Kara Petersen

Kara Petersen has over fifteen years of experience serving children and their families in educational, therapeutic, and clinical settings. She is a writer, licensed depth psychotherapist, and co-founder of Clinicians For Change/Clinicas Para Cambiar, a bilingual grassroots collective of licensed mental health practitioners working to address systemic oppression and the trauma it causes. With an independent practice in Carpinteria, California, she serves folks from the age of five and older. A mythopoetic approach guides her work, which is grounded in psychodynamic theory and play therapy. She is trained in the Oaklander Play Therapy Model and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. She continues to elaborate on her thesis work, The Supernatural Vulva: Revivifying the Radical Roots of Psychotherapy to engage archaeomythology and active imagination in efforts toward individual and collective healing, liberation, and psychic wholeness.

Prior to opening her own practice, Kara worked at Ventura County Behavioral Health as a senior clinician on the mobile crisis team and clinic administrator for the RISE program, which aimed to connect high acuity and under-resourced folks with services. She also served as a school-based counselor for the Santa Barbara Unified School District. Before becoming a therapist, Kara spent a decade at Santa Barbara Middle School teaching yoga, journalism, and life skills classes; and leading mountain biking and backpacking trips across the Western United States. She is a graduate of the Counseling Psychology program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She holds a degree in Comparative Literature from the University of California Santa Barbara. Her work has appeared in Parabola Magazine, Carpinteria Magazine, and DEEP Surf Magazine. She is an active student of her own dreams, who spends much of her waking hours hanging out with her dog, Shadow, talking with birds and howling at the moon somewhere between the mountains and the ocean.