Irene Velasco is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Vallejo, CA works with adults who are experiencing a wide variety of issues including depression, anxiety, early attachment/relationship difficulties, trauma, grief, and life transitions. She also works with 1-2 generation immigrants with the ongoing cultural stresses, social marginalization as well as economic and communication challenges they face living in our social world. Many of Irene’s clients come to her overwhelmed with explicit and assumed responsibilities for their families, culture and themselves. She works with these clients to develop an awareness and understanding of their cultural, intergenerational and childhood developmental traumas, empowering them to heal while learning to build healthy boundaries in their lives.
In sessions with Irene, clients learn to build psychological flexibility and become more in touch with their values. She uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help clients learn about harmful thought patterns and how to build better coping and communication skills to avoid them. Irene is a motivation-centered therapist, meaning she helps clients explore ambivalent thoughts in order to make those changes by creating a plans of action, rather than non-directively explore themselves.
As a Filipino-American and immigrant, Irene is fluent in English, Tagalog, and Visayan/Cebuano and offers multilingual therapy to the immigrant population. She understands the emotional struggles and complexities of immigrating to a new country and is sensitive to each client's unique needs. Irene’s goal in therapy is to provide a caring, non-judgmental, and safe environment to help her clients identify and explore the issues that have been getting in the way of living their best life. She understands that people come from different backgrounds and is sensitive to the different life experiences, practices and beliefs these backgrounds bring. She is committed to making her space a safe harbor for anyone who needs it.
