Macarena “Maca” Santelices, LPCC 

It is so important to build a therapeutic relationship with my clients and make sure they feel like they are in a safe space and can trust me in understanding and supporting their struggles and pain points. That is always my primary goal for beginning therapy is making the client feel safe and building that therapeutic relationship while getting to know about your journey thus far and the struggles you’ve faced along the way. Do you struggle with feeling anxiety, depression, issues in your relationship, low self esteem or self concept that affects your day to day life, work, and ability to function properly? Do you feel low, lost, overwhelmed, frustrated by just trying to get through your day? Do you wonder if your day to day life could be better? If so, I can help. 

In my work I use some evidence based practices in combination with each other to create a supportive environment to address your individualized goals. The primary theoretical orientations that I focus on are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy along with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. With Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT we address your thought patterns and pay attention to how you think and speak to yourself. We take an inventory on the self talk on a day to day basis and pay attention to the belief systems that are affecting your thoughts and your patterns of thinking. With this I provide you with some psycho-education to learn how thoughts affect our emotions and behaviors so you can have a deeper understanding of the inter workings of your mind and how the impact each other. Once we are able to gauge how things are working internally we are able to have a deeper understanding of where these belief systems originated and work to break them down. We work together to rewire the way that you think about yourself and others in order to activate new positive thought patterns that will promote more self love and satisfaction. Overtime, we are able to fully let go of old belief systems and ways of thinking that are holding you back and adopt healthy ways of thinking that promote growth and acceptance. This can help support, anxiety, overthinking, depression, relationship issues, and self esteem. 

Using Dialectical Behavioral Therapy or DBT in my practice allows me to supplement the CBT practice with skills depending on the need of each client as we customize their individual treatment plan. DBT allows me to support my clients by teaching them skills associated with mindfulness and learning to be more present by grounding themselves and paying attention less to their thought patterns which influence their emotions and more to their surroundings. My clients learn more about their emotions and have a deeper ability to label and separate from their emotions. They learn skills to regulate their emotions and not feed their emotions. This gives them a feeling of being more in control and responding rather than reacting to their own emotions and triggers. DBT can also help support my clients struggling with distress tolerance and learning to work through and manage intense and heavy emotions that seem to fully take over their day. Finally DBT can help support interpersonal relationships and learning to communicate better with others by identifying the goals of the interaction and working to be more intentional and goal oriented. 

I believe that understanding oneself and the patterns of thought, behaviors and triggers can only give my clients power in managing their emotions and being more in control of their actions and behaviors. 

I have a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and have been practicing for 14 years. I have had a license in Maryland for many years and just received my Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor License in California as I moved cross country a couple years ago. 

I am experienced in working with all different kinds of problems and pathologies with clients from all different backgrounds and experiences. 

When I am out of the office, I love exploring, traveling, listening to music, working out and spending time with my friends and partner.