802-551-2516
Silla Siebert, LMFT #125238
Hello and Welcome
My clients reach out when challenges seem overwhelming. They experience pain emotionally, and struggle with feelings of being sad or anxious, hopeless, angry, numb, stressed, overwhelmed and/or emotionally isolated. Being in pain like this prevents us from thinking and acting effectively. It can feel like you are the only one in your situation and nothing can change. The desire to live a life based on clarity, intention, and purpose feels out of reach, not obtainable. If this is the reason you are seeking help or at least looking for options, then you are not alone!
As a committed, highly-trained Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I help clients collaboratively explore, process and resolve emotional pain, learn more effective behaviors and communication patterns. I support clients as they explore current challenges, strengths and available coping and options, and identify, treat and improve mental health symptoms. Therapy brings relief through connection, awareness, broader perspective, new coping and insight, and a value-based, intentional way forward that is structured individually for each client and their specific circumstances.
The result is greater wellbeing, clarity and improved relationships, with yourself and others.
I have trained in varied, often acute/ high-risk situations/crises, especially with teens and their families. This experience benefits all my clients, including individuals or couples, as I work from a systems perspective, which benefits my clients as they develop understanding of themself in context, not just as individuals.
Therapy services
Family Therapy
Family therapy is a type of treatment designed to help with issues that specifically affect families' mental health and functioning. It can help individual family members build stronger relationships, improve communication, and manage conflicts within the family system.
Some of the primary goals of family therapy are to create a better home environment, solve family issues, and understand the unique issues that a family might face.
Adolescent Individual Therapy
Psychotherapy helps children and adolescents in a variety of ways. They receive emotional support, resolve conflicts with people, understand feelings and problems, and try out new solutions to old problems.
Adult Individual Therapy
Therapy, also called psychotherapy or counseling, is the process of meeting with a therapist to resolve problematic behaviors, beliefs, feelings, relationship issues, and/or somatic responses (sensations in the body)
Couples Therapy
Couples therapy is used for addressing issues in relationship. The therapist acts as a facilitator to keep the conversations civil, without partners
blaming each other. Couple will learn new skills in communication, emotional attunement, and explore/develop a plan for ways to improve the relationship. You can expect questions and lots of open and honest communication.
Fees & Insurance
(In-person or Telehealth)
About Me
Silla Siebert (she/her) is an experienced, multi-culturally aware psychotherapist, specializing in adolescent and adult individual, family, and group therapy. Silla draws on her background in yoga, mindfulness, and life-long experience of working with people from all walks of life. Silla uses evidence-based approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (M-CBT), and Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) to provide clients with immediate skills and insights to create relief. Silla is trained in family systems theory and attachment-focused therapy, especially Bowinian, Strategic, and Structural orientations. Silla obtained her training experience working in acute, crisis-focused environments (PHP/IOP), focusing on severe substance abuse, co-occurring disorders, severe mental illness (2 years in residential training), teen substance abuse/suicidal ideation/self-harm, and crisis management, couples and family therapy, including high-conflict families/ contentious divorce/ parental alienation.
Silla has broadened her awareness of cultural considerations through two decades of extensive traveling, and working with multicultural groups and individuals; in school-based harm-reduction classes, youth club mentoring, public/private yoga, fitness and mindfulness classes, and providing yoga, meditation and coping skills to incarcerated populations, and. Silla has a life-long deep fascination and passion for psychology as an art, a science, an intellectual pursuit, and spiritual component.
A Bit About Therapy
The hardest part is reaching out ...
Therapy means a space to explore, process, and resolve Emotional Pain. Pain resulting from mild to debilitating depressive symptoms, anxiety, despair and grief from loss, ongoing emotional and physical symptoms as consequence of childhood or adult trauma, high-level of conflict/dysfunction in intimate and professional relationships, impacts of illnesses and caregiving, disordered eating, body-shame and loathing, sexual struggles, , systemic racism, gender and sexual orientation struggles, social pressures for ever-more success and high-status perfection, intense shame existing in secrecy and self-loathing, addiction challenges and so many other struggles.
As humans we often manage, and get through with support of loved ones, hobbies, our profession, sports, etc. Yet for many, another crisis equals inability to cope.
It is a sad truth that the shame of needing help, strong secret feelings of being inadequate, to blame, unworthy of support and care, prevent many from engaging in preventative therapy, and only when a crisis appears do we "dare" reach out, or when we are "made" to come to treatment.
Most humans need greater awareness of our minds and bodies, we need to learn and develop healthy acceptance and thus skills in distress tolerance, regulation of our emotions, greater effectiveness in interpersonal struggles, healthier intentional boundaries, and ultimately a way out of a deepening sense of isolation, hopelessness and sadness. The isolation leaves people internally desperate, many experience suicidal thoughts, self-harm, or addictive coping. Ultimately, it is fear and a deep sense of shame and isolation in our suffering, which prevents so many from getting help before crisis.
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Our culture, upbringing, and inner binary assumptions creates unhealthy, false thinking patterns, like "I should not feel this way", "what is wrong with me", "everyone else copes better", "I don't deserve treatment", ""I am too far gone" or "it is my own fault", or "I am not good enough", "I am not lovable" , and ultimately "I don't matter". These symptomatic thinking distortions leave many too ashamed to ask for help and perpetuates the negative feelings/thoughts.
Mental health support is a shared space where you matter, are enough, lovable, and deserving. Therapy reminds us of this fact. Therapy helps you explore influences, past and present that impact you NOW. Therapy teaches you how to tolerate your emotions, feelings and be aware of your thoughts and how to cope with thinking. Therapy teaches you how to live intentionally with purpose and meaning as you manage and control your behavior, and therefore your life.
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As humans, we seek to SURVIVE intrinsically, yet THRIVING is different. Therapy helps you thrive.
It takes courage and a first step. You looking on here may be that step.
The Guesthouse
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This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi
A bit about Self Discovery ...
“I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.
walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
I walk down another street.”
― Portia Nelson
There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery
Contact Me
For more information and to schedule a session,please complete form below or call.
Office Address:
Family Therapy Institute
111 E Arrellaga St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
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Phone: 802-551-2516
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