Kristin Robert
Associate Marriage and Family Therapist -
I bring more than 17 years of experience in mental health and addiction care, including a decade as the Executive Director of a residential treatment center in Malibu. Working within high-acuity environments taught me how to remain steady through crisis, tolerate uncertainty, and look beyond the most visible symptom to understand the person and history beneath it. After years of helping shape treatment from a leadership role, I chose to return to graduate school and work directly with people in the private, consequential moments where change actually takes place.
I work with adults, couples, and families, with a particular emphasis on women ages 16 and older across every stage of life. Many of my clients enter therapy after something has disrupted the way they understand themselves or the future they expected: grief, trauma, betrayal, infidelity, divorce, suicidal thoughts, family rupture, or a major transition that has divided life into before and after. Others arrive because they are exhausted by patterns they understand intellectually but remain unable to change.
My approach is warm, direct, and deeply engaged. I am not a silent therapist, and I do not believe polished reassurance is always the same as care. I listen closely, ask intentional questions, identify patterns, and offer honest reflection or challenge when it can deepen the work. I believe compassion and accountability belong in the same room. People deserve to have their experiences understood without being reduced to them, while also being supported in recognizing where they still have agency and responsibility.
I draw from attachment-based therapy, depth psychology, somatic awareness, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and family-systems work. Rather than forcing every client into one theory, I consider what level of the experience needs attention. Some pain requires language and meaning. Some remains active in the nervous system through vigilance, numbness, collapse, or a body that continues preparing for danger. Some patterns require practical intervention, while others must be understood at their roots before lasting change becomes possible.
I do not view anxiety, perfectionism, withdrawal, anger, control, people-pleasing, or hyper-independence as evidence that someone is fundamentally broken. These responses usually developed within a context. They may have protected connection, reduced conflict, preserved belonging, or helped someone remain functional when few other options were available. Therapy allows us to become precise about what those adaptations once accomplished, what they cost now, and whether they have become permanent requirements for feeling safe or loved.
With couples, I am interested in what conflict is protecting as much as what it is damaging. Anger may stand in front of grief. Criticism may conceal fear that the relationship no longer matters. Withdrawal may begin as an attempt to prevent escalation and become indistinguishable from abandonment. I do not position myself as a judge, manufacture equal blame, or ask couples to meet in the middle when the middle obscures responsibility. We identify the pattern, clarify what belongs to each person, and examine what repair would actually require.
Family therapy brings attention to the rules operating beneath the family’s stated problem: whose feelings organize the room, which truths remain forbidden, who is expected to forgive, who carries the anger, and who becomes “the difficult one” because examining the larger system would be more threatening. The goal is not a sentimental version of family unity. It is a more honest form of relationship in which connection does not depend upon silence, submission, or one person carrying what belongs to everyone.
I work especially well with clients who want deep, transformational work rather than symptom management alone. You do not need to arrive with perfect insight or know exactly where to begin. Motivation does not mean certainty. It means a willingness to become curious about what is happening beneath the surface, speak honestly about what is no longer working, and remain engaged when the work becomes uncomfortable or revealing.
My own life has taught me that grief can alter us without becoming the entirety of who we are, and that rebuilding does not always mean returning to who we were before. Sometimes it requires discovering who we are in the wake of what happened. I became a therapist partly because I experienced what can occur when another person sees potential that pain has made difficult to recognize, offers challenge without abandonment, and remains present through experiences that do not resolve neatly.
At a personal level, I value substance over presentation, accountability without humiliation, and honesty delivered with care. Outside the therapy room, I am grounded by books, nature, the ocean, meaningful conversation, and life with my two dogs. I appreciate intelligence, humor, loyalty, and people willing to be real before they are polished.
I do not believe therapy is about placing a bow on experiences that changed you, burning everything down in the name of authenticity, or learning to tolerate a life organized around other people’s comfort. It is about developing the discernment to understand what happened, what it required you to become, what remains worth preserving, and what you are no longer willing to abandon within yourself.
Supervised by Supervised by Dr. Shari Corbitt PsyD #18743
https://www.kristinrobertpsychotherapy.com/
Skills and Expertise
Abandonment
Abuse / Survivors of Abuse
Addiction
Adjusting to Change / Life Transitions
Adjustment to College
Adult
Alcohol Use
Anxiety
Attachment Issues
Breakups
Cancer
Codependency
College Age
Commitment Issues
Communication Problems
Control Issues
Coping Mechanisms
Couple Counseling
Depression
Divorce and Divorce Adjustment
Drug Use
Emotional Abuse
Entitlement
Family Conflict
Family of Origin Issues
Fatherless
Fear
Forgiveness
Grief
Guilt
Identity Issues
Inadequacy
Individuation
Infidelity and Affair Recovery
Irritability
Isolation
Loss
Loss or Grief
Marriage Couseling
Midlife Crisis
Navigating Identity in Relationships
Peer Relationships
Perfectionism
Premarital Counseling
Relationship Issues
Self Esteem
Spirituality
Substance Use
Suicidal Ideation
Teens
Trauma
Trauma and PTSD
Women's issue
Treatment Orientation
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
Couple and Family Systems Therapy
Humanistic
Intervention
Jungian
Marital Couple/ Family Communication Therapy
Motivational Interviewing
Psychodynamic
Psychotherapy
Relational Therapy
Rogerian
Somatic
Telehealth-based
Acceptance Commitment Therapy
DBT Informed Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy
Family/Marital Therapy
IFS
Person Centered Therapy
Modality
Couples
Family
Group
Individuals