Education & Licensing
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Bachelor of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology, Pepperdine University
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Dually Licensed Psychotherapist in California
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Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #150408)
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Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC #19451)
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Member of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology; member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT)
At a Glance
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Dually licensed psychotherapist in California (LMFT and LPCC) specializing in neurodivergent children, teens, parents, and families
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Specializes in autism, ADHD, AuDHD, giftedness/twice-exceptionality (2e), anxiety, OCD, executive-function challenges, and demand-avoidant/PDA profiles
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Former School-Based Mental Health Therapist with Outreach Concern, providing psychotherapy to children and adolescents at Holy Family School in Pasadena and Carpenter Community Charter School in Studio City, with a caseload spanning behavioral, emotional, social, and academic concerns
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Founder and Clinical Director of the Center for Twice Exceptional Counseling, with a particular interest in bright, complex children whose abilities and capacity can look dramatically different depending on the setting, demand, or level of regulation
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Helps parents understand the “why” underneath behavior and develop an individualized roadmap for their child rather than relying on one-size-fits-all parenting strategies
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Integrates psychodynamic therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment and family-systems approaches, CBT, ACT, DBT-informed interventions, and practical executive-function support
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Trilingual in English, Farsi (Persian), and Spanish
Parenting a Child Who Doesn't Fit the Usual Parenting Advice
You may have a child who can explain a sophisticated scientific concept but cannot get dressed for school without a battle. A child who holds it together beautifully all day and then falls apart the minute they get home. Or a child who desperately wants friends but repeatedly struggles with the unpredictability of other people. A child who is capable of doing something one day and seemingly unable to do the exact same thing the next.
Parents often come to me saying some version of, “I know my child is capable. I just don't understand why this is so hard,” and this question is much more useful than How do we make them do it? When a child is struggling, I want to understand what is getting in the way.
Is the demand exceeding their executive-function capacity? Are they anxious or overwhelmed? Is there a sensory component? Are they trying to avoid the possibility of failure? Is perfectionism making it impossible to begin? Is autonomy especially important to them? Have adults inadvertently created a power struggle around something that started as a genuine difficulty?
The behavior tells us that something is happening. Our job is to become curious enough to figure out what.
Clients
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Individuals
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Couples
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Families
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Teens/Kids
Modalities
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Psychodynamic/depth-oriented psychology
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EFT (emotion focused therapy for couples)
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IFS (internal family systems)
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CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) including ACT and DBT
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Family Systems Dynamics
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Solution focused therapy
When Do I Accommodate, and When Do I Push?
This may be the question I hear most often from parents of neurodivergent and twice-exceptional children. You don't want to make your child's life unnecessarily difficult. But you also don't want to underestimate them, inadvertently reinforce anxiety or avoidance, or communicate that they aren't capable of doing hard things.
There isn't one correct answer. A child who genuinely cannot meet a demand in that moment needs something different from a child who is frightened to try. A skill deficit requires a different response than sensory overwhelm. Anxiety may call for gradually moving toward discomfort rather than continually removing it. And sometimes the environment itself is simply asking something unreasonable of the child. This is where I tend to resist rigid parenting philosophies.
I don't think every demand should be enforced simply because an adult made it. I also don't believe the answer is always to eliminate demands or discomfort. Instead, we try to understand what this particular child needs in this particular situation to continue developing without repeatedly overwhelming their nervous system or damaging their sense of themselves. That's a more complicated answer, and complicated kids often require more nuanced answers.
Giftedness, 2e, ADHD and Uneven Development
I have a particular interest in gifted and twice-exceptional children. These children can be confusing to parent because their development may be strikingly uneven. A twelve-year-old may reason like an adult in one conversation and become completely dysregulated over an apparently minor disappointment ten minutes later.
Their intelligence can also hide areas where they genuinely need support. Adults may think, If she can do that, surely she can do this. But neurological development doesn't work that way. A child can have extraordinary verbal reasoning and weak working memory. Exceptional academic ability and difficulty organizing a backpack. Sophisticated insight and very little access to that insight once emotionally activated.
Part of our work is separating ability from capacity in the moment and setting expectations that neither underestimate your child nor repeatedly ask them to perform beyond skills they have not yet developed.
PDA, Demand Avoidance and Kids With a Strong Need for Autonomy
Some children experience ordinary expectations with an intensity that is difficult for other people to understand. Getting dressed, leaving the house, stopping a preferred activity, beginning homework, or answering a simple question can suddenly become a negotiation, shutdown, explosion, or absolute refusal.
Parents are often told their child is oppositional, manipulative, spoiled, or simply needs firmer limits. That explanation is rarely helpful. With demand-avoidant children, I want to understand the relationship among anxiety, autonomy, nervous-system regulation, executive functioning, rigidity, and the child's history of interactions with adults.
We can then experiment with ways of reducing unnecessary power struggles, using more collaboration, flexibility, declarative language, indirect approaches, choice, humor, advance planning, and regulation, while still helping a child gradually develop the ability to tolerate frustration, uncertainty, and the unavoidable demands of life. The goal isn't to win the battle, it's to help your child build capacity.
Looking at the Whole Child, and the Whole Family
I don't work from a single diagnosis. Your child's autism matters, and so may their ADHD, anxiety, OCD tendencies, giftedness, learning profile, temperament, sensory system, developmental history, friendships, school environment, sleep, executive functioning, and relationship with you. And your child's needs exist inside a family. Sometimes one parent is more inclined to accommodate while the other wants firmer expectations. One sibling may receive far less attention because another child's needs dominate family life. Parents may disagree about screens, school, consequences, independence, or what a child is actually capable of doing.
These aren't side issues, they're part of the system we're trying to understand. My goal is to help parents develop a clearer shared framework so that you're not inventing a new response during every difficult moment. Over time, I want you to become increasingly confident asking: What is happening here? What does my child need from me right now? And what response moves us toward the person we ultimately want them to become?
How I Work With Parents
My style is collaborative, curious, practical, and fairly active. I want to know what happened Tuesday morning before school. I want to know exactly what you said, what your child said back, what happened next, and where the interaction began to unravel.
Then we can think about it together. Sometimes I'll give you a concrete strategy to try. At other times, the most useful work is helping you see your child's behavior differently. We may modify expectations, build external executive-function supports, rethink how a demand is communicated, develop boundaries that are clearer and less emotionally charged, or help you respond differently when your child's nervous system becomes overwhelmed.
I don't expect parents to execute a parenting method perfectly. Real families are messy, parents get tired, children surprise us, and the same strategy won't work in every situation. What I'm hoping to give you is something more durable than a collection of techniques: a way of understanding your child that helps you make better decisions even when I'm not there.
Supporting the Parent Matters Too
Parenting a neurodivergent child can take an enormous amount of emotional and cognitive energy. You may spend much of your day anticipating problems, managing transitions, communicating with school, researching therapies, worrying about your child's future, or trying to prevent the next crisis.
It is easy for the entire family to begin organizing itself around one child's needs. Part of our work may therefore be about you: your own anxiety, guilt, frustration, expectations, relationship with your partner, or difficulty knowing when you have done enough.
Understanding your child shouldn't require disappearing as a parent. I want us to find approaches that are sustainable for the whole family, not just theoretically ideal for the child.
About Me
Before becoming a psychotherapist, I spent many years in the corporate and technology world in leadership roles including president, CFO, COO, and founder. I earned my undergraduate degree from MIT and later returned to school for a Master's in Clinical Psychology at Pepperdine University.
My background contributes to the way I approach complicated families. I like patterns and I like understanding systems. I'm rarely satisfied with “that's just the autism” or “that's just behavior” as an explanation. I want to know what is actually happening and what we can do with that understanding.
My clinical training is psychodynamic and depth-oriented, and I integrate Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment and family-systems approaches, CBT, ACT, DBT-informed work, and practical executive-function interventions depending on the needs of the child and family.
I am dually licensed in California as a Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #150408) and Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC #19451). I live in Los Angeles with my husband and two children. You can learn more about my background, clinical work, and areas of research and interest at Pirnia Therapy https://www.pirniatherapy.com/