Astraea Bella,LCSW

Astraea Bella,LCSW

Telehealth Available
Professions: Psychotherapist, Sex Therapist
License Status: I'm a licensed professional.
Primary Credential: Licensed Clinical Social Worker - 26430
Billing and Insurance:

I don't currently accept insurance, but I can provide documentation if clients wish to submit to an insurance company for "out of network" benefit coverage

Fees: $250 - $200
Free Initial Phone Consultation

Offices

1918 Bonita Ave
Suite 200
Berkeley , California 94704
2940 Summit St.
Suite 2D
Oakland, California 94609

View Accessibility

My Approach to Helping

The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. Relationships are where we experience our deepest wounds and our deepest healing. This is the paradox and the promise. Therapy is a sanctuary of healing, learning, and growth, in which we soften the paradox, and open to the promise.

By giving your relational wounds the thoughtful care that they've wanted, needed, and deserved all along, your innate healing instincts can be restored. Your original knowing that you deserve safety, fairness, and love in all of your relationships, including with yourself, can be fully reawakened.

Because relational trauma and neglect are the biggest obstacles to flourishing, I offer in-depth attention to trauma and neglect prevention, recovery, and post-traumatic growth. Post-traumatic growth is poetic justice. It emerges from wrestling with very stressful life circumstances, finding one's way out of the depths, and discovering that through your trials you've gained a greater appreciation for life, deepened capacity to relate authentically, increased inner strength, openness to new possibilities, and spiritual or philosophical transformation.

But what happens when we suffer in silence? The healing process stops. The realms that we're most likely to suffer in silence are in love and sexuality. Our families, religions, and cultures rarely offer a safe, protected, and educated space to explore and discover who we are in these realms. Cultural repression, centuries of guilt and shame, widely accepted myths about romantic love, gender conditioning that limits wholeness, and unhealed sexual trauma, have all made difficulty nearly universal. Yet, it's our birthright to discover who we really are in eros.

Eros is the energy of love, sexuality, spirit, and the creative pulse of life. It brings us into intimate communion with the numinous and affirms that flesh, emotions, and spirit are one. By melting the taboos on open, honest, and vulnerable conversations, we can activate the healing process. By layering one insight and skill at a time, you can move from being overwhelmed by the power, risk, and mystery of eros, to co-creating safety, fairness, love, pleasure, and play in this life-giving realm.

Over time, as you heal your hidden wounds, you'll discover your deepest gifts. You'll come to know that the parts of yourself that you thought were the least acceptable, loveable, and desirable become your greatest sources of sensitivity, belonging, and creative aliveness. Healing eros, whether you are single or partnered, is a journey home to wholeness.

More Info About My Practice

Therapy is part art, part science, and part alchemy. My approach has developed through 30 years of experience and intensive training, and grounded in current science. I walk this path myself, and have thereby developed a deep understanding and trust in the process. I find that most people do their best healing when we work together in warm, authentic, spontaneous, and life-affirming ways.

My View on the Purpose of Psychotherapy

The term psychotherapy is derived from the ancient greek words 'psyche' and 'therapeia'. Psyche means breath, spirit, and soul. Therapeia means healing. The essence of psychotherapy is the healing of the soul. As you heal, you come to know who you really are, and naturally open to the deepest freedoms of all, loving and being loved well.

Ages I Work With

  • Adults

Languages

  • English

Groups I Work With

    I welcome working with healers, artists, changemakers, educators, parents, and leaders.

Industries & Communities Served

  • BIPOC
  • Education
  • Entertainment Industry
  • First Responder/Medical Professionals
  • LGBTQ+
  • Self-Employed and Freelance Professionals

Client Concerns I Treat

  • Family of Origin Issues
  • Men's Issues
  • Multicultural Concerns
  • Posttraumatic Stress / Trauma
  • Relationships and Marriage
  • Sexuality / Sex Therapy
  • Spirituality
  • Women's Issues

Types of Therapy

  • Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
  • Collaborative Therapy
  • Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)
  • Culturally Sensitive Therapy
  • Dreamwork
  • Experiential Therapy
  • Feminist Therapy
  • Holistic Psychotherapy
  • Jungian Psychotherapy
  • Positive Psychology
  • Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT)
  • Relational Life Therapy
  • Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
  • Somatic Psychotherapy
  • Strength-Based Therapy
  • Transpersonal Psychotherapy
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