Anke Kalaiah, LMFT

Anke Kalaiah is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in California who helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, relationship strains, grief, and life transitions. She works with those coping with trauma, parenting challenges, caregiving strain, addiction, ADHD, and aging and geriatric issues. Sessions are conversational and focused on practical steps clients can try between meetings. Anke uses a client-centered style that treats each person as the expert on their life. She draws from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to help people notice patterns in thoughts and behavior. Mindfulness and motivational strategies are used to build skills for managing strong emotions and making steady change. Her background includes a Bachelor degree in German and Social Psychology from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from Santa Clara University in California. She received her California LMFT license in 2014 and brings about 15 years of clinical experience working in diverse settings. An immigrant herself, Anke understands stress tied to cultural adjustment and works with people from varied backgrounds. Much of her recent work has focused on trauma, domestic and sexual abuse, family conflict, divorce, blended families, and coparenting issues. She favors short-term, skills-based work when that fits the client's goals, and she also supports longer therapeutic work for deeper patterns. The first steps include talking about priorities and setting simple, achievable goals together.

How Anke’s approaches shape online therapy

Client-centered therapy emphasizes the client's priorities and choices. In practice this means sessions begin by hearing what matters most and setting goals together. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people spot links between thoughts, feelings, and actions and try small experiments to shift unhelpful patterns. This approach is useful for anxiety, depression, and stress-related problems. Dialectical Behavior Therapy teaches concrete skills for mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and better interpersonal interactions, which can help with strong emotions and relationship strain. Finding the right approach is part of the work. Anke will collaborate with each person to decide which methods fit their needs, goals, and preferences. She combines techniques when helpful and checks in regularly to adjust the plan based on what’s working. Confirm the current session options before booking so you know how sessions are delivered. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy week, cut travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when needed. They also make it simpler to include caregivers in scheduling and to maintain continuity of care when life becomes unpredictable.