Welcome in! Im glad you’re here.
My name is Lauren. I am a licensed therapist providing telehealth to folks living in California, Washington, Virginia, & Florida.
Life includes painful experiences. But when those experiences overwhelm our system, our brains take note — implicitly learn how to protect us from encountering that kind of threat again.
With almost 10 years in practice and seeing the transformations in me from my own therapeutic journey, I have a deep trust in what insight, embodiment, and courageous action can do when practiced (at first) in the therapeutic space.
I specialize in helping individuals and couples change those protective patterns — from anxiety & depression, to people-pleasing & perfectionism.
“Mind without body just narrates old stories. Body without mind feels chaotic and disjointed. And without a field to take action, neither one can adapt to the present”.
- Lauren Ziel, LCSW
Why Experiential Therapy?
Your brain isn't a filing cabinet of facts waiting to be opened — it's a prediction machine, constantly forecasting what's about to happen based on what's happened before — executing the prediction faster than conscious thought ever could.
You can't out-think a prediction. And talking about the pattern may prove you understand it… but it doesn't prove to your system that it's safe to stop running that prediction. You have to have a different experience convincing enough to update it.
Changing the Pattern
The most current clinical neuroscience is specific about this: a pattern only becomes editable when it's activated in the room and met, in that same window, with something that genuinely contradicts it. Not contradicted on paper — contradicted in the body, in real time, while the old prediction is still live.
That's the whole premise of experiential therapy. Not more explaining. An actual, felt experience — new enough, real enough — that your system has no choice but to update the algorithm.
If the prediction is wrong, the pattern(s) is no longer needed.
Creating the Conditions
There's no single tool that does this for everyone, which is why I am trained in several methods— parts-work, somatic and polyvagal-informed practices, EFT, ART, BSP, Active Imagination — not as a menu to pick a favorite from, but as different doors into the same room. For some, patterns need to be spoken to first. For other’s they need to be felt before they'll listen. Some only move once the body does something different- aligned with an impulse. The tool matters less than whether it gets you into the conditions where the old prediction finally meets something it can't explain away.