About Wendy McFarland
I began my career as a psychiatric social worker at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. During my tenure at CHLA, I was a member of a multidisciplinary team responsible for inpatient therapeutic care for children, adolescents and their families. During this time, I worked as an on-call psychiatric social worker for hospital Emergency Departments throughout Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. With a desire to provide more long-term clinical treatment, I took a position with Ventura County Children's Behavioral Health as a school clinician, providing mental health assessment and weekly therapy. I later served as the treatment manager for the counties Transitional Youth Program, supervising assessment and treatment of transitional youth. In 2007, I moved to Santa Barbara and began my private practice working with adolescents, families and adults. In addition, I serve as a school counselor at Cate School in Carpinteria, providing counseling, consultation and mental health education.
Services
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- I provide compassionate, individualized and supportive therapy services informed by years of training in treatments that have a solid foundation of research and positive outcomes.
- My approach to therapy is informed by my training and practice in:
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Combining experienced clinical skill, enthusiasm, warmth, and compassion, I provide psychotherapeutic treatment to adolescents and adults who would like to overcome destructive behaviors and thoughts, engage in healthy relationships, and improve their overall quality of life.
- Additional services include parent education presentations on teaching your adolescent distress tolerance, coping skills, stress management and mood regulation, and parenting your teen with technology. Such presentations are provided in school and agency settings.
Call or message to schedule a brief consultation.
To schedule a consultation with Wendy McFarland, please call or message (805) 280-2653
Specialty areas
Mood Related Concerns
Many individuals enter into therapy hoping to alleviate the symptoms of anxiety, depression or both. My experience lends itself to treating mood related concerns including:
- Generalized anxiety as exhibited through difficulty controlling your worries, trouble sleeping, physical symptoms including increased heart rate, muscle tension, chest pain
- Social anxiety characterized by intense concerns over what others are thinking about you
- fears and phobias
- self-doubt
- perfectionism
- change in mood characterized by feeling sad, loss of energy or pleasure in things you normally find pleasurable, withdrawing from those around you, constant self-criticism
- difficulty managing stress
Emotional Dysregulation
Emotional Dysregulation is marked by a persons inability to control their emotional responses to any distressing stimuli. As a result, the individual can experience some or all of the following behaviors; non-severe self-harm, anger dyscontrol, school or work avoidance, impaired self-awareness of emotions, and frequent relationship break-ups. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) was created specifically for the emotionally dysregulated. The skills learned in this therapy format empower individuals by engaging with them the following strategies which decrease or eliminate the most troubling behaviors.
- mindfulness skills
- emotion regulation strategies
- interpersonal effectiveness
- distress tolerance
When working with Emotionally Dysregulated individuals we work together to build a healthy therapeutic relationship based on trust, respect and healthy boundaries