Meet Kalie
Individual & Couples Therapist in Santa Monica, CA
I believe you should be able to bring your whole self to therapy. Not just the parts that are easy to explain, palatable, or acceptable, but the messy, emotional, complicated parts, too. The parts that feel needy, angry, jealous, selfish, scared, or just plain hard to like. The parts you might judge yourself for, hide from other people, or not even fully understand yet.
I’m Kalie, a relationship therapist in Santa Monica, CA.
I work with individuals and couples dealing with big emotions, relationship anxiety, uncertainty, and those messy in-between moments that leave you wondering,
Who am I, and what do I actually want?
Together, we’ll work toward understanding yourself and your relationships more deeply, so you can move through life with more clarity, self-acceptance, and trust in your own inner compass.
I've been there...
I know what it’s like to sit with a version of yourself that you’ve never really shown anyone. To keep moving toward the life, goals, relationships, or version of yourself that seems to make sense to everyone else, while quietly wondering, Do I even want this?
Maybe there are parts of you that you’ve never really let yourself explore because they feel silly, impractical, embarrassing, or like something no one else would understand.
Why do I want this? Am I really allowed to want it? What will people think? Is this stupid? Maybe I should just keep it to myself.
Sometimes we become so good at adapting to what’s expected of us that we lose track of what actually feels like us.
I know this because I've had to learn it myself.
One of the places I've felt this most deeply is in relationships. Through my own therapy, I realized that a lot of my relationship anxiety was connected to insecure attachment. Suddenly, so much made sense: the reassurance-seeking, the overthinking, the checking, the constant wondering whether something had changed.
My brain would try to solve problems that didn’t even exist yet:
Are they upset with me? Did I do something? Are they losing interest? Is something changing? Why haven’t they texted me back?
I knew logically that nothing was wrong, but my body wouldn’t get the memo.
And somewhere along the way, I realized I was so focused on figuring out what would keep the relationship okay that I was losing track of what I actually wanted.
All the while, underneath the anxiety was a very human desire: I just want to know that we’re okay.
Learning to ask for help was part of learning that I didn’t have to keep living that way. I could understand where my patterns came from without being controlled by them. I could learn to tolerate uncertainty, listen to myself, ask for what I needed, and build a more secure relationship with myself and the people I love.
I could also start asking the questions I spent a long time avoiding:
What do I actually want?
What feels like me?
What am I doing because I genuinely want it, and what am I doing because I think I’m supposed to?
That shift changed a lot for me,
and it’s a big part of why I do this work now.
I know what it’s like to understand your patterns and still feel stuck inside them. I know what it’s like to feel deeply connected to someone and still struggle to feel secure within yourself. And I know what it’s like to wonder whether the parts of you that don’t quite fit are actually the parts worth listening to.
I don't believe therapy is about becoming a completely different person.
I think it’s about getting to know yourself well enough to recognize what’s true for you, making room for the parts you’ve pushed aside, and learning how to build relationships and a life that actually feel like your own.
Sometimes finding your way forward starts with finding your way back to yourself.
Background & Training
As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I’ve had the honor of gaining experience and training to support couples and adults manage anxiety, grief, self-esteem challenges, and relationship distress, always with the goal of helping them feel more empowered, aware, and connected. I am trained in EMDR (eye movement desensitization & reprocessing), a trauma therapy using bilateral stimulation, to support my clients in reprocessing painful experiences from the past and building the internal resources to thrive and feel safe in their bodies.
I received my Master’s in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy from Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology, and my Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of Florida.
Before private practice, I worked in outpatient treatment settings supporting individuals living with anxiety, panic disorder, OCD, Tourette syndrome, and trauma-related concerns. My experience also includes coordinating clinical research trials for the University of South Florida’s Rothman Center for Pediatric Neuropsychiatry, where I managed psychiatric trials to evaluate the treatment outcomes for various psychiatric conditions.
Couples/Relationships
Relationships can bring out both our deepest joy and our deepest pain. I work with couples who feel disconnected, stuck in familiar arguments, or unsure how to find their way back to each other after betrayal or distance.
Nothing is too big or too scary to bring into the room, whether it’s rebuilding after infidelity, navigating intimacy concerns, or wondering if you’ve become more like roommates than partners.
Together, we’ll look beneath the surface patterns to understand what’s really happening, shift how you approach conflict, and strengthen the emotional connection between you.
The goal isn’t perfection; it’s cultivating a relationship that feels like a well-tended fire: steady, warm, and enduring.
For Individuals
For individuals, I help you reshape your relationship with yourself. We’ll explore how your past experiences, internalized beliefs, and cultural or family narratives shape the way you see yourself and relate to others.
Our work might include identifying unhelpful thought patterns, understanding how emotions show up in your body, and learning tools to regulate your nervous system.
With curiosity and compassion, we’ll process pain, dismantle limiting stories, and build new ways of relating to yourself, your values, and your life.
