Stacy Hajarian

I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist based in Santa Monica, with over 15 years of experience helping adults navigate the moments in life that feel too heavy to carry alone, and too important to ignore. I hold a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University, and my approach draws from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and depth-oriented modalities including Internal Family Systems (IFS) and psychodynamic therapy — I’ve chosen approaches that are both evidence-based and deeply human.

Before becoming a therapist, I spent over a decade as a television casting director and producer at some of Los Angeles’s most respected networks and production companies. That career gave me a firsthand understanding of what it feels like to navigate high-pressure environments: the relentless pace, the blurred lines between identity and achievement, and the quiet cost of keeping it all together on the outside. It’s a perspective I carry into the room with every client.

Life can quietly accumulate. Deadlines, relationships, expectations, and the weight of simply trying to keep up. For many high-functioning adults, distress doesn't always look like falling apart. It can look like staying very busy, overthinking, people-pleasing, or feeling disconnected from yourself even when everything on the outside looks fine. If you've been running on stress for so long it feels normal, or if tension in your relationships — at work, at home, or within yourself — has started to feel louder than you can manage alone, therapy can help you find your footing again.

My approach draws from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), and psychodynamic and attachment-based therapy. Because lasting change usually requires both structure and depth.

CBT offers practical, evidence-based tools to help you recognize the thoughts and behaviors that are keeping you stuck. It's concrete, skill-building work that can bring meaningful relief relatively quickly.

IFS invites you into a compassionate relationship with the different parts of yourself, including the ones that carry stress, fear, or old wounds. Rather than fighting those parts, you begin to understand what they need.

Psychodynamic and attachment-based work illuminates how your history shapes your present, especially in relationships. It helps you see the invisible threads connecting past experience to current patterns, so those patterns finally have somewhere to go.

My clients are often thoughtful, self-aware adults who are doing well by most external measures, yet something feels off. They may be:

• Chronically overwhelmed, even when they can’t fully explain why
• Navigating stress that’s showing up in their body, sleep, or closest relationships
• Repeating patterns in relationships they haven’t been able to change on their own
• Considering a career transition but feeling stuck or uncertain
• Ready to go beyond symptom management and do deeper, more meaningful work