I work with couples and individuals in Ojai, Ventura, and throughout California, helping you understand the deeper patterns that shape how you feel and connect with others.

Authentic Connection,

Real Change in Your Relationships

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Specialized Services

  • Whether you're in a committed partnership, exploring polyamory, or navigating other structures, we'll explore the unconscious patterns that keep you stuck in familiar but painful cycles, helping you create something genuinely different together.

    • Breaking cycles that keep you having the same fight

    • Understanding what betrayal and repair mean for your particular bond

    • Exploring how intimacy gets blocked or defended against

    • Creating agreements that reflect who you're becoming, not just who you've been

  • Sometimes you need space to understand the deeper currents underneath your struggles. I help you explore what drives patterns of anxiety, depression, or feeling stuck, so you can develop a different way of being in the world.

    • Anxiety and depression

    • Life transitions and major changes

    • Understanding patterns that no longer serve you

    • Building confidence and self-worth

  • Working with queer individuals and couples who understand that desire, identity, and attachment develop along different pathways when you exist outside heteronormative structures. I'm interested in how queer subjectivity emerges, how erotic life unfolds when freed from conventional scripts, and how intimacy gets negotiated in relationships that must be consciously created rather than culturally inherited.

    • Exploring how queer desire and identity co-constitute each other across the lifespan

    • Understanding how queer intimacy develops its own logic outside conventional relationship models

    • Working with the unique dynamics that emerge when therapist and client share marginalized identities

    • Examining how gender performance intersects with authentic self-expression

  • Having built a career from individual contributor to Vice President at a publicly traded tech company, I understand how professional identity can become entangled with self-worth at every level, and how the pressure to perform affects your capacity for authentic connection both at work and at home.

    • Exploring how work stress and identity pressures show up in your body and relationships

    • Understanding the unconscious drivers behind perfectionism and overwork

    • Working through career transitions without losing yourself

    • Developing leadership that feels authentic rather than performative

A Modern Take on Deep Work

Relational Psychodynamic Therapy

I practice from a relational psychodynamic perspective. Psychodynamic means I start with the assumption that our mental life is complex - there are multiple forces at play, constantly shifting and interacting beneath the surface. Many of these feelings, motivations, and patterns operate outside our conscious awareness, which is why relying only on what your mind already knows isn't enough to shift the deeper sources of suffering.

The main way I help you explore this inner landscape is through the relationship we build together, and by examining how patterns show up in your connections with significant people in your life. I believe relationships determine the quality of our wellbeing. Our deepest wounds often come from relationships, and paradoxically, the most profound healing happens when you risk being vulnerable with another person and discover that you can be understood, safely held, and accepted.

Why This Approach Works

This approach gets to the root rather than just managing symptoms. The relationship we build becomes both the laboratory for discovering these patterns and the place where healing happens, through being truly known by another person. It's not just about gaining awareness of why you keep ending up in painful cycles, but actually experiencing yourself differently in a relationship. When you experience what it's like to be seen without judgment or to express difficult emotions without being rejected, something shifts at a cellular level, creating lasting change.

For couples, this same principle applies - the work happens not just in understanding your patterns, but in experiencing new ways of being together right in the room. You learn to navigate conflict, express needs, and rebuild trust through actually doing it, not just talking about it.

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A Bit About Who I Am

I received a Master's Degree in psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Following that, I completed my training at Valley Community Counseling Clinic, one of the most respected applied training clinics in psychoanalytic technique in Los Angeles.

This comprehensive training encompassed foundational concepts of psychodynamic theory, contemporary approaches to complex trauma & PTSD, couples & partnerships therapy, and LGBTQ+ affirming therapy.

Additionally, I am trained in somatic techniques, as I believe the body expresses what the mind can't always articulate. Listening for both facilitates an integrated understanding that honors both your intellectual insights and your embodied wisdom, often uncovering truths that thinking alone can't access…

Let’s work together

Starting therapy is a significant decision, and finding the right therapeutic fit matters deeply for the work we'll do together. That's why I offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation where we can get to know each other a bit, I can learn more about what's bringing you to therapy, and we can explore whether working together feels right.

Please reach out to me via email or phone below, or complete the contact form, and I will respond as soon as possible.

marina@marinakuma.com

747.345.9248