Blanca Santana, PhD, MS, LCSWR

I am a a bilingual, Spanish-speaking clinician with 28 years of experience treating adults, adolescents, and children struggling with trauma, grief, loss, cultural identity challenges, diaspora, social stress, and life transitions. I utilize an eclectic, client-centered, and collaborative care approach that helps you regain your confidence and hope.

Growing up in a culturally-diverse, inner-city community, I experienced challenges with my multifaceted identity as a woman of color in a conservative-centric Christian household. Feeling like I didn’t belong, I doubted my potential and struggled with low self-esteem throughout my early years. Fitting in socially was challenging and as I sought support to address my concerns, connecting and trusting a therapist was difficult, as I longed to have someone understand and empathize with my background. In my journey of self-acceptance, I realized that it is my diversity and faith that make me strong and resilient. I learned to trust in myself and my Christianity by embracing my culture, language, ethnicity, and spirituality. I was very fortunate to find therapeutic support that helped empower me to understand that my heritage, traditions, and faith were important aspects of my identity. Through this experience, I became passionate about helping others find support and empowerment.

What should someone know about working with you?
In our initial meeting, I will conduct a consultation to assess our therapeutic fit. We will discuss what you are looking for in a therapist as well as my clinical approaches to address your specific needs and goals. In the initial session, we will complete a biopsychosocial assessment to gain an understanding of your background, to explore your current concerns, and to discover what brings you to therapy at this time in your life. As we begin our therapeutic relationship, we will address what you want to achieve from therapy. This will consist of developing skills and interventions followed by monitoring your progress in weekly sessions. If you have a beloved animal serving as your emotional support, we can also incorporate them into our therapy sessions using animal-assisted interventions. My forte is working with persons of diverse cultures and communities where I incorporate heritage, language, ethnicity, and spiritual beliefs to help them find balance in their lives.

Over the years, I have trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, solution-focused brief therapy, Adlerian counseling, expressive therapies (play, art, and sand), spiritual therapy, narrative therapy, mindfulness, animal-assisted therapy, psychodynamic therapy and psychoanalysis. Part of my core values as a clinician includes always learning and growing as a professional. I participate in continuing education to learn innovative therapy approaches that can benefit my clients.