Meet Alejandro Daniel | Licensed Couples Therapist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alejandro Daniel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alejandro Daniel, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
As a licensed couples therapist working for over half a decade now, I’m very proud of how Feel Understood Couples Counseling has strengthened and guided relationships with partners from many different backgrounds and cultures. Thanks to my training in Emotionally Focused Therapy, so many couples have learned how to better communicate their emotional needs to their partner, rediscovering and strengthening support and care within their relationship.

Couples at all stages of their relationship have benefited from EFT at Feel Understood; couples seeking premarital counseling who want to proactively build secure attachments, couples who recently moved in together, or experienced major life transitions, couples who are seeking to repair past hurts and rebuild trust, interracial and cross-cultural relationships with partners who may want to overcome and understand differences. It’s amazing to see how inclusive the Emotionally Focused Couples therapy model that I provide can create a positive and lasting impact for so many relationships.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
When people find out I’m a couples therapist, I usually get asked many insightful questions, and I think my answers to those questions makes Feel Understood Couples Counseling standout. For instance, people ask, what kind of couples therapy works best for Interracial or Multicultural couples?

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy works for anyone willing to be honest with how they feel, or at least ready to learn how to talk about themselves with their partner. The reason EFT is the most inclusive form of couples therapy is because this approach focuses on how each partner feels, and we all have emotions, whether or not we want to admit or understand them.

Understanding how a partner feels begins the couples therapy work, couples counseling is not about getting advice from the therapist. Not receiving direct advice from a therapist can seem off-putting to people of certain cultures and background. Depending on a person’s background, people may feel more comfortable receiving direction from someone they respect, or someone that is respected in their community.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy with Feel Understood will offer some direction. I help partners gain a better understanding of what needs to change in their relationship, and what will work better. But in order to figure that out, partners need to be open to being honest in how they feel, and open to learning how to articulate their feelings. The plan will be developed together.

I also get asked about new therapy platforms that have popped up over the years. Which is better, Talkspace or Betterhelp?

Thankfully, in our new era of mental health awareness more people are open to therapy. Unfortunately, more corporations, startups, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are interested in turning therapy into profit. Think of BetterHelp and TalkSpace as the Uber and Lyft of mental health.

Yes, these companies seem convenient and economical for customers, but are the monthly subscriptions customers pay for include real therapy and ethical treatment practices? These apps and therapy platforms incentivize therapists to unethically extend the Therapeutic Relationship with clients to gain financial bonus rewards. And I know this because these tech companies describe their payment incentives each time they ask me to work for them as a gig employee.

A therapist shouldn’t be treated like a gig economy worker. I’m proud that I’m a licensed and trained Marriage and Family Therapist who doesn’t unethically utilize a tech company to gain financial bonuses off clients seeking help.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
A real hidden gem in Los Angeles is Barnsdall Park. For tourists that want to see a great skyline, I always encourage them to see Los Angeles from this beautiful little hill and cultural center. A great place to enjoy a picnic, maybe see an art gallery showing, and take in a fantastic view of the Griffith Park Observatory and iconic Hollywood sign.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’m grateful to the EFT community of therapists in Los Angeles, and to the other couples therapists from alternative couples therapy modalities I’ve been able to consult with throughout my career. Their knowledge, and the training I received, has been instrumental in supporting my skillset as a therapist to better assess and guide couples.

And I’ve always been very grateful of the training I received at Didi Hirsch’s national suicide hotline when I was a crisis intervention counselor during my masters level training program over a decade ago. The high crisis work I became equipped to handle has primed my ability to work with couples in distress in a way many therapists would not be able to facilitate.

Many therapists shy away from couples work, but the training I’ve received from all of these communities has been invaluable in my confidence to help distressed couples repair, rebuild, and thrive.

Website: https://www.FeelUnderstood.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alejandro-daniel-pina-lmft-feel-understood

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FeelUnderstood

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/feel-understood-los-angeles

Other: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/feel-understood-couples-counseling-los-angeles-ca/358573

Image Credits
Credit Alejandro Daniel Pina to certify