches that fit their goals, needs, and daily life. Together they will try strategies, notice what helps, and adjust the plan as progress unfolds.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation from wherever it’s convenient. Phone sessions use less bandwidth and can fit into a busy day. Live chat or text messaging can support shorter check-ins, ongoing support between meetings, or an option for people who prefer writing.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 23 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Spanish
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