About James
Dr. James Wood is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps people facing stress, anxiety, addiction, trauma, and depression.
Background and approach
He speaks plainly and listens carefully to understand what matters most to each person. He aims to make the first steps toward change feel manageable and supported.
With 34 years of clinical experience in California, Dr. Wood draws on a mix of practical methods to meet people where they are.
Sessions focus on clear goals, learning skills to handle upsetting feelings, and building more satisfying daily routines. He encourages honest conversation about past wounds and current struggles so people can find better ways forward.
His work pays attention to attachment and relationship patterns, including issues tied to abandonment, adoption and foster care, and family of origin concerns. He also helps with codependency, communication problems, and recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.
When crises arise from disasters or separation, he helps people sort priorities and cope step by step. Therapy often uses evidence-informed tools such as cognitive behavioral techniques, acceptance-based strategies, and emotion-focused ways of understanding experience.
He blends these with a client-centered stance that keeps each person’s values and goals in view. Many clients come for coaching on life changes as well as relief from symptoms.
Outside clinical work, Dr. Wood is completing a memoir titled Different Drummer that traces his life story and recovery.
He offers a calm, direct style aimed at helping people build steady progress over time.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify their values and take small steps toward a life that matters to them while learning to accept difficult thoughts and feelings. It can be useful for anxiety, depression, and stress when someone wants values-based change. Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationships shape current patterns; it helps people notice connection and trust issues and practice new ways of relating. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches practical techniques to reduce symptoms and change unhelpful patterns.Choosing the right approach is a team effort. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has helped or not helped before. Over the first few sessions he will suggest methods to try and adjust the plan as progress is made, keeping the client's goals central.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit different needs. Video allows face-to-face conversation for deeper work, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and messaging supports quick check-ins or shorter coaching moments. These options make it simpler to schedule therapy around work, school, or caregiving responsibilities and to keep regular contact between sessions.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Attachment issues
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Family of origin issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Gottman Method
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 34 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English