It Is Never Too Late To Revive Your Best Self

Therapy for Generational Trauma
(California Residents)

Sometimes the struggles you face don't entirely feel like your own. The anxiety, the hyper-vigilance, the patterns of shutting down or people-pleasing—they may have been with you so long, they just feel like "who you are."You may have tried therapy before and found some relief, but the deeper, recurring patterns remain. Perhaps you've learned coping skills, but still feel disconnected from yourself and others.If you're ready to go beyond managing symptoms and begin unraveling the roots of what you carry—personally and generationally—you're in the right place.

Generational Trauma, It´s Complicated

Do You Suspect Your Past—and Your Family's Past—Keeps Following You?

There's a lot of talk about trauma these days. But not all trauma work is the same.The trauma work I specialize in is not about processing a single bad event. It's about understanding the deeply embedded patterns that have shaped your nervous system, your beliefs about yourself, and your way of relating to the world.You may wonder:Why do I respond to stress the way my parents did, even though I swore I wouldn't?Why do I carry a vague sense of dread or shame that I can't explain?Why do I feel like something is fundamentally wrong with me, despite outward success?These are often the imprints of trauma that isn't entirely yours—passed down through family lines, cultural histories, and generations of survival adaptations.What feels like personal trauma is frequently generational. The coping strategies your ancestors needed to survive (hyper-vigilance, emotional numbing, people-pleasing, rigidity) become the inherited burdens you carry today. They get encoded in your body and your nervous system, long after the original threat is gone.My work is to help you identify what belongs to you, what belongs to your lineage, and how to gently untangle the two and begin releasing what was never yours to carry and heal what is. This isn't just about understanding the patterns; it's about lightening the load—unburdening the body, the nervous system, and the spirit from generations of protection strategies that have long outlived their purpose.Together, we create space for you to reclaim the parts of yourself that got lost along the way, so you can finally feel more present, more embodied, and more at home in yourself.

My Approach: Unpacking the Inherited and the Embedded

More Than Talk Therapy

Healing generational trauma requires more than talk therapy. The wounds are held in the body and in the unconscious patterns passed down through families. My approach is designed to reach those depths.My style is warm, open, and direct—always coming from a place of support and compassion. I welcome all parts of you to show up: the hopeful parts, the skeptical parts, and the parts that are tired of carrying what was never yours to hold. That includes every part of your identity—background, culture, sexuality, gender, ability, and faith. I'm committed to ongoing training around my own positionality as a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman, and I welcome any questions or feedback along the way.I draw from several modalities, depending on what you need:Internal Family Systems (IFS): An evidence-based model that helps you befriend the "parts" of you that developed to survive—the inner critic, the exile, the caretaker. IFS allows you to access the core Self beneath these parts: the you that is already whole, calm, and capable.Brainspotting & Trauma-Informed Yoga: These body-based approaches allow us to access and release trauma stored in the nervous system, often bypassing the need to "tell the story" over and over.Ancestral Healing: For those who feel called, I offer Ancestral Healing as a way to explore how family history, cultural wounds, and inherited patterns may be influencing your present. This work is separate from clinical treatment and is rooted in spiritual and experiential practice. It is for clients who sense that their healing extends beyond their own lifetime.

About Me

My name is Riitta de los Santos. I earned my MA in Counseling Psychology from Palo Alto University in 2015. In addition to private practice, my experience includes working in county mental health, forensic settings, and with military veterans suffering from complex trauma and PTSD.A native of Finland, I immigrated to the US as an adult in my late 20s and have since navigated the complexities of building a life and family across cultures. Although invisible to the eye, I also brought along a heavy backpack of personal and generational trauma.Learning to unpack that backpack changed my life—and set me on the path to helping others do the same. I'm still doing my own work, and I always will be. But these days, even on the hard days, there's more room to breathe. That makes all the difference.My experiences have given me deep insight into how family of origin, culture, race, identity, and ancestral burdens shape the way we think, feel, and move through the world.

Contact and Fees

The patterns that have followed you—and perhaps followed your family for generations—they do not have to define your future.I offer a free, 30-minute online consultation to explore your needs, answer any questions, and determine if we're a good fit.My fee is $130 per session (Limited sliding scale slots available). I am not currently accepting insurance.Ready to begin unpacking what you carry?Email Me to Book a Free Consultation:

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