About Jilla
Jilla Lavian is a California licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) with 20 years of experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, relationship strain, parenting challenges, and shifts in life direction. She speaks English and Persian and brings a calm, practical presence to sessions.
Clients first get clear, focused time to describe what feels hard right now. Lavian listens and helps name emotions and patterns that show up in daily life.
How Jilla works
She supports people who want to boost self-esteem, cope with grief or anger, or find direction in career and life purpose. Her approach mixes practical tools and reflective work. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people notice and change unhelpful thinking and behavior.
Mindfulness practices teach simple ways to settle the mind and reduce stress. Motivational Interviewing is used to build momentum toward goals, while psychodynamic ideas look at how past relationships shape current reactions. Sessions may include short exercises, goal-setting, and discussion about real-world steps to try between meetings.
Lavian also draws on coaching skills to help clients clarify priorities and take action. The work is collaborative - she and the client decide what to focus on and how to move forward. She has particular interest in caregiver stress, attachment and abandonment concerns, family of origin issues, immigration-related adjustment, and multicultural matters.
Her background supports people seeking both practical coping strategies and deeper self-understanding.
Jilla lists 5 ways of working on the entry:
What Jilla works with
The areas below are the ones Jilla selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Parenting issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Multicultural concerns
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 20 |
| Languages | English, Persian |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | California |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches that translate to online care
Jilla commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Mindfulness Therapy to help people manage stress and change unhelpful habits. CBT focuses on identifying thoughts and behaviors that get in the way, and then practicing new ways of thinking and acting to reduce anxiety and improve mood. Mindfulness Therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices that reduce reactivity and support clearer decision making.Motivational Interviewing is another tool she uses to help people find internal motivation for change. It involves asking focused questions, reflecting what matters to the person, and building small, doable goals. Together the therapist and client decide which approach or mix of approaches fits the client's needs and aims, and they adjust over time as progress and preferences become clear.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video works well for in-depth conversation and exercises, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and messaging supports quick check-ins or brief coaching between sessions. These options help clients fit therapy into busy schedules and maintain regular contact as goals evolve.
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Common questions
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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