Hi. I'm Dr. Laura Alfonso and I am a Licensed Clinical Psychologist based in (Pinecrest and Coral Gables) Miami, Florida. I provide evidence-based services and resources, focused on parenting, adolescents, and women. Individual sessions (online and in-person) and group sessions are aimed at meeting the client where they are in that moment and guiding them toward healing, using my clinical training, my experience as a therapist and my experience raising three children and moving through the different phases of life. Please read more about my therapeutic work and approaches below.

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My parenting philosophy stems from my training and research in attachment parenting, focusing on the bond between parent and child as essential for optimized parenting. I teach attachment-based interventions. There are a number of skills I feel are essential for optimal parenting such as, authoritarian parenting (responsiveness and expectations), inductive discipline, reflective listening, use of natural consequences, unconditional positive regard, parent awareness of parenting variables, just to name a few. I work with stressed and overwhelmed parents to help them develop the relationship they want with their child so they can raise happy, prosocial and resilient children. I emphasize developmental stages and tailoring interventions to the developmental stage of the child, from newborn to young adults. My doctoral research focused on proposing a model of how maternal affect regulation shapes parenting. ​Additionally, if past attachment relationships are influencing current parenting this can be explored within an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)-guided attachment reparative framework. I draw on extensive clinical experience working with children from inpatient to residential to day treatment to outpatient settings. With my own three children, a 12 year-old son, a 15 year-old son, and a 17 year-old daughter, I offer both the knowledge informed by clinical training and experience with my own experience of parenting to offer practical parenting interventions to create the relationship which optimizes the parent-child relationship.

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My work with adolescents and women grows out of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and neurocognitive interventions for transformation. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that focuses on how the power to shape our world can be found in the moments following an external or internal event. This choice point and our ability to make decisions from a place of choice about moving towards values brings alignment and a reduction of depression, stress and anxiety. I combine this cognitive model with somatic approaches such as somatic EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to offer skills and tools to the client immediately, while also combining this within a frame work of personal insight and healing. With adolescents, I use a similar approach with a specific focus on developing the cognitive and behavioral skills they need to navigate adolescence and the, at times, difficult transition to college. Providing these skills before a young adult leaves to college allows them to be well-prepared for the transition to college, for college, and later, for life.

 

With women, I use the skills of ACT to help them through the many different phases of a woman's life, teaching skills for growth and wellbeing. These skills often transform a woman's mindset, helping them to see and face challenges differently. Supplementing this wealth of powerful skills that a client can learn quickly and use in their lives, therapy incorporates somatic and neurocognitive interventions such as somatic EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). These somatic and neuro transformative skills are effective for changing problematic behavioral, somatic and neuro states, resulting in changes the client can observe and feel in their daily responses in their world. Grounding ACT within an understanding of the neuroscience of the brain creates interventions that lead to neurocognitive transformation. 

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Explore my website! I have all kinds of free resources available to help you on your journey. 

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To book an online or in-person session:

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