About Lisa
Lisa Rakusin is a California-licensed clinical social worker with 11 years of experience. She focuses on helping people who feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, life changes, addiction, relationship strain, and ADHD. Her style is straightforward and supportive, aimed at helping clients take small, practical steps toward feeling better.
She treats each person as the expert of their own life. Sessions are collaborative and goal-oriented. Lisa listens for strengths and uses them to build manageable strategies for everyday problems like sleep disruption, anger, low self-esteem, or work stress.
Background and approach
Her approach blends talk-based work with evidence-informed techniques. Lisa uses cognitive-behavioral ideas to change unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns. She also draws on attachment-based and emotionally-focused ideas to help people understand relationship patterns and emotional responses.
For people processing trauma or painful memories, she offers methods that address the physical and emotional impact of those experiences. Lisa aims to create a clear plan for progress, with steps clients can try between sessions and time to review what works. Her work is practical and paced to each person.
Clients can expect calm, direct feedback and concrete tools for managing symptoms. Lisa supports people as they experiment with new habits, build self-compassion, and move through difficult life transitions.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Attachment-based work focuses on how early and current relationship patterns affect feelings and reactions. In online sessions this can mean tracking how you respond to closeness, trust, or conflict and practicing new ways to connect or set boundaries. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches step-by-step strategies to change unhelpful patterns. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and day-to-day coping skills. Emotionally-focused ideas help name and work with strong feelings in relationships and personal life, making emotions easier to understand and respond to without getting overwhelmed.Choosing the right approach is a shared process. The therapist will ask about goals, past experiences, and preferences, then suggest methods to try. Sessions often blend approaches and adjust over time based on what proves most helpful to each person.
Online therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, which make it easier to fit sessions into a busy schedule. Video sessions allow face-to-face interaction for deeper conversation. Phone sessions can be a simpler option when bandwidth is limited or a quicker check-in is needed. Chat and messaging let clients send notes or reflections between meetings and get brief support without a full session.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Grief
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Intimacy-related issues
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 11 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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