Mara Bruckner, LMFT

Mara Bruckner is a licensed LMFT - a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - practicing in Southern California with more than 22 years of clinical experience. Her career spans private practice as well as county and state funded agencies where she provided behavior-based services for children, teens, and adults on the autism spectrum. Those services included play therapy, applied behavior analysis (ABA), social skills groups, and guidance for parents as part of comprehensive treatment plans.

In private practice she has developed extensive experience working with teens and adults who have Asperger's or high functioning autism, alongside those facing anxiety, depression, and other concerns common in adolescence and adulthood. She also sees adults across the lifespan for issues such as relationships, family and intimacy problems, grief, parenting challenges, substance concerns, and mood disorders. Mara is certified in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, an evidence-based approach known to be effective for depression, anxiety, phobias, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and many relationship difficulties.

Her counseling style is warm, interactive, and often includes well-timed humor to ease the strain of difficult topics. She treats each person with respect and adapts interventions to meet individual needs, drawing on cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, solution-focused, and client-centered therapies. Mara emphasizes a collaborative process that encourages clients to take an active role in their sessions, and she looks forward to supporting people as they work toward their goals.