AVIVA PSYCHOLOGY SERVICES

Dr. Akoury is a warm and present psychologist who helps clients balance acceptance and change in their life journeys. She builds a welcoming and collaborative space where clients can safely explore challenging emotions and work towards their goals. In her prior training, she has focused on working with adults in the midst of challenging life transitions. Whether her clients are adjusting to a new stage of life or building a new sense of identity, Dr. Akoury welcomes the opportunity to help.

Dr. Akoury provides individual and group therapy for adults with a wide range of concerns, including anxiety, depression, trauma, and acculturation difficulties. She has experience working with indigenous, immigrant, and marginalized individuals to build empowerment from a cultural humility lens. Dr. Akoury is also extensively trained in evidence-based treatments to improve individuals’ relationship with their body, food, and self-image. She has authored numerous publications on the influence of culture and society on women’s relationships with their bodies, self-esteem, and food.

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Dr. Akoury is an integrative psychologist who is trained in both culturally-immersed therapy, which acknowledges the influence of race, culture, and identity on clients’ lived experiences, and in evidence-based therapies, including Dialectical-BehavioralTherapy (DBT) and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). With a sense of collaboration and discovery, she helps clients untangle their thoughts and feelings in order to move forward with increased freedom, stability, and clarity. Dr.Akoury believes that change comes from increased awareness and works with clients to build mindfulness, explore their values, set healthy boundaries, and catch and replace unhelpful thinking patterns. 

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Tara is an integral part of Aviva’s functioning. She is dedicated, curious, and eager to help. She supports the team with warmth, care, and essential administrative tasks so operations at Aviva can run smoothly for both clinicians and clients. Tara studies psychology and hopes to become a clinical psychologist in the coming years.

Dr. Karthaus is a founding partner and the Business Manager for Aviva Psychology Services. Dr. Karthaus is a visionary and a phenomenal systems thinker. She is gifted at translating ideas into action, and at implementing efficient systems to optimize organizational functioning.

In her clinical role as a licensed psychologist, she provides individual therapy and career counseling. She focuses on working with diverse populations and has an expertise in working with individuals who struggle with anxiety, career challenges, and adjustment to parenting.

In practice, Dr. Karthaus works from a mindfulness-based perspective, integrating evidence-based interventions from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). She is a registered yoga teacher, which informs her work in helping clients to cultivate intuitive strategies for managing the stress of daily life. Finally, as a counseling psychologist, Dr. Karthaus has a great deal of experience in helping clients find value and meaning in their careers. She offers both formal career-counseling sessions as well as integrates career counseling into individual psychotherapy sessions as it is relevant to clients’ needs.

As a behavioral therapist, Dr. Karthaus aims to help clients identify patterns of behavior and make active choices to move towards their values. She believes that much of the pain in life stems from avoidance. While avoidance of pain is a universal human experience, it often leads to moving away from values in an effort to feel less intensity. With this in mind, her approach to therapy involves (a) working with clients to understand the function of their behaviors (b) increase mindfulness skills and expand emotional awareness and (c) increase willingness to make the changes that would help them move towards a more valued life.

Dr. McMorran is a warm and skillful psychologist with expertise treating depression, anxiety disorders, complex trauma, and trauma-related disorders. She has completed extensive training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness/acceptance-based, transdiagnostic and psychodynamic approaches.

Dr. McMorran enjoys working with adults of all ages who are diverse in their identities, backgrounds, and perspectives, and she is committed to multicultural training and competence. She highly values the insights, growth and improved emotional stability engendered by mindfulness practices, and welcomes the opportunity to help clients explore and develop mindfulness skills.

Dr. McMorran uses an integrative approach that incorporates CBT, ACT, mindfulness-based and psychodynamic techniques, allowing her to tailor treatment to the unique needs of each person. Through this integrative approach, clients can expect both short-term symptom improvement and long-term growth in accordance with their goals for therapy. Dr. McMorran views her role as supporting and guiding active collaboration between therapist and client, with the understanding that a trusting and open therapeutic relationship is the foundation of effective psychotherapy. Her core therapy values include genuineness, compassion, and an open-minded curiosity, which enable her to connect deeply with clients in the service of their self-understanding and whole well-being.

Dr. Remen is a dedicated and seasoned psychologist who has been in practice for over twenty-five years. She is LGBTQ affirming and welcomes clients from diverse backgrounds. She has extensive experience treating highly sensitive adults whose emotional needs were often unmet in childhood. Dr. Remen is attuned to the inherent challenges and rewards of being a highly sensitive person. She is passionate about helping people understand and self-validate their emotional experiences while also developing a powerful repertoire of skills to cope with the challenges of living in a complex world.

Dr. Remen holds the perspective that all people have great inner strength and wisdom, qualities that may be hard to access due to their life circumstances and histories. Her warm and accepting manner enables her clients to feel connected and safe as they explore such issues as painful emotions, trauma, and life stress. With curiosity and sensitivity, she assists her clients to access their innate inner resources to experience a profound sense of well-being.

Dr. Remen’s approach to treatment is integrative. She has had extensive training and experience in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). These mindfulness-based behavioral therapies have been studied widely and offer powerful strategies for managing emotions, tolerating distress, resisting impulses, and improving relationships. As a long-time meditator, Dr. Remen has personally experienced the positive effects of mindfulness in her own life. She is dedicated to sharing this effective means of reducing stress and increasing her clients’ capacity for experiencing meaning and joy.

Dr. Remen is also a Level 1 trained IFS therapist. IFS has a growing evidence base and is recognized internationally as a powerful treatment modality. IFS proposes that all human beings have, at their core, the capacity for profound healing, as well as different protective parts of their personalities that may manifest as symptoms such as anxiety, anger, and undesirable habits. By assisting her clients to connect compassionately with their parts, Dr. Remen guides them to apply their innate healing capacity to resolve these intense and habitual reactions and to feel unstuck. Successful IFS therapy enables clients to live full, flexible, authentic lives.

Dr. Remen believes that close collaboration with her clients is an essential ingredient for successful psychotherapy. She views candid, ongoing feedback from clients about how treatment is progressing as essential to their satisfaction and success.

Dr. Schmidt is a present and intuitive psychologist who works with clients from a person-centered perspective.  She works with the understanding that healing comes from integrating parts of ourselves to feel more present, whole, fulfilled, and connected to other people and to our spiritual selves.  She encourages active participation and uses emotion focused therapies and trauma-informed practices to build a strong therapeutic relationship, which creates safety to explore desired change and enhance a sense of well-being and hope along that journey.    

Dr. Schmidt is also passionate about working with couples to strengthen resiliency and connection in relationships.  Patterns often evolve in relationships that trouble couples.  Dr. Schmidt works with partners to encourage re-connection and improve intimacy.  Her approach focuses on the capacity of the relationship, and the persons in it, to build security and attuned communication on both non-verbal and verbal levels.  

Dr. Schmidt works from a humanistic stance, listening to her clients’ narratives, unconscious communications, and emotional expressions with intention and focused presence.   With careful and individualized attunement to each client and couple, she draws largely from the wisdom of Psychodynamic theories, Internal Family Systems, CoherenceTherapy, and Psychobiological approaches.

Dr. Urbano is a founding partner and the Clinical Director for Aviva Psychology Services. She is a dedicated clinician and supervisor, and she helps to build our team and bring our clinical vision to life. She supports our growing team with organizational development, clinical support, and training.

As a licensed psychologist, Dr. Urbano provides individual, couples, family, and group therapy to adults of all identities. She utilizes structured therapy models (CBT, ACT, IFS, and Bader's Developmental Model of Couples Therapy) and psychodynamic processes. She specializes in helping individuals who feel anxious or emotionally overwhelmed to improve coping and increase comfort with themselves, their feelings and thoughts, and others. She also specializes in helping individuals, couples, and families to improve communication, develop healthier attachments, and better understand and change hurtful relational patterns.

Dr. Urbano has an additional area of expertise in perinatal mental health and 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 adjustment to parenthood.

As an integrated psychodynamic and behavioral psychologist, Dr. Urbano believes that a combination of self-awareness building and skill-building tailored to the unique needs of each client provides a strong foundation for effective therapy. Her basic approach to therapy helps clients to recognize their role in making desired changes, build strategies for healthier coping and relational functioning, and translate their values into action to live more secure, satisfying, and connected lives.  

During your therapy process with Dr. Urbano, you will find that she is active and provides feedback, is compassionate and honest, and values your feelings. You will also find that she regularly discusses your therapy process, goals, and our relationship in addition to inviting your feedback.

Dr. Wu is a warm, hopeful psychologist who is dedicated to improving adults’ well-being by understanding their experiences, identifying their values and needs, and improving their security in relationships. He enjoys a collaborative therapy process with adults of diverse, intersecting identities and backgrounds, and he prioritizes working within clients’ frames of reference to reach their goals.

Dr. Wu provides individual and group therapy, treating a range of issues such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, academic and career challenges, adjustment challenges, dating and relationships, men’s concerns, Asian American mental health, and identity development. He specializes in working with the young adult population and with those experiencing difficult life transitions. His therapeutic approach builds on clients’ existing strengths, explores current concerns while considering the impact of past experiences, and increases skills for self-awareness, coping, communication, and values-driven behavioral changes.

Dr. Wu’s approach to psychotherapy is integrative, tailored to clients, and strengths-focused. It is informed primarily by relational, emotion-focused, CBT, and ACT approaches, and incorporates mindfulness and DBT skills. This process encourages holistic awareness and acceptance of the many aspects of ourselves, empowering individuals to better understand self and others, and to more confidently define next steps. He provides a supportive therapeutic space characterized by patience, compassion, flexibility, and curiosity. He values authentic communication and invites feedback in the therapeutic relationship.