About Kathleen
Kathleen Grisez is a licensed marriage and family therapist practicing in California. She brings 30 years of clinical experience to conversations about stress, anxiety, trauma, intimacy concerns, and depression.
Background and approach
Kathleen aims to meet people where they are and help them take the next practical step forward. She listens for each person's story and the strengths within it.
Sessions focus on clear, doable changes rather than jargon. Kathleen emphasizes collaboration and helps clients name goals and try small experiments to reach them.
Her background includes long experience with LGBT concerns, trauma and abuse, and relationship-related struggles involving trust and intimacy. She also supports work on issues like body image, codependency, attachment wounds, and the fallout from divorce or separation.
People come to her for help managing overwhelming feelings, repairing communication, or coping after difficult events. She also works with concerns such as infertility-related stress, shame and guilt, isolation, and midlife transitions.
Kathleen adapts a practical approach that values clear next steps. She encourages people to use their existing strengths while learning new ways to handle tough moments.
The focus is on steady progress and on tools that can be used between sessions.
Approaches that help online and in-session
Many of Kathleen's methods focus on practical, evidence-based techniques that help people manage strong emotions and improve connection. One common approach emphasizes learning small, repeatable skills for emotion regulation and anxiety reduction; this typically involves practicing simple breathing, grounding, and step-by-step coping strategies that can reduce overwhelm in daily life. Another approach centers on improving relationship patterns and communication by identifying repeated behaviors, noticing attachment needs, and experimenting with new ways of asking for closeness or setting boundaries.Choosing the right approach is collaborative. Kathleen works with each person to figure out which techniques fit their goals and preferences. Over the first few sessions she helps clarify what feels most useful and tailors the plan so clients can try what resonates and adjust as needed.
Online therapy with Kathleen is offered via video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexible ways to connect. Video allows full face-to-face conversation and visual cues, while phone sessions can fit into a work break or require less bandwidth. Live chat and messaging let people check in between sessions, send short updates, or do shorter check-ins when scheduling is tight. These options help make therapy more practical for different routines and needs.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Experience
- 30 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English