Orlando Valdez

Men can face pressures around responsibility, strength, relationships, work, identity, and changing roles across adulthood. I provide a space to examine these concerns without assuming what masculinity should look like. Together, we can work on emotional regulation, communication, resilience, meaning, and relationship patterns while identifying practical ways to respond to stress, conflict, expectations, and life transitions with greater clarity and purpose.

Depression can affect motivation, energy, self-worth, relationships, and your sense of direction. I work collaboratively with clients to understand the patterns and circumstances contributing to low mood, while identifying realistic steps toward change. Using CBT and strengths-based strategies, we can address self-critical thinking, withdrawal, and loss of momentum while rebuilding routines, connection, meaning, and a greater sense of agency.

Anxiety can make everyday situations feel more threatening, urgent, or difficult to manage. I help clients identify patterns in thoughts, emotions, and behavior that may be maintaining anxiety, while building practical skills for regulation, coping, and more flexible responses. Using CBT and DBT-informed strategies, we can work toward reducing avoidance, increasing confidence, and helping you respond to stress with greater clarity and control.

My work is strongly grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I use CBT to help clients identify patterns among thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, evaluate beliefs more accurately, and test new ways of responding. I integrate CBT with collaborative case conceptualization so interventions are tied to the client’s specific goals, symptoms, relationships, and life circumstances rather than applied as a one-size-fits-all technique.

I use DBT informed strategies to help clients strengthen mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. This approach is especially useful when emotions feel intense, reactions happen quickly, or stress affects relationships and decision making. I focus on practical skills clients can apply between sessions while balancing acceptance of present experience with purposeful behavioral change.

My clinical stance is deeply influenced by Carl Rogers and person-centered therapy. I emphasize empathy, genuineness, respect, and careful listening while treating clients as active participants in understanding their own lives. Rather than imposing interpretations, I work collaboratively to help clients clarify experience, identify what matters to them, and make choices that are increasingly consistent with their values and goals.