With over 23+ years of experience, my psychotherapy practice uses current evidence-based techniques building from advances in psychology and neuroscience. My practice uses Somatic Embodiment Practices with Relational Therapy. We will discuss ways to improve executive functioning skills which are necessary to organize and manage your daily life.

Desirée Reitknecht MFT is a board-certified psychotherapist providing telehealth in California and New Jersey. She specializes in treating individuals who seek support with Anxiety, Depression, Resolving Relationship Challenges, Fostering Trust and Attunement to your Self, Cultivating Self-Compassion, and Issues related to Sexuality Diversity. Desirée studied at California Institute for Integral Studies and has been licensed for over 23 years. Her treatment approach is rooted in evidence-based practices that focus on the mind-body connection. She has maintained a private practice utilizing Relational Theory and Technique, AEDP, DBT and somatically oriented approaches that have served a foundational role her clients’ success in overcoming mental health challenges.

She brings a warm non-judgmental stance to assist clients how to learn self-analytic and observational skills to evaluate habitual cognitive interpretations and replace them with conscious intentional responses. Desiree’s therapeutic focus is to help her clients develop effective strategies for interpersonal communication, manage distressing emotions, and enhance lateral thinking abilities for creative problem solving and personal development.

Desirée aims for her clients to formulate a cohesive self-narrative to make peace with the past and experience the freedom to envision the future. She is committed to partnering with her clients to design a path forward to transform and increase an overall sense of balance in emotional, mental and physical well-being within in her private practice.

Desirée is an aspiring oneironaut, a parent of three children and a somatic embodiment enthusiast.  She is currently completing her Ph.D. coursework at California Institute for Integral Studies in the Transformative Studies Department. Her research interests include the phenomenological and hermeneutic dimensions of elucidating the orbitals of consciousness. She is an avid advocate for displacing human exceptionalism to elevate and advance our ethical responsibility towards the more-than-human co-experients that we share the Earth with.

Aerial view of waves creating a shape on the beach that resembles a human figure.

Diving into the Wreck

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters

Adrienne Rich, 2007, Stanzas 6-7