Make an Appointment: (707) 529-3021 |   s.machado.phd@gmail.com

s.machado.phd@gmail.com | (707) 529-3021
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My Approach

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Integrative Depth Psychotherapy & Neurofeedback

Therapist in Petaluma

I believe that, at its core, effective and meaningful psychotherapy occurs in a trusting relationship between client and therapist—a relationship that is in great part the agent of change. I work to provide you with the safe and necessary container in which you discover hidden sources of strength, resilience, and knowing, and learn new methods and tools for facing life’s challenges.

By carefully exploring your struggles together, we find and care for those places in you that long for attention, and support you to engage with your life in a more fulfilling and satisfying way. My experience working with others leads me to believe that lasting change occurs most readily when we work collaboratively to both resolve your pain while listening attentively for the message it carries. Recent research shows that this whole-person, trauma-informed approach to psychotherapy is both highly effective and meaningful for clients.

“There is a secret love hiding in each problem.”

– Hillman

Areas of Expertise
An Engaging & Collaborative Stance

I take an interactive and collaborative approach with you. I offer feedback and suggestions in a sensitive, well-timed manner while remaining deeply invested in helping you to find your own answers and trust yourself more.

A Focus on Solutions

Your goals guide our work together. We begin by clarifying what you seek for yourself and revisit these goals over the course of therapy. At times, we focus on specific skills or behavioral changes needed to overcome some difficulty or troubling symptom; at other times, we focus intensively on what drives the symptom in order to resolve it.

Attention to the Relational

When it is helpful, we explore the interactions that occur between us. Our relationship serves as a rich source of information about your inner world and characteristic ways of interacting with others, and provides the safe space for corrective experiences.

An Appreciation for Depth & Meaning

Together we appreciate the role of your past experiences and the resulting influences they have on your present life. At the same time, we seek to find and make meaning of what it is that calls your forward. In this way we balance past, present, and future. We also explore ways to access your inner symbolic life, which provides useful information about the new story you seek to live. These methods include: dreamwork, journaling, meditation, imagery, contemplation, sandplay, and other creative processes.

An Integrative Stance

Every human being is complex. A comprehensive approach in psychotherapy to your unique complexity is essential. Based on your particular needs, we integrate emotional (i.e., feelings), cognitive (i.e., thoughts), physical/somatic, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of who you are. When helpful to you, we may integrate neurofeedback into our work to “turn the volume down” on distressing symptoms, so you can actually understand the message they carry. Or we may utilize EFT tapping, matrix reimprinting, EMDR, or AEDP to process traumatic experiences

Attention to Context & Identities

As a depth-oriented psychotherapist committed to cultural humility and social justice, I view your ethnic, sexual, gender, and other identities as sources of strength and resilience. Further, I believe it is critical to incorporate into our understanding of your challenges the experiences of oppression and marginalization you have experienced and the harm sustained by these experiences.

Guiding Principles

I think it is important that you know how I think about the therapeutic process to see if my philosophy aligns with your own.

Certain principles characterize my work as a psychotherapist and neurofeedback clinician. They serve as the bedrock of my practice and underlie my use of any particular technique or theory with you.


"Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being, if you give it space to move toward its rightness."

- Gendlin

About Dr. Machado

“Your visions will become clear only when you look into your own heart.”

– C. G. Jung

My Training

Psychologist in Petaluma

My work is informed by a variety of approaches that I tailor to meet your specific needs. I draw from advanced doctoral and post-doctoral training, in-depth study, and years of mentoring with experts in the following:

Psychotherapy

Neurofeedback