Lara Plutte (she/her)

Anxiety has been at the center of my own life. I have worked to discover & utilize various tools & practices to work with anxiety & have shared them with my clients & students for years. My anxiety & the desire to live life anxiety free, or at least not ruled by anxiety, led me to become a certified Mindfulness Teacher. Anxiety is unfortunately a common part of our modern life, but it can be worked with, limited & let go of.

Anxiety has been at the center of my own life. I have worked to discover & utilize various tools & practices to work with anxiety & have shared them with my clients & students for years. My anxiety & the desire to live life anxiety free, or at least not ruled by anxiety, led me to become a certified Mindfulness Teacher. Anxiety is unfortunately be a common part of our modern life, but it can be worked with & limited & even at times released.

Most of my work as a therapist & counselor has been with women of various ages from teenagers to middle aged women to the elderly. And much of my own personal growth has been centered around the limits & challenges of being a female in our society. I have held support groups for women for years that focus on the deep life adventure of becoming a mother. Women's challenges are at the heart of my studies & experiences, from adolescence, young adulthood, pregnancy to menopause & end of life.

I am a parent of two boys, 11 & 15 years old, & have often been a solo parent for extended periods of time. Becoming a parent has been the window into much of my own personal therapy work & my work with clients. Becoming a parent returns us to our own childhoods in ways potentially not possible otherwise. We have the opportunity & the challenge to heal our own lifelong wounds as our memories rise to the surface in the lives of our own children. Parenting can be a chance for freedom.

I have an MSW from UCLA where I focused on CBT. Seeing, questioning, exploring our actions/behaviors with deeper awareness & understanding can be a window into understanding why we do what we do. We can then more clearly understand the people we have become & why & make the changes we wish to make. Our behaviors are like clues to our inner truths, that can lie below what appears on the surface even to ourselves.

I have an MSW from UCLA where I focused on CBT. Seeing, questioning, exploring our actions/behaviors with deeper awareness & understanding can be a window into understanding why we do what we do. We can then more clearly understand the people we have become & why & make the changes we wish to make. Our behaviors are like clues to our inner truths, that can lie below what appears on the surface even to ourselves.

I am a certified teacher with InsightLA, where I teach mindfulness meditation & every day mindfulness life practices. Mindfulness, as the practice of returning the mind's attention again & again to the present moment, to the truth of what's actually happening, away from the stories our mind's tell us about what's happening, can be a powerful tool for personal peace. Whenever it's helpful & welcomed by my clients, I am happy to share & provide a variety of mindfulness practices.

I have a background/MA in journalism/writing & have found the practice of truly looking at the stories we tell about our lives can be deeply insightful & helpful when working towards a greater quality of life. Putting the stories our minds tell us down on paper, journaling, even writing in a stream of consciousness can be enlightening & empowering by allowing us to clearly see these stories we tell, so we can edit them, rewrite them or even throw them out as we grow.

I have an MSW from UCLA where I focused on CBT. Seeing, questioning, exploring our actions/behaviors with deeper awareness & understanding can be a window into understanding why we do what we do. We can then more clearly understand the people we have become & why & make the changes we wish to make. Our behaviors are like clues to our inner truths, that can lie below what appears on the surface even to ourselves.