About Paula
Paula Fuentes is a licensed marriage and family therapist practicing in California. She brings ten years of clinical experience to sessions and focuses on helping people through stress, anxiety, relationship challenges, trauma, parenting strain, and self-esteem struggles.
Background and approach
Paula builds a warm, accepting space for people to talk about what matters to them. She emphasizes clear communication and practical steps people can try between sessions.
Many clients come wanting better emotional regulation, clearer boundaries, or relief from persistent worry. Her work often draws on client-centered techniques that begin with listening and understanding each person’s goals.
Paula combines that with tools from cognitive behavioral therapy to spot unhelpful thinking patterns and try new behaviors. She also uses elements of dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness to teach concrete skills for managing intense emotions.
Paula has experience supporting people exploring complex sexual cultures, questions of gender identity, and relationship styles outside of mainstream norms. She also addresses family of origin issues, divorce and separation, parenting concerns, fertility-related stress, and challenges like codependency, jealousy, and commitment worries.
Sessions are practical and collaborative. Paula helps people set short-term goals and develop small, doable changes.
Her aim is to foster more self-compassion and clearer choices so people can make forward movement in their daily lives.
Therapeutic approaches for online care
Client-centered therapy is built around the person’s own goals and values. Sessions begin with open listening and then shape the work around what the person says matters most, which helps with issues like self-esteem, identity, and relationship choices.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, helps people notice patterns of thinking that increase anxiety or conflict and then practice different ways of thinking and acting. It is useful for worry, mood shifts, and improving everyday coping.
Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, provides practical skills for managing strong emotions and reducing impulsive reactions. DBT tools are often used when people want to build better emotional regulation and steadier communication.
Paula treats finding the right approach as a collaborative process. She will talk with each person about goals, try an approach, and adjust as needed so therapy fits the person’s needs and preferences.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy flexible. Video is a good choice for deeper conversations and learning new skills. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging are useful for brief check-ins, skill reminders, or when scheduling short, focused conversations. These options let people fit therapy into work, family life, and other responsibilities.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English