- 40 years experience
- Client-centered approach
- California based
About Marla
Marla Gentile is a licensed professional counselor with four decades of clinical experience. She practices in California and has worked across multiple states over her career. Marla focuses on helping people navigate stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, grief, life changes, compassion fatigue, relationship and intimacy concerns, career questions, and self esteem challenges.
She works from a belief that each person knows their life best and already has strengths to build on. Sessions aim to be practical and respectful, helping people make small changes that add up. Marla encourages people to notice what helps and to try different ways of coping until something fits.
Her background includes long-term clinical work with a wide variety of life problems, including abandonment, attachment issues, caregiving stress, and isolation or loneliness. She has supported people facing cancer, aging concerns, and family of origin issues. That breadth gives her a familiarity with how grief and life transitions can show up in day-to-day life.
Marla uses several clinical approaches depending on the person and the problem. She draws on attachment-based thinking, client-centered methods, psychodynamic ideas, mindfulness, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, choosing what seems most helpful in session. The pace and focus are shaped by each person’s goals and comfort.
People who are seeking steady, experienced guidance through big feelings and life changes may find her style useful. She aims for a collaborative relationship that respects the person’s story while offering tools for coping and growth.
She works from a belief that each person knows their life best and already has strengths to build on. Sessions aim to be practical and respectful, helping people make small changes that add up. Marla encourages people to notice what helps and to try different ways of coping until something fits.
Her background includes long-term clinical work with a wide variety of life problems, including abandonment, attachment issues, caregiving stress, and isolation or loneliness. She has supported people facing cancer, aging concerns, and family of origin issues. That breadth gives her a familiarity with how grief and life transitions can show up in day-to-day life.
Marla uses several clinical approaches depending on the person and the problem. She draws on attachment-based thinking, client-centered methods, psychodynamic ideas, mindfulness, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, choosing what seems most helpful in session. The pace and focus are shaped by each person’s goals and comfort.
People who are seeking steady, experienced guidance through big feelings and life changes may find her style useful. She aims for a collaborative relationship that respects the person’s story while offering tools for coping and growth.