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Serving clients in Los Angeles, CA
and throughout California (telehealth)
Elyse Brynen, AMFT
(they/her)
Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #146254
Supervised by Robyn Caruso, LMFT #80168, CEDS-S #4246-C
Eating Disorder, Self-Esteem, Trauma, and Relationship Therapist in Los Angeles
You may understand why you respond the way you do and still feel unable to change it. One part of you may want closeness while another pulls away. You may work hard to meet everyone else’s needs while struggling to identify your own. Food, body image, perfectionism, anxiety, or self-criticism may take up more space in your life than you want them to.
You may also be carrying pain that did not develop in isolation. Family expectations, relationships, culture, identity, grief, trauma, and experiences of oppression can shape how you relate to your body, your worth, and your sense of belonging.
I provide affirming therapy for teens, adults, and couples who want to understand these patterns without being judged or treated as a problem to fix.
Therapy That Makes Room for All of You
Meaningful change begins with understanding rather than criticism. Your responses make sense in the context of what you have lived through, what you have needed to survive, and the environments that have shaped you.
Rather than pushing you to become a different person, therapy can help you develop a more connected relationship with yourself, understand the stories and protective patterns influencing your life, and create more room for choice, authenticity, connection, rest, and joy.
We will work together relationally and collaboratively. You are not expected to arrive with the right words, disclose everything immediately, or heal according to someone else’s timeline. Therapy moves at a pace that respects your needs, boundaries, and capacity.
I believe healing is an act of rebellion and that joy is a radical tool for doing just that. In my work with individuals, teens, and couples navigating pain, trauma, anxiety, eating disorders and grief from this lens. Working relationally, I draw from trauma-informed, gestalt, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) approaches to help clients reconnect with play, rest, and the parts of themselves that long to feel seen. My practice is rooted in an awareness of how systemic oppression shapes our relationships with our bodies, our worth, and our belonging. I specialize in working with LGBTQIA+ communities, including trans and gender-expansive clients, and center co-creation as the foundation of my work — trusting that each person is the expert of their own experience. I believe that all change elicits grief, and no matter where you are on your journey, your healing deserves tenderness, curiosity, and joy.
Curious, Not Critical
We explore what your experiences mean and what your parts are trying to protect.
Relational & Collaborative
You are the expert on your life. We work together at a pace that honsors your needs and boundaries.
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Inclusive & Affirming
LGBTQIA+ affirming care that considers your full identity and lived experience.
Trauma-Informed
We move at the speed of trust, creating space for healing and growth.
Eating Disorders and Body Image
Your relationship with food or your body may feel confusing, exhausting, or difficult to explain to others. You may experience restriction, binge eating, emotional eating, food avoidance, body shame, disconnection from hunger and fullness cues, or persistent thoughts about food and appearance.
My approach to eating disorder therapy will not reduce your experience to weight or willpower. Treatment can help you understand what the eating disorder/disordered eating has been doing for you, build greater trust with yourself, and develop ways of coping that do not require you to remain at war with your body.
Self-Esteem, Perfectionism, and People Pleasing
You may be highly attuned to what others need while feeling disconnected from your own preferences, limits, or desires. Saying no may bring guilt. Making a mistake may feel intolerable. Rest may feel undeserved.
I can help you explore the parts of you that learned to perform, please, achieve, criticize, or remain small in order to feel accepted or safe. Therapy does not require eliminating these parts. It creates space to understand what they protect and what they need from you now.
Relationship Issues
You may want connection but struggle to trust it. You may repeatedly find yourself withdrawing, overextending, avoiding conflict, becoming responsible for another person’s emotions, or feeling unseen in your relationships.
Relational therapy can help you notice what happens within you and between you and others in real time. Together, we can identify familiar relationship patterns, explore where they developed, and practice new ways of communicating, setting boundaries, and remaining connected to yourself while in relationship.
Trauma and Grief
Trauma can affect your emotions, body, relationships, identity, and ability to feel present. Grief can emerge after death, separation, identity changes, family estrangement, lost possibilities, or major life transitions.
I bring care and patience to experiences that may be difficult to name. My trauma-informed approach recognizes that protective responses developed for a reason. The work is not to force those responses away, but to build enough safety and trust that you have more choices available to you.
LGBTQIA+ and Gender-Expansive Experiences
I work with individuals and couples within LGBTQIA+ communities, including trans and gender-expansive clients. Distress cannot always be separated from experiences of invalidation, marginalization, family expectations, discrimination, or pressure to make yourself more acceptable to others.
Approach to Therapy
Healing isn't about becoming someone new. It's about deepening your relationship with yourself, understanding the stories that shaped you, and creating more room for choice, connection, and joy.
My work draws from Internal Family Systems (IFS), Relational Gestalt Therapy, and Liberation Psychology. While each offers a different lens, they share a common belief: that your experiences make sense, that healing happens in relationship, and that lasting change begins with curiosity rather than judgment.
Liberation Psychology
You Don't Exist in a Vacuum
Many of our struggles are shaped not only by personal experiences but also by the systems and communities we live within.
Liberation Psychology invites us to consider the larger contexts that influence our lives: culture, identity, oppression, belonging, family expectations, and social narratives about who we're supposed to be.
This doesn't mean reducing your experiences to politics or theory. It means honoring the reality that our relationships with ourselves, our bodies, and one another are shaped by more than individual choices.
Together, we can make space for both personal healing and a deeper understanding of the world that shaped your story.
Every Part of You Makes Sense
Have you ever felt torn between different needs, desires, or reactions?
One part of you wants to rest while another insists you keep going. One part wants connection while another wants to stay guarded. Parts work recognizes these experiences as a natural part of being human.
Rather than trying to get rid of anxiety, perfectionism, self-criticism, people-pleasing, or other protective patterns, we become curious about them. Together, we'll explore what these parts are trying to protect, what they need, and how they can begin to trust that they no longer have to carry everything alone.
The goal isn't to silence parts of yourself. It's to build relationships with them.
Relational Gestalt Therapy
Healing Happens in the Here and Now
Relational Gestalt focuses on awareness: noticing what is happening within you and between us in the present moment.
Instead of only talking about experiences, we may explore how those experiences are showing up right now—in your emotions, your body, your relationships, and even within the therapy room itself.
This approach creates opportunities to recognize old patterns, experiment with new ways of relating, and discover what feels most authentic to you.
Therapy becomes less about finding the "right" answer and more about deepening awareness, connection, and choice.
Trauma-Informed Care
Moving at the Speed of Trust
Trauma often teaches us that we must disconnect from ourselves in order to survive.
A trauma-informed approach recognizes the wisdom of those survival strategies while creating opportunities for greater safety, choice, and connection.
In our work together, there is no expectation that you share everything immediately or heal on anyone else's timeline. We move at a pace that honors your needs, your boundaries, and your capacity.
Healing doesn't happen through force. It happens through relationship.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation for therapy in-person (Los Angeles) or virtually in California
