Paulina Chávez Medina, Register Associate MFT12977
Supervised by Lisa Jellison, LMFT#46430

I’m Paulina (she/her/ella), a 1.5 generation immigrant, born in Sinaloa, Mexico. I am Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, supervised by Lisa Jellison, LMFT #46430 and employed by The Feeling Space, A Marriage and Family Therapy Corporation.
My academic focus on Latinx Family Systems and Trauma has evolved into a specialization in perinatal mental health, parenting, and immigration. I enjoy working with parents because, as one myself, I understand the importance and complexities of the role. Sometimes being a parent is rewarding, and other times it is overwhelming, tiring, and hard.
My hope is to provide a space for you to be you, however that space looks, that feels safe. I work from a collaborative framework because the reality is that YOU are the expert of you. I am here to provide a different perspective, a listening ear, and validation. I will add some sarcasm and dark humor because, let’s be real, this journey is difficult enough without being able to laugh about it. Overall, I promise to show up as my authentic self and join you in this journey to the best of my abilities.

I am trained in many things as to better support you in this journey, to name a few of my favorites are EMDR, Trauma Resilience Model (somatic work), Trauma Focused-CBT, Motivational Interviewing and Perinatal Mental Health.

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Not a kid anymore but not a teen just yet. It’s hard, annoying, embarrassing and sometimes gross. I have my own 11 year old at home and I’ll be real not always do we get along but we have found ways to communicate.
Tweens in general are such a wonderful group to work with. During grad school I got to spend most of my time with middle schoolers and they were life.
For tweens my hope is to always provide a space in which they can ask and learn what they need. And more than anything to support them in creating a relationship with their parents/caregiver that helps them have the conversations we have in session outside of it with them.

Yes parenting is something I heavily enjoy and work with.
But I was also once a teen/young adult struggling with depression, anxiety and S/I.
It is because of this that I also specialize work with teen, young adults and first gen college students. My approach is heavily on creating a safe space to share these, often times, scary/uncomfortable feelings and experiences.

Supervised by Lisa Jellison, LMFT46430

So much goes into creating a family. Sometimes it works out just the way you dreamed for, hoped for, planned for.
And sometimes it doesn’t. And there is so much sadness, pain, frustration.
And sometimes las bendiciones, no bendicen de la misma manera.
Sometimes this can also include not being ready, not wanting to go through with a pregnancy and that is also worth and needed to be discussed.

This is a space to express all this. To be in a space where if you need to call customer service (if we work together I’ll share more about this lol) and complain you can do it.

Back in 2012 my husband was part of the military. For 4 years we were a military family, with 2 kiddos, 1 car and 3000 miles away from home.

Military life is something different. It’s a culture that only those who have lived it know it and understand it.

After my husband got out out I saw how much he struggled, because the reality was that there was not a lot of help for him. We struggled as a family as we figured out how to be back in the “real” world.

Part of becoming specialized in trauma surged from the military. I saw how underserved this community is, and the truth is that this family I created is special to me in more than one way.