Founding partner
Alessandra Urbano
Dr. Urbano is a founding partner and the Clinical Director for Aviva Psychology Services. She is a dedicated clinician and caring soul who helps to build our team and bring our clinical vision to life. She supports our growing team with organizational development, clinical support, heart and humor.
Dr. Urbano is a licensed psychologist who specializes in helping adults of all identities to feel more secure in themselves, satisfied in their relationships, and resilient through uncertainty, change, and loss of all types. Dr. Urbano meets clients in the depths of their despair and deeply respects (and trusts) the strength, resilience and newfound freedom that emerge through grief.
Dr. Urbano believes we are both hurt and healed in the context of relationships, and she has an additional specialty area in relational health. She enjoys working with highly sensitive individuals (HSP’s) and those who feel anxious, misunderstood, insecure, and/or emotionally overwhelmed to increase comfort with themselves, their feelings and needs, and their relationships. She helps individuals, couples, and families to improve communication, develop healthier attachments, and better understand and change hurtful relational patterns. She explicitly welcomes gender and sexual diversity and those who identify as male who wish to do this work.
Finally, Dr. Urbano’s most recent area of focus and study is perinatal mental health. She is dedicated to working with both aspiring and current parents throughout the complex family planning and adjustment process, including grief and traumatic loss, coping with uncertainty and infertility, and adjustment to parenthood.
Approach to therapy
As an integrated psychodynamic and behavioral psychologist, Dr. Urbano uses a combination of structured therapy models (CBT, ACT, IFS, and Bader's Developmental Model of Couples Therapy) and psychodynamic processes to achieve desired change. Through a combination of both self-awareness and skill building, Dr. Urbano helps clients recognize their role in making desired changes, build strategies for healthier coping and relational functioning, and translate their needs and values into action to live more secure, satisfying and connected lives.
In addition to her training in behavioral and psychodynamic therapies, Dr. Urbano integrates systems thinking in all her therapy work. You will find that she:
- unwaveringly views you as a whole and capable person
- is warm and emotionally attuned
- welcomes all of you— including your anger and shame
- is active throughout the process
- provides and invites ongoing feedback
- views behavior as purposeful
- pays attention to your nervous system
- values your complex identity and views the familial, social, cultural, and systemic influences that shape you/us as central to our therapy work
She also utilizes Non-violent Communication (NVC) training to build competency identifying and expressing one’s needs with clarity and confidence, both in the context of the therapy process and in daily living. She has found NVC to be a highly effective, compassionate, and transferable communication framework.
Dr. Urbano offers a compassionate, emotionally attuned, and honest therapy relationship to support both acceptance and desired change to live a more vibrant and fulfilling life.
license, Education + certifications
Massachusetts Licensed Psychologist #9583
PhD in Counseling Psychology, University of Georgia
Predoctoral Internship, Georgia State University Counseling Center
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Georgia State University Counseling Center
Certified Group Psychotherapist (CGP)
Trained in:
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
