about angela

Angela is an Integrative Relational + Somatic + Spiritual Counselor & Coach with 10+ years of education and experience. She has a Masters in Clinical Psychology with two specializations — in Applied Community Psychology, and in Spiritual & Depth Psychology. She has worked in residential eating disorder treatment, and she is an IPE-Certified Dynamic Mind Body Eating Psychology Coach and an NTA-Certified Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. She completed additional coursework in Integrative Medicine & Nutrition for Mental Health, as well as Cult Recovery & Exit Counseling.

She is a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, Counselor-in-Residence at The Relational Center in Los Angeles, California, where she provides counseling and psychoeducation to adults and adolescents of diverse cultural backgrounds, including individuals, couples, and families. She has created, presented, and facilitated foundational trainings for psychotherapy trainees and colleagues, as well as specialized workshops for clients, colleagues, and community members. She has collaborated in the development of curriculum for multiple group therapy platforms covering a variety of topics, including somatic trauma work, disability and chronic illness, leadership and community organizing, and relational food psychology.

Angela received her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University Los Angeles, where she participated in the school's Advanced Practitioner program, completing extensive coursework beyond the conventional degree requirements and acquiring additional training and skills in working with eating disorders, disability and chronic illness, art therapy, equine-assisted therapy and Jungian sand-play therapy, among others. She received her B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Oklahoma.

Informed by personal confrontations with the isolation epidemic of Western culture, and the routine and systemic failings of allopathic medicine following her 2008 near-death diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, a chronic autoimmune condition, Angela eventually found her passion, purpose, and calling in the integrative healing journey of relational psychology, somatic awareness, mindful inquiry, and spiritual exploration.

She leans away from pathologizing models of diagnosis that view normal adaptive coping strategies and behaviors as requiring pharmaceutical drug interventions and other potentially risky treatments, while failing to address the true underlying issues and root cause. Rather than viewing clients as broken, Angela takes an holistic, humanizing, and compassionate approach, collaborating with and supporting clients to learn and understand the irreducible role the body plays in healing and recovery, to gently integrate their emotionally wounded and traumatized parts, to cultivate resources and resilience, and to better navigate conflict, boundaries, and communication in relationship.

Angela has also spent years in the earnest study of personal and group meditation practice, as well as a variety of plant medicines, including psilocybin, ayahuasca, and huachuma. She credits these transformative experiences as informing her own personal growth and approach to counseling every bit as much as, if not more than, her academic training. Angela’s journey with type 1 diabetes has been a spiritual curriculum and daily meditation of its own, requiring her ongoing and earnest confrontation with the ever-changing challenges of food and body, which she navigates today with confidence, grace, and ease.

In her free time, Angela gets outside and into nature as much as she can — hiking, gardening, soaking up the sun, taking pretty pictures, and exploring national parks. She loves food and is devoted to her Los Angeles-based community of gardeners, farmers, homesteaders, soil nerds, and raw milk enthusiasts. In recent years, Angela has become a rather prolific poet, and she is currently authoring her first book, which hopes will help those with chronic illness experience a loving and transformative relationship with their bodies, so they can live a shame-free, joy-filled life.

All coaching and psychotherapy sessions are by appointment only. Please contact Angela for more information. Psychotherapy sessions are supervised by The Relational Center's Clinical Director, Jami Winkel, LMFT (License #44036).