Gargi Patel
LMFT #101986
Specialties.
The clinical areas I have the most depth in. Many overlap because trauma rarely shows up alone, and most of my clients are working in two or three of these at once.
Trauma & PTSD
Single-incident trauma, complex/developmental trauma, and the kinds of trauma that don't get named as such chronic relational stress, growing up in a body or family that wasn't safe. I work primarily with EMDR, Brainspotting, and somatic practices for active trauma processing.
Anxiety
Generalized anxiety, panic, social anxiety, health anxiety, perfectionism, performance anxiety. The work is rarely about getting the anxiety to stop. It's about understanding what it's protecting you from and renegotiating that relationship.
Depression
The kind that lingers, the kind that lifts and returns, the kind that masks itself as numbness or productivity. I look for what's underneath rather than chasing the symptom.
Eating Disorders
Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, orthorexia, and the wider gray area of disordered eating that doesn't have a tidy diagnosis. I work alongside dietitians and medical providers when needed; I do not provide higher-acuity care alone.
Racial identity & intergenerational trauma
The experience of growing up in immigrant families, in mixed cultural contexts, or in bodies that are racialized. The patterns that get passed down without being spoken. I'm South Asian American and bring cultural fluency to this work, but I see people from many backgrounds.
Couples & relationships
Communication patterns that get stuck, attachment dynamics, infidelity and rupture, life transitions that put pressure on a relationship, sex and intimacy. → Couples therapy
Codependency
Patterns of self-abandonment in relationships: over-functioning, fawn responses, losing track of your own preferences. Usually rooted in family-of-origin and worth tracing back, slowly.
Grief & loss
Death, divorce, estrangement, loss of identity, ambiguous loss (someone who's still here but unreachable). Grief that arrived a long time ago and never got space.
Self-esteem
The internal voice you've been carrying for a long time. Where it comes from, what it costs you, what changes when you stop believing it's the truth.
Self-harm
Non-suicidal self-injury, and the underlying experiences self-harm is usually managing. The work is to build different ways of meeting what's there.
Sexual abuse recovery
Recovery from sexual abuse and assault. EMDR, Brainspotting, and somatic work are central. The pace is yours.
Women's issues
The specific pressures of being socialized as a woman: caretaking, body, voice, ambition, motherhood, the years that come with their own grief. Not a separate specialty from the others so much as a lens.
Career & life transitions
Major shifts: starting work, leaving work, parenthood, geographic moves, becoming someone different. The grief and identity work that transitions ask of us, even good ones.
Spirituality
If spiritual life matters to you, it's welcome in the room. I work with clients across traditions, including those reconstructing or leaving the tradition they grew up in.
