Dr. Kristina Mendez, PhD
Dr. Kristina Mendez is a bilingual (English/Spanish) psychologist offering trauma-informed telehealth across California for anxiety, intergenerational family stress, identity, and immigration-related concerns.
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Working with Kristina
I provide online therapy to teens and adults across California navigating stress, anxiety, trauma, and identity-related concerns. Many of my clients are balancing multiple cultural identities, family expectations, or the emotional weight of today's social and political climate — including anxiety tied to immigration policy, family safety, racialized stress, or bicultural identity. I also work with depression, mood, and adjustment concerns, in English or Spanish.
My approach is grounded in culturally responsive, trauma-informed care. Mental health is shaped by identity, family systems, community experiences, and environment. Therapy can be a place to process realities like immigration-related concerns, family-separation fears, or discrimination without minimizing them — while building resilience and steadiness. I integrate CBT, ACT, and DBT within a relational framework that honors your lived experience.
Clients often describe my style as warm, steady, and collaborative. We'll begin with a thoughtful intake, then blend structured, evidence-based tools with relational conversation — some sessions practical, others exploring identity, family narratives, or the stress of navigating multiple worlds. Therapy should feel supportive but also purposeful, moving toward clarity, self-trust, and change at a manageable pace.
What Kristina treats
Constant worry or racing thoughts, panic, that "what if" loop you can't switch off.
Struggling after a really stressful experience — difficult memories, sleep, feeling on edge, and changes in how you see yourself, other people, or the world.
Low mood, loss of interest, exhaustion, or feeling stuck and disconnected from what used to matter.
Care that accounts for your culture, background, and identity — and never asks you to leave any part of yourself at the door.
Affirming support for queer lives and relationships, from someone who won't make you explain the basics.
The hard parts of trying to conceive, pregnancy, postpartum, or loss.
Feeling stretched thin, overwhelmed, or running on empty — a low-pressure place to start when everything feels like too much.
Kristina also brings specific experience with: Identity Exploration, Sex & Gender, College Students, Life Transitions, Meaning Making, Perfectionism, Self-Esteem, First-Gen, Immigrants & Third-Culture, Marginalized backgrounds.
Approaches Kristina uses
Other clinicians at Grounded.
If Kristina isn’t the right fit — or the schedule doesn’t work — these clinicians might be.
Dr. Becca Graham
Dr. Maria Meinerding
