About Claudia
Claudia Santiago is a licensed clinical social worker with 12 years of experience helping people manage anxiety, depression, trauma, and life changes. She is based in California and offers services in English and Spanish. Claudia focuses on practical steps people can use right away to feel steadier and more in control.
Her approach is collaborative and warm. She listens first and helps people name what matters most to them. Sessions often include skills for managing stress, techniques to change unhelpful thought patterns, and exercises to improve communication and relationships.
Background and approach
Claudia works with a wide range of concerns, including grief, addictions, bipolar symptoms, parenting strain, and compassion fatigue. She also addresses attachment and abandonment issues, avoidant personality traits, body image struggles, chronic pain and illness, and co-occurring problems that complicate recovery.
In therapy she uses client-centered methods, cognitive behavioral work, mindfulness, motivational interviewing, and elements of the Gottman Method when relationship skills are needed. These approaches are used in plain language and adapted to each person’s situation. Claudia helps people set clear, achievable goals and checks in on progress each step of the way.
People can expect sessions that balance listening with practical tools. Claudia aims to help clients build resilience, improve self-esteem, and find clearer ways to cope with stress and life transitions.
How Claudia blends approaches for online care
Claudia often uses client-centered therapy, which focuses on understanding each person's experience and building a trusting working relationship. This approach involves listening closely, reflecting what is said, and helping people identify their own solutions to everyday problems.She also uses cognitive behavioral therapy, a practical method that looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect. CBT provides straightforward tools to reduce anxious or depressive symptoms and to change patterns that get in the way of daily functioning. When relationship skills are needed she draws on aspects of the Gottman Method to teach concrete communication and conflict tools.
Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. Claudia will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and what feels most useful, and then try methods that fit the person’s needs. The plan can change over time based on progress and feedback.
Offering video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging makes it easier to keep therapy consistent. Video is useful for deeper conversations and skill practice, phone calls work when bandwidth is limited, and chat or messaging can be used for quick check-ins or brief coaching between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy lives and keep momentum between meetings.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Spanish