Lera Less (she/her)

I work with adults struggling with anxiety, understanding how overwhelming it can be affecting relationships, work, and daily life. Using CBT and ERP, I help clients gradually face and work through their fears rather than avoid them, building practical coping tools along the way. Together, we focus on reducing avoidance, increasing resilience, and building lasting confidence in handling anxiety-provoking situations.

In my work with clients, I often utilize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) because I’ve seen how effective and empowering it can be. CBT helps individuals explore how their thoughts influence emotions and behaviors, and how making small, intentional shifts in thinking can lead to meaningful improvements in daily life. Together, we identify unhelpful thought patterns, challenge them, and develop more balanced and supportive ways of thinking.

I help adults break free from relationship patterns that leave them over-giving, shrinking, or struggling to say no. Using IFS and CBT, we explore where these patterns come from and build the self-awareness, communication skills, and boundaries needed for healthier connection. Together, we work toward relationships and a relationship with yourself built on clarity and self-respect rather than fear or habit.

I use IFS to help clients understand the different parts of themselves the inner critic, the protector, the part that shuts down under stress often shaped by past experiences. Rather than fighting these parts, we work to understand and build a compassionate relationship with them. This approach creates lasting change by addressing the root of internal conflict, leading to greater self-trust, emotional balance, and a stronger sense of wholeness.

I use EMDR to help clients process traumatic memories and experiences that remain stored in the body as active threats long after the danger has passed. Rather than simply talking through the past, EMDR allows the brain to reprocess these experiences so they lose their emotional intensity. Clients often find relief from anxiety, hypervigilance, and being triggered by reminders of what happened, allowing them to move forward without being constantly pulled back.

Historical trauma isn't always a single dramatic event often it's the accumulation of growing up in an environment where your needs, feelings, or voice weren't fully safe to have. This can shape how you relate to yourself and others well into adulthood, showing up as chronic people-pleasing, guilt around rest or self-care, and a persistent fear that people will eventually leave or reject you. Using EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and CBT, I help clients understand how these early experience

For many people, anxiety isn't random it's the nervous system's response to years of managing everyone else's needs, bracing for rejection, or feeling like rest has to be earned. This can show up as overthinking, difficulty relaxing without guilt, or a persistent sense that something bad is about to happen in your relationships. Using EMDR, IFS, and CBT, I help clients get to the root of what's driving the anxiety, so you can feel calmer and more grounded in everyday life.