Understanding and Healing Together

Hello and welcome. My name is Sandra Wohali (she/her/hers) and I am licensed to practice psychotherapy in CA as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (#122530). Social workers are trained to look beyond immediate mental health symptoms, to all the areas of life that might be exacerbating those mental health symptoms.

I am a trained EMDR therapist, with additional specialized training in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), CBT for Psychosis, Motivational Interviewing, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Solutions-Based Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and more.

In my life prior to becoming a therapist, I worked as a teacher, principal, and district level administrator in the public school system. The further I rose in my professional position, however, the further I got away from working one to one with individuals and pursuing my personal joy of helping others find their inner strength. This led me to return to school to get a Masters in Social Work.

Since becoming a therapist, I have worked with unhoused individuals in the field, children with moderate to severe mental health symptoms and their families, domestic violence survivors, substance users, human trafficking survivors, and adults with moderate to severe mental health symptoms and functional impairments.

I currently work full time for a specialty mental health crisis clinic that serves low income adults with a wide array of moderate to severe mental health symptoms. While trauma, dissociation, and overcoming adversity have been the primary focus of my extended training, my work in public health has given me a vast amount of experience with a broad range of diagnosis.

Resilience

People don't often associate Amsterdam with poverty, but a while back, I found myself on an early morning walk in a "bad neighborhood" in Amsterdam. It was industrial, gray, covered with uninspired graffiti and the concrete ground was cracked and uneven. As I turned a corner, I found myself staring up into the face of a single, giant sunflower, rising up 6ft out of a break in the concrete. It was pure defiance - beautiful, strong, bold, and unapologetic in its will to survive.

The image has stayed with me, and I think of it often as I work with survivors of adversity. The road to healing can often be ugly and treacherous, but the result is so resilient and beautiful that it is impossible to look at without respect and awe.

Be bold. Choose you. Every light matters in the darkness.

Private practice is an opportunity for me to serve a larger portion of the community I live in, and to provide long-term therapy to individuals I am only able to serve in a relatively short term capacity in my other clinical work.

No matter your personal challenges, it is my honor and privilege to support you in your journey to healing. I believe that everyone can heal and grow. None of us is truly broken, and the cracks in our shells are where all the interesting stuff happens!

Often, the things we perceive as negative about ourselves are actually survival adaptations which kept us alive to fight another day. The key to healing is not in rejecting those parts of ourselves, but to engage in relationship with them, showering them in compassion, acceptance, and the knowledge that the war is over and the self survived. Then those agitated parts of ourselves can finally rest and stop fighting in the knowledge their job is done and the power to heal has been within us all along.

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in."

Anthem - Leonard Cohen