Layla Berenjian, MA,

Mental Health Practitioner
Meet Layla (she/her) – Eating Disorder, Trauma, Couples, and Integrated Care Specialist

Layla grew up in a family of storytellers. As a second-generation Iranian immigrant, she learned early that stories carry history, identity, resilience, and survival. That foundation deeply shapes her work as a therapist. She understands that every person who walks into her office carries a story that deserves to be heard with care, nuance, and respect.
Her approach to therapy goes beyond traditional talk therapy. Layla sees healing as layered and interconnected, shaped by biology, lived experience, relationships, and the systems around us. She holds the belief that many of the patterns we struggle with are intelligent responses to environments that required adaptation. Anxiety, overachievement, emotional withdrawal, people-pleasing, control, hyper-independence — these are often strategies that once kept us connected, protected, or safe. Rather than rushing to pathologize, Layla slows down. She is interested in understanding what each response has been trying to protect.
This perspective does not dismiss agency or responsibility. Instead, it creates room — room to examine the past without being defined by it, room to relate to ourselves with more curiosity than criticism. When we understand the function of our patterns, we are no longer at war with them. From there, change becomes less about force and more about integration.
Layla provides affirming, inclusive care for individuals ages 16 and older, supporting clients through anxiety, trauma, relationship dynamics, identity exploration, life transitions, and the quiet relational patterns that often operate beneath the surface.

Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating
If persistent food noise is occupying your mental real estate, or body image concerns are preventing you from fully joining in—or even staying present when you do—Layla offers compassionate, stigma-free guidance to heal your relationship with food, exercise, and your body. Her approach helps you understand the deeper root causes beneath your struggles, clarifying what these protective parts of you are shielding you from. Together, you’ll navigate conflicting misinformation about nutrition and exercise, discovering what genuinely aligns with your body, lifestyle, and goals. Healing doesn’t mean feeling shameful about wanting to look or feel a certain way—Layla compassionately explores these desires through an empowering, non-judgmental lens. She collaborates closely with functional nutritionists and naturopathic providers, honoring your whole self so you can reclaim health, joy, and presence.

LGBTQIA+ Affirming Care
Layla passionately provides inclusive support for individuals navigating identity, body image, mental health, relationships, and systemic challenges. She creates a therapeutic environment where you feel deeply respected, authentically seen, and empowered in your journey, fully embracing your true self.

Couples Therapy
Layla loves couples work because the therapy unfolds in real time. You are not just talking about the dynamic, you are witnessing it. The interruption, the withdrawal, the sarcasm, the longing beneath the defensiveness. What might stay abstract in individual therapy becomes visible, tangible, and workable in the room.

She views relationships as living systems shaped by attachment history, culture, trauma, desire, and fear. When couples feel stuck, it is rarely about one person being the problem. It is about the pattern that has taken hold between you. Often, both partners are reaching for connection, but their strategies collide.

Whether you are navigating high-conflict cycles, addiction and recovery, ethical non-monogamy, attachment injuries, or the aftermath of betrayal or trauma, Layla helps slow down the interaction so you can understand what is happening underneath the reaction. What feels threatened? What feels unseen? What does each of you most need but struggle to ask for?

Layla works alongside a co-therapist in a dynamic, balanced model that brings depth and range to the room. Her co-therapist shares a similar relational philosophy while offering a distinct temperament and lens. Together, they create a structure where both partners feel equally held and challenged. The presence of two clinicians softens polarization, expands perspective, and allows the room to hold complexity without collapsing into sides. No one is the identified problem. The relationship itself becomes the focus, and the work becomes collaborative rather than adversarial.

This approach is intentional. It creates accountability without shame, honesty without attack, and repair without humiliation.

Trauma, Addiction, and Mental Health
Trauma is often misunderstood. It is sometimes minimized as something we should simply “get over,” and other times overstated or flattened into a trend. Trauma is neither trivial nor theatrical. It is a wound. It is what happens to us when an experience overwhelms our capacity to process it. It lives not just in memory, but in the body, in relationships, and in the patterns we develop to feel safe again.

Many of the struggles people carry begin as adaptations to that wound. Anxiety, perfectionism, substance use, emotional shutdown, over-functioning. These are not random flaws. They are attempts to regulate, protect, or survive. Layla approaches trauma and addiction with the understanding that symptoms make sense in context.

Her work focuses on helping you understand what your coping strategies have been doing for you, and what they may now be costing you. Through a blend of parts-oriented work, motivational exploration, and practical tools for regulation, she helps clients move from automatic survival responses toward more intentional living.

Whether you are processing childhood trauma, navigating substance use, living with anxiety or depression, or feeling worn down by the demands of everyday life, Layla creates a space that is steady, non-judgmental, and deeply respectful. Healing is not about dramatizing your story, nor dismissing it. It is about tending to the wound in a way that restores agency, clarity, and connection.

Layla is also a 1000-hour certified yoga instructor in Bikram and Vinyasa yoga, thoughtfully incorporating mind-body techniques into therapy sessions.
Above all, Layla believes true healing begins by honoring and uplifting your voice and your story. Healing doesn’t have to be just a hopeful wish.