Deana Porter, LMFT

Deana Porter is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in California with 29 years of clinical experience. She focuses on relationships, trauma and abuse, intimacy concerns, and issues that affect self-esteem and motivation. She aims to create a respectful, sensitive space and adjusts conversations to meet each person’s needs.

Her approach is practical and collaborative. She uses methods from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to help people identify unhelpful thoughts and learn skills for managing strong emotions. She also draws on the Gottman Method for relationship work and Internal Family Systems to look at different parts inside a person that influence behavior.

Porter supports people facing grief, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and stress from caregiving or life changes. She also works with parenting concerns, blended family dynamics, adoption and foster care issues, and aging and geriatric issues. Sessions address communication problems, codependency, commitment worries, and patterns that come from family of origin.

Her style is straightforward and compassionate. She tailors goals and plans to what matters most to the person in front of her. Topics are broken into manageable steps, with tools you can practice between sessions.

Deana frames therapy as a partnership. She encourages realistic steps toward better sleep, healthier relationships, improved mood, and clearer priorities. If you want a direct, experienced clinician who uses evidence-informed techniques, she may be a good fit.

How her approaches translate to online work

Deana uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. CBT is often used for anxiety, depression, sleep and eating problems, and coping with life changes. She also uses Dialectical Behavior Therapy to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness skills useful for strong emotions and relationship conflict.

Choosing a therapeutic approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to decide which combination of methods fits their needs and goals. That decision may evolve as work continues, with new strategies added when useful.

The biography does not list specific online session formats, so confirm current options before booking. In general, online work can make therapy easier to fit into a busy day, reduce travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when needed. It can also let people practice skills between sessions in the settings where they live and work, and make it simpler to attend when caregiving or mobility are challenges.