Jilla Lavian, LCSW

Jilla Lavian is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) practicing in California with 20 years of experience supporting diverse communities through a wide range of life challenges. She earned dual master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Social Work and Jewish Communal Service and is also trained as a transformational life coach, combining clinical training with goal-oriented coaching techniques to help clients move forward.

She approaches therapy as an investment in personal growth, emphasizing attentive self-exploration and compassionate awareness of thoughts and feelings. By cultivating greater self-knowledge, she helps people uncover values, strengthen inner resources, and reduce self-judgment so they can find greater calm, direction, and meaning.

In session she works to understand each person’s core experience, listening with empathy and validating emotional states while collaborating on clear, achievable goals. Her clinical work draws from cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based methods, motivational interviewing, psychodynamic perspectives, and solution-focused techniques, applied according to each client’s needs.

Areas of focus include stress, anxiety, depression, relationship and family concerns, parenting issues, grief and loss, sleep difficulties, anger, career transitions, self-esteem, coping with life changes, and compassion fatigue. Additional concentrations include attachment and abandonment concerns, caregiver stress, codependency, communication difficulties, family of origin issues, acculturation and immigration challenges, isolation, and questions about life purpose and midlife transition.

Jilla provides therapy in English and Persian and integrates strength-based and client-centered approaches to help people restore clarity, build resilience, and pursue meaningful change.