Therapy for Teens and Adults in San Marino

I work with teenagers and young adults who are not in crisis in the traditional sense but who know something is off. The ones who are functional on the outside and disconnected on the inside. The creative ones, the sensitive ones, the ones who feel like they are too much in some rooms and not enough in others. My practice has room for all of it, and I bring genuine warmth and curiosity to every person I work with.
Colorado Boulevard runs through Eagle Rock as the neighborhood's primary artery, lined with the coffee shops, bookstores, independent restaurants, and creative businesses that give the area its particular character. The Eagle Rock Recreation Center and Yosemite Drive Park anchor the residential core, and Occidental College brings an academic presence that has long coexisted with the neighborhood's working-class and Latine roots. The area borders Glendale to the north, Highland Park and Glassell Park to the west, and Mount Washington on the other side, and the community has maintained a creative and politically engaged identity through significant change.
Eagle Rock draws young people who are often highly self-aware, deeply curious, and still figuring out how to translate that self-awareness into a life that actually feels like theirs. Many of the teenagers and young adults I work with from this area are navigating the tension between creativity and conventional expectation, between their own sense of identity and what the people around them want that to look like. Therapy for teens in Eagle Rock, LA at my practice is built for exactly that kind of work.

How it works

My approach starts with your whole story

I am interested in you as a whole person: your creative life, your relationships, your sense of identity, what you are carrying, and what you are building. I bring tools from a range of approaches and select what fits rather than applying a single method. I work with warmth and directness, and I take people's inner lives seriously from the beginning.

Book a discovery call

The first step is a free 20-minute consultation where we have a real conversation about what is happening and whether this feels like a good fit. No preparation required. You do not need to have the right words or a clear sense of what is wrong. Whatever is actually there is enough to start with.

What ongoing work actually looks like

My clients build more than coping. They develop a relationship with themselves that is more honest, more flexible, and more able to tolerate the complexity of being a real person in a complicated world. That kind of inner stability makes everything else easier: the relationships, the creative work, the big decisions, the hard moments.

Explore my therapy services and specializations

Young people who are highly self-aware often have a complicated relationship with therapy. They have already analyzed their own patterns extensively. They know what their issues are, they can trace them to their origins, and they are puzzled about why that understanding has not done more to actually change things. What they need is not more analysis but a different kind of space: one where they can stop performing the work of insight and start doing the work of feeling. In sessions, I provide exactly that. We move from the intellectual to the experiential and we stay with what is actually present in the room. The shift from analyzing to inhabiting is often what produces the change that understanding alone could not. What builds over time is a more embodied, more honest relationship with themselves: still curious and self-aware, but rooted in something more real than cognitive understanding.
Creative and introspective clients often have vivid, sensory-rich relationships with their own memories: the images are specific, the feelings attached to them are strong, and the way certain experiences keep influencing the present is clearly felt even if it is not always understood. This richness is actually a significant asset in EMDR. The approach works by engaging the full experience of a memory rather than just its narrative, which makes it particularly well-suited to people who process experience in non-linear, associative, or highly embodied ways. The shift often feels less like insight and more like something finally releasing. I am a Certified EMDR Therapist, and I find this approach connects especially well with creative and imaginative clients. It meets them at the level where their experience actually lives.
Anxiety in creative, sensitive people often has a social imagination quality: the ability to vividly construct worst-case scenarios, to feel other people's responses before they happen, to live the fallout of a situation in their head before it has occurred. This kind of anxiety is relentless in its creativity and genuinely exhausting. In sessions, we work with the anxiety at the level where it is actually operating: the imagination, the body, the relational patterns, the beliefs underneath. We do not try to think our way out of it. We build a different kind of relationship with it over time. What clients describe as the work progresses is a change in the quality of their inner experience: less noise, more room, a greater capacity to be present in the moment they are actually in.
For creative teenagers, depression often arrives as a kind of creative silence: the things that used to absorb and delight them have gone quiet, the imagination that was a refuge has dried up, and the interiority that made them feel most alive has become just another source of pain. That specific loss is one of the hardest things I see, and it rarely gets named accurately. In sessions, we name it. We work with the depression and with the grief of what it has taken, without rushing the return. Some of the most important work in these cases is just sitting with what has gone quiet and holding space for the possibility that it can come back. What returns over time is not just mood but access to the creative self: the ideas, the curiosity, the ability to be moved by something. Clients describe it as coming back online, and that moment of return is one of the most meaningful things I witness in my work.
Creative people often process trauma through their imagination as much as through direct memory, which can make it harder to recognize or name. The recurring imagery, the dream life that keeps returning to something, the way certain colors or sounds or smells produce a response that does not connect to any obvious source: these are trauma's fingerprints in a creative nervous system. In sessions, we work with whatever form the experience is actually taking, including the imaginative and symbolic dimensions that do not fit neatly into clinical language. I follow the client's lead and adapt the work to how they actually process experience. The healing tends to produce a reclaiming of the creative space itself: the imagination becoming a place of refuge again rather than a source of intrusion.
Creative students in conventional academic systems often experience a specific kind of burnout: not just the exhaustion of overwork but the depletion that comes from having to suppress or minimize what makes them themselves in order to perform in a format that does not accommodate them. By the time burnout arrives, they are often genuinely unsure what is left of the person who used to love learning. In sessions, we work on finding that person again. We look at what the student actually cares about when the performance requirements are removed, what their relationship to learning looks like when it is not organized around evaluation, and what it would mean to build an educational or creative life that fits how they actually think. Over time, clients tend to reconnect with a genuine motivation that is much more sustainable than the anxiety-powered productivity that preceded the burnout.
For creative young adults, the post-grad period often involves a collision between what they were told their degree would produce and what they are actually facing. The path that seemed clear has ended and the next one involves a level of uncertainty that nobody prepared them for: how to build a creative life that is also financially viable, how to hold onto a sense of purpose when the institutional scaffolding is gone. In sessions, we work on building an adult identity that can tolerate that uncertainty without collapsing. We get specific about what this person values and what they are actually building toward, rather than what they think they should want. Clients often describe the work as the first time they have made decisions based on what they actually want rather than what they are supposed to do. That shift changes a lot.
Creative and imaginative teenagers who have experienced trauma often have rich, vivid relationships with their own experience that makes the healing work both more complex and, in certain ways, more accessible. The metaphors are available. The images are there. The inner life has language for things that literal language cannot reach. I work with this kind of client by following their own ways of knowing and communicating. I do not require them to translate their experience into clinical terms. We work with whatever form the experience is taking, and we let the healing happen in the same register. What tends to develop over time is a different relationship with their own creative inner life: one that has more room in it, more trust, and less of the intrusion that trauma installed.

Who I serve

My practice serves clients in Eagle Rock and surrounding communities including Glassell Park, Highland Park, Mount Washington, Glendale, and greater Pasadena. I offer in-person sessions at my office at 16 S Oakland Ave Suite 211 in Pasadena, accessible from Eagle Rock via the Gold Line, and virtual sessions for anyone in California. An embedded map below shows the surrounding service area.
Smiling woman with curly dark hair in a light floral blouse, outdoors with greenery in the background

Hi, I'm Cristina Lugo — teenager therapist serving Eagle Rock, CA

I'm a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified EMDR Therapist who brings warmth, creativity, and over fourteen years of clinical experience to my work with teenagers and young adults. I am drawn to working with people who feel things deeply, who think in complex ways, and who need a therapeutic space that can actually hold their full inner life without trying to simplify it. As a Puerto Rican-American therapist, I bring cultural attunement and a decolonial lens to everything I do. I work from my Pasadena office, accessible from Eagle Rock via the Gold Line, and offer virtual sessions across California. Therapy isn't about fixing you. It's about helping you remember who you were before the world got loud.

FAQ about my services

  • What is the best type of therapy for young adults and teenagers?

    There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. The most effective therapy depends on your stage of life, identity, and needs. EMDR, mindfulness, ACT, and creative approaches can all be helpful when tailored to you.



  • Do you offer therapy in person? What about virtual? Which one is better?

    I prefer in-person therapy because it creates a stronger sense of connection at my Pasadena office. Virtual sessions are also available for convenience, and some clients even choose a mix of both.



  • Do you take insurance?

    I am considered out-of-network. Many PPO plans reimburse part of the cost, and I provide monthly superbills so you can request reimbursement directly from your insurance company.


  • What is your cancellation policy?

    I ask for at least 24 hours’ notice if you need to cancel. If we can’t reschedule in the same week, the full session fee will apply.



  • Do you offer a sliding scale?

    I believe that therapy should be within reach, regardless of what life throws your way. I offer a community-minded sliding scale for individuals affected by systemic stressors, financial strain, or unexpected crises. If this applies to you, please let me know. Together we’ll make a plan that supports your healing while honoring the sustainability of my practice.