About Macarena
Macarena Santelices is a licensed clinician with 14 years of professional experience. She holds MD, LCPC, and LPCC credentials and practices in California. She focuses on helping people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, and challenges to self-esteem.
She helps people sort through relationship and family concerns and supports parents facing the daily strain of caregiving. Her work also addresses life transitions, motivation, and wide-ranging issues like money stress and midlife questioning.
Background and approach
She avoids trauma-focused work and asks people seeking trauma therapy to find a different clinician. Her approach is practical and collaborative. She treats clients as the experts in their own lives and uses evidence-based tools to try to make change feel manageable.
Sessions focus on clear goals, small steps, and skills people can use between meetings. Macarena draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify unhelpful thoughts, and on Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills for emotion regulation and better communication. Mindfulness exercises are introduced to help with stress and present-moment focus.
Together these methods aim to reduce anxious thinking and increase coping options. People who choose her often want straightforward guidance, concrete tools, and a supportive listener while they work toward change. She meets people where they are and helps set realistic next steps that fit their lives.
CBT, DBT, and Mindfulness for Online Care
Macarena uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thoughts that feed anxiety and low mood. CBT sessions often include specific exercises and homework to practice new ways of thinking between meetings.She also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and clearer communication. DBT-based skills can be useful for managing intense feelings and reducing impulsive reactions.
Mindfulness exercises are offered to build present-moment awareness and reduce rumination. Simple breathing and grounding practices are introduced in-session and practiced at home to help calm stress responses.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to choose methods that fit their needs, goals, and preferences. Treatment plans are adjusted as goals change so the process stays relevant to daily life.
Online sessions offer flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is useful for full conversations and teaching skills, phone works well when bandwidth is limited, live chat can be a shorter check-in, and messaging supports ongoing skill practice between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to maintain continuity of care.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- California, Maryland
- Languages
- English