The most effective therapist is the one you feel seen and understood by.
Now in my 40’s, I celebrate the winding path that led me to becoming a therapist. After living and working abroad in my mid-20s, I returned home to the Bay Area to heal a stubborn injury, which led to a 12-year career teaching mind-body wellness, fitness, and pain recovery.
The physical, mental, and spiritual lessons and practices from those years still inspire and inform me today. Working with a wide range of ages, economic positions, and cultures during those years made me a responsive therapist to both cultural nuance and the features that make an individual unique. Engaging with many different approaches to healing grounded me in the universality of what it means to have a soul and a body.
By nature I’m an artist and explorer and a person with unending curiosity. I love to laugh as much as I love to get down to brass tacks. My roles in the world are as a mother, partner, sister, daughter, and community member. I hold identities of both advantage and disadvantage. I love to pursue excellence in my craft, dance, sing, travel, and play in the outdoors.
Alissa BenPorat, LMFT
The work
I am a relational-psychodynamic-somatic therapist. The clinical theories with which I work are Control Mastery Theory, Attachment Theory, and Existential-Humanistic Theory. Modalities I have trained in and most often weave into the mix are Emotionally Focused Therapy, Relational Somatic Healing, and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
Couples
I’m excited about and experienced with supporting high achieving couples who want to build a strong foundation, improve communication, heal from betrayal and past addiction, adjust to parenthood, navigate cultural differences, enhance sex and intimacy, affirm queer identities, reduce anxiety, grieve losses, handle crises, and strengthen primary relationships in consensually non-monogamous couples.
In particular, I love working with couples where one or both partners have a neurodivergent diagnosis or who who think they might be neurodivergent (OCD, ASD, ADHD), and with couples who are interested in working with developmental wounds.
Individuals
When it comes to individuals, I truly enjoy all kinds of people. My main passion is in supporting high functioning individuals in addressing developmental wounding, with additional interest in supporting the relational lives of neurodivergent individuals.
Professional Affiliations & Training
California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT)
International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT)
San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group (SFPRG)
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP)
Relational Somatic Healing (RSH)