Angela Sitka, M.A., LMFT

Many of my clients have spent years trying to figure things out on their own, trying to deal with the overthinking, second-guessing themselves, and wanting better relationships.

I know that journey well, and I'd like to share a little about what led me to become a therapist and how I help people move forward.

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How I Help My Clients:

  • My clients are intelligent and capable people who need a therapist who doesn’t just sit back and listen, they need direction from their therapist to see the bigger picture of all the complexities of their lives.

    The clients who find me a good match are typically looking for a therapist with a calm and steady demeanor, rational perspective, and deep emotional empathy. Someone who picks up on all the little details, pieces them together and gives a roadmap to navigate extremely confusing relational dynamics and complex life circumstances.

    Past clients comment that my qualities of patience, attentiveness, and expertise in relational issues helped them have the confidence to move forward in make real positive changes in their lives.

  • I was first introduced to ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) many years ago during my clinical training internship, when I was working with adolescents with severe and chronic eating disorders.

    I was really struck by how different it was from other types of therapy I’d been exposed to.

    As someone who has always struggled with anxiety myself, I thought I needed to neutralize and minimize my strong thoughts and feelings in order to be “normal.”

    It was such a discouraging path for me because, inevitably, whenever I got grounded and stable enough to put myself out there more and allow myself to live a bigger, more meaningful life, anxiety and negative thinking would resurface.

    It felt like I was constantly backtracking and regressing, so frustrating!

    I was drawn to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy because it’s based on the concept that the human mind naturally produces worries, judgments, fears, and painful stories about ourselves and the world (there is nothing wrong with us to have these thoughts and feelings).

    ACT helps us change our relationship with these inner experiences, so they have less power over how we live.

    Since then, I’ve learned how to understand and respond differently to my thoughts and feelings, instead of fighting against them, reasoning with them, trying to distract from them, avoiding them, or otherwise telling myself to “stop thinking that way!”

    I find ACT to be a non-shaming, normalizing, and a very compassionate approach compared to a traditional medical model of mental health that sees our distressing thoughts and feelings as “abnormal” or something that needs to be diagnosed and fixed.

    It’s kind of counterintuitive, but once I dropped the struggle with my thoughts and feelings, it opened up doors of peace and contentment for me, and an internalized sense of confidence that I can handle the next thing that comes up in life. It’s an honor for me to help others do the same.

  • As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, my training and experience is grounded in understanding relationships and seeing our emotional pain through a relational lens.

    My passion in my work is helping people dig deep into understanding their patterns and having those “ah-ha” moments that allow for healthy and happy connections with others.

    While I utilize several different approaches with my clients to create a personalized treatment plan, but my overall view of helping my clients is through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with elements of Psychodynamic or Relational Psychotherapy to deepen my client’s understanding of themselves.

    I maintain a relatively small caseload of clients compared to most therapists in private practice, due to the nature of my work, I need to be highly attentive and remember the details of my clients’ lives.

    This also allows me to think about what will help you apply the things we talk and practice in therapy into your life outside of therapy.

    You might receive follow-up emails with key takeaways or leave sessions with handouts of tools and concepts to keep the work going. I recommend readings and books, and other resources I think would help you.

    My goal is for you to carry what you learn here into your everyday life, so the changes don’t stay in therapy, they show up in how you actually live.

 

My journey to become a therapist

When I began college at UC Davis, I was deeply undecided about what I wanted to pursue as a career. I was interested in learning about a lot of things, and as someone who at times struggles with decision-making, I was an undeclared major most my college years until I got an email from my school in my 3rd year telling me if I didn’t declare a major, I couldn’t go to their school anymore.

I wanted to explore it all, which included volunteering as a late-night substitute radio DJ for the campus radio station, taking beer and brew making classes, and studying abroad in Greece to see the ancient sites following a year of taking ancient history courses. I was living a full life from the outside that I loved, but I was also struggling internally with managing anxiety that I did not fully understand at that time.

Thankfully in my exploration, I started volunteering at a peer counseling internship at my school that gave me a little window into what eventually became my career and passion. I began learning the basics of how to use counseling skills to help other students. It felt like a natural fit for my strengths and passions. In counseling, I get to be my naturally curious self.

The Moment It Clicked

When I was working at the peer counseling center, I remember one student in particular had a big aha moment during one of our counseling sessions. They realized how hard they had been on themselves while trying to navigate the overwhelming transition to college and build a new adult life in the "right" way.

Not only could I relate, but I was able to point out some things in their thinking process that it was hard for them to recognize.

As we talked, they began to make room for a little more self-compassion, I could almost see the weight lifting from their shoulders.

That experience had a lasting impact on me. It showed me how powerful it can be when someone feels truly understood and learns to relate to themselves differently.

Building a Practice Around What Matters

From there, I knew I wanted to become a therapist, though the path wasn't exactly a straight one. Years of graduate school, internship hours, training, and licensing exams eventually led to becoming a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in 2017.

Along the way, per my usual exploratory nature, I worked in schools, medical settings, government agencies, non-profits, juvenile hall, and even locked mental institutions.

Over the years, I began to notice what seemed to create the most meaningful and lasting change for people. When I started my private practice, I built it around those lessons.

Rather than being constrained by brief treatment models or trying to be everything to everyone, I wanted to create a practice where I could work deeply with clients who are a natural fit for my approach. This allows me to focus on the kinds of struggles I'm most passionate about helping people overcome and provide therapy that is individualized, intentional, and focused on real change.

My Qualifications as a Licensed Psychotherapist:

 

My Specialties:

Relationship Anxiety

Stressed Out Professionals

Men’s Issues

Young Adult Issues

Angela Sitka is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #97770) in Santa Rosa, California, providing therapy to adults throughout California. As a licensed therapist since 2017, she specializes in helping individuals strengthen their relationships through greater emotional awareness, effective communication, and psychological flexibility.

Her educational background has included specialized training in using ACT Therapy to address perfectionism and people-pleasing tendencies, as well as ACT for Trauma. She writes and collaborates in popular media about various relational topics including setting boundaries, obsessive thinking, emotional intelligence, and relationship attachment styles in publications such as: TIME, HuffPost, SELF, PsychCentral, AskMen, and Cosmopolitan.

Her work integrates Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), attachment-informed therapy, and relational approaches to help clients navigate conflict, reduce emotional reactivity, and build healthier, more secure relationships.

Angela Sitka, LMFT, offering counseling in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County and online in California

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