About Arlene
Dr. Arlene Unger uses straightforward, evidence-informed approaches to help people manage stress, anxiety, ADHD, and other struggles. She is a California psychologist with three decades of experience.
Her style is practical and collaborative so people can apply what they learn to daily life. She draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thought and behavior patterns. She also uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to teach skills for living with strong emotions while focusing on personal values.
Background and approach
Emotionally-Focused Therapy guides work on close relationships and improving emotional connection. Dr. Unger understands how loss, trauma, addiction, and long-term stress can wear people down.
She helps clients build simple coping tools for sleep, anger, eating concerns, and panic. Many people come to her for support with depression, low self-esteem, or feeling isolated. With thirty years of clinical experience and a PhD in Clinical Psychology, she blends practical coaching with talk therapy.
Her background includes writing mindfulness visualization exercises and other resources that support daily practice. She explains strategies clearly and models exercises during sessions. Sessions can focus on improving communication, setting boundaries, managing symptoms of bipolar disorder or ADHD, and returning to valued activities.
Dr. Unger works step by step with each person to set realistic goals and track progress. She prefers a collaborative pace so clients feel able to use new skills between sessions.
Therapeutic approaches and online care that fit your life
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people accept difficult feelings while committing to actions tied to their values. It is useful for chronic stress, worry, and for managing symptoms like those that come with ADHD when the goal is living a meaningful life despite hard thoughts and feelings.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on spotting unhelpful thoughts and behaviors and replacing them with more helpful ones. It is commonly used for anxiety, panic, depression, sleep problems, and many everyday challenges where changing what you do changes how you feel.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) concentrates on emotions and how they show up in close relationships. It can help people improve communication, handle intimacy-related issues, and rebuild emotional connection.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, symptoms, and preferences and then suggest which methods to try. That plan can change over time based on what works and what doesn’t.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video lets people work face to face from different locations, phone calls use less bandwidth, live chat can be a brief check-in, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life while trying different approaches to see what helps most.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 30 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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