About Nicole
As a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, my personal mission is to help clients reach wholeness and fulfill their potential within their relationships. With over 20 years of experience, I offer individualized support and practical feedback in an accepting, comfortable and safe environment to help clients move forward toward renewed mental health, growth and overall wellness.
The therapy that I practice is done from a psychodynamic perspective. Within this framework, I practice various techniques to deepen the therapy process including Cognitive Behavioral and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. I believe in a holistic approach to recovery by treating the whole person, including fostering emotional, spiritual and physical health.
I also provide Clinical Supervision services to MFT’s, S.W.'s and other M.H. professionals requiring hours for a Licensing process including in depth therapy practices for CBT, DBT and Psychodynamic Therapy, Clinical Documentation Skills, Legal and Ethical practices & Boundaries, License Exam Prep, Self-Care, and Strategies to Achieving Future Career Goals.
Qualifications
Licensed by State of California / 93591Nicole M Ferrari
In Practice for 12 Years
Membership with AAMFT Clinical Fellow since 2020-current204564 / 2020
Specialties and Expertise
Top Specialties
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Grief
Expertise
- Borderline Personality (BPD)
- Career Counseling
- Coping Skills
- Divorce
- Emotional Disturbance
- Infidelity
- LGBTQ+
- Life Coaching
- Life Transitions
- Medication Management
- Men's Issues
- Mood Disorders
- Peer Relationships
- Personality Disorders
- Relationship Issues
- Self Esteem
- Sex Therapy
- Spirituality
- Stress
- Suicidal Ideation
- Women's Issues
Treatment Approach
Attachment-based
Attachment-based therapy is form of therapy that applies to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, which explains how the relationship a parent has with its child influences development.
Attachment theory focuses on relationships and bonds (particularly long-term) between people, including those between a parent and child and between romantic partners. It is a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people.
Today, researchers recognize that the early relationships children have with their caregivers play a critical role in healthy development.
Such bonds can also have an influence on romantic relationships in adulthood. Understanding your attachment style may help you look for ways to become more secure in your relationships.
Clinical Supervision and Licensed Supervisors
Supervision services are offered by qualified practitioners who provide feedback and expertise for less experienced professionals. While each state and licensing board has its own unique requirements, professionals offering supervision play a key role in helping new practitioners advance their clinical knowledge, as well as satisfy requirements leading to licensure.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
Cognitive-behavioral therapy stresses the role of thinking in how we feel and what we do. It is based on the belief that thoughts, rather than people or events, cause our negative feelings. The therapist assists the client in identifying, testing the reality of, and correcting dysfunctional beliefs underlying his or her thinking. The therapist then helps the client modify those thoughts and the behaviors that flow from them. CBT is a structured collaboration between therapist and client and often calls for homework assignments. CBT has been clinically proven to help clients in a relatively short amount of time with a wide range of disorders, including depression and anxiety.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is the treatment most closely associated with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Therapists practice DBT in both individual and group sessions. The therapy combines elements of CBT to help with regulating emotion through distress tolerance and mindfulness. The goals of Dialectric Behavior Therapy are to improve interpersonal skills and the quality of relationships, and to alleviate the intense emotional pain associated with BPD.
Psychodynamic
Psychodynamic therapy, also known as insight-oriented therapy, evolved from Freudian psychoanalysis. Like adherents of psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapists believe that bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness promotes insight and resolves conflict. But psychodynamic therapy is briefer and less intensive than psychoanalysis and also focuses on the relationship between the therapist and the client, as a way to learn about how the client relates to everyone in their life.