Justin Gillespie
AMFT #141194
justin@mcaft.com
650-297-3400 x 19
Supervised by: Lisa Macias, Ph.D. PSY #32178
Location: San Jose, Los Altos
Fee: $170
Areas of Focus:
Languages: English, Spanish, Italian
Children & Teens: Trauma, Emotional Dysregulation, Anxiety (Social Anxiety, Separation Anxiety, Academic / Athletic Stress, Perfectionism), Depression, Social-Emotional Issues, Peer Challenges, Developmental Identity & Acculturation Issues.
Adults & Couples: Trauma, Complex Trauma, Early Childhood Trauma, Anxiety, Stress, Spirituality, Identity & Acculturation Issues, Depression, Grief / Loss, Life Transitions, Career Choices, Work Stress / Job Burnout, Parenting Support, Desires for Authenticity and Integrity.
Modalities:
Internal Family Systems (trained at IFS-I), Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR), Psychodynamic, Attachment Based, Existential, Mindfulness-Based Somatic Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for Couples, IFS & Play Therapy for Children.
Background:
Justin has many years of experience working with children, teens, adults, and couples with a wide array of life-experiences and professional backgrounds. He works collaboratively with each client to help them have a therapeutic experience that is both healing and transformative, liberating them from whatever it is that holds them back from actualizing the life they aspire to. Informed by Internal Family Systems and Attachment theory, Justin works with clients to experience themselves, their relationships, and their lives in a way that more fully aligns with their deepest values. He is passionate about working with the effects of trauma in all its forms, helping clients to live with an increased sense of freedom and aliveness in the present, using trauma-informed therapies such as Internal Family Systems and EMDR, all within a safe and gentle collaboration. Justin works with each client to create a warm, supportive and secure relationship that is the incubator for growth and healing. He also believes that true healing and growth is deeply challenging, and he works to provide the warm, judgment-free relationship needed to undergo such a life-affirming transformation.
Experience:
Having lived and worked for years both in Italy and in Ireland, being fluent in Spanish and Italian, Justin is accustomed to listening within different cultural and linguistic frames, focusing on the client's unique experience and personality. He has worked with multicultural teens in the Sunnyvale School district, Latinx youth and their families in school-based settings, as well as individual adults and couples throughout the Bay Area. Justin has approximately twenty years of experience sitting with people in deep pain, serving as a companion for people as they face the bewilderment of life's choices and crossroads, and supporting people as they open to their desires for growth and transformation. He has worked with traumatic wounds, the challenges of life transitions and the experience of paralysis in undesired situations. Justin believes that a therapeutic relationship that is simultaneously challenging and radically safe can open the door to a future life that might feel impossible in the present, but could be experienced as a true blessing as it ultimately unfolds.
Education and Training:
- Internal Family Systems Level 1
- Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy Externship
- EMDR Trained
- Palo Alto University, MA in Counseling
- Università della Santa Croce, Doctorate in Theology, Rome, Italy
- University of Dallas, MA, English Literature
- University of Dallas, BA, English Literature