About Claudia
Claudia Santiago is a licensed clinical social worker in California with over 12 years of practice. She supports people facing stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, and major life changes. Claudia speaks English and Spanish and aims to make therapy straightforward and understandable.
Claudia uses a somatic lens alongside client-centered and cognitive behavioral approaches. That means she pays attention to how feelings show up in the body while keeping the conversation focused on each person’s goals.
Background and approach
Sessions are practical and paced to each person’s needs. Her work covers a wide range of concerns. She helps people manage grief, addiction, bipolar mood swings, sleep problems, parenting strain, compassion fatigue, and ADHD challenges.
She also focuses on attachment issues, abandonment, codependency, communication problems, and body image struggles. Claudia’s style is collaborative and down-to-earth. She listens first, then helps people name patterns and try small changes.
Clients and therapist form a plan together that can include short-term skills or deeper work depending on what’s needed. Claudia holds a Licensed Clinical Social Worker credential, CA LCSW 109498. She brings cultural awareness to sessions and pays attention to identity and context.
Online options include video calls, phone, live chat, and text-based messaging to fit different schedules and preferences.
How somatic, client-centered, and CBT approaches work online
Claudia combines somatic awareness with client-centered work to help people notice how emotions show up in the body and use that information to guide change. Somatic work often involves tracking breath, bodily sensations, and gentle grounding practices that can be used across formats like video or phone.She also uses client-centered therapy, which focuses on understanding each person’s experience without judgment. That approach helps build trust and makes it easier to set goals together. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is used to identify unhelpful thoughts and test small behavior changes to reduce symptoms like anxiety or low mood.
Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the process. Claudia works collaboratively to figure out what fits a person’s needs, goals, and comfort level and adjusts methods as therapy progresses. Clients participate in choosing tools and pacing to match their priorities.
Online therapy offers flexibility for people with busy schedules or mobility limits. Video calls allow face-to-face interaction, phone sessions remove travel time, and live chat or text-based messaging provide brief, on-the-go check-ins. These options make it easier to maintain regular contact and try skills between sessions.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Spanish