Specialties:
Certified Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (Attachment Focused – EMDR)
Certified Seeking Safety
Certified Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT)
At-Risk Youth
Mindfulness
Addictions, 12 Step
Motivational Interviewing
Psychodynamic
About Jill
Jill Landefeld is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in trauma and addictions work. She has served in leadership roles at a number of community mental health agencies and drug rehabs, managing therapy programs at Los Angeles schools and Juvenile Hall, and starting up the county’s first day treatment program for transition-aged youth with severe and persistent mental illness. In her clinical work with families living in poverty, Jill came to understand that trauma formed the fabric of her clients’ lives, and that marginalized people, even more than others, needed to be met on their own terms with as much sensitivity as possible to their cultural, emotional and economic needs.
Jill helped facilitate the transition of a drug treatment environment based on confrontation to one founded on respect and empathy as Clinical Director of Via Avanta, a residential program for pregnant and parenting women in Pacoima, CA. Her growing belief that the individual is the ultimate authority on their experience was solidified by her training with Shinzen Young, a teacher of Vipassana mindfulness meditation, which led to her certification to coach his students in mindfulness techniques.
Jill sees her trauma work through a lens of self-psychology and object relations, along with the present-centered focus of gestalt. While she worked toward her masters in clinical psychology at Goddard College, she grew to value process by studying with Gerald Goodman, a community psychologist and author of The Talk Book, who chronicled the six “response modes” that encompass all help-intended communication. She is certified in three trauma practices: EMDR, Seeking Safety and Trauma-Focused CBT. She has also studied Motivational Interviewing and is a huge fan of William Miller and his respectful avoidance of power struggles. Before her agency work, Jill was in private practice, and she wishes she could travel back in time and give those clients a few sessions in EMDR.
