Dr. Rebecca Lesser Allen is a licensed clinical psychologist based in Los Angeles, CA. She works with individuals across the lifespan who are looking to better understand the ways they think, feel, and learn. Her goal as a provider is to help individuals move deeper into their own self-understanding and use that knowledge to enrich their lives.
Dr. Lesser Allen provides individual psychotherapy for adolescents and adults, as well as parenting coaching/consultation. She also runs virtual “hold the mother” self-exploration workshops for new mothers navigating issues of identity and transition. She speaks on a variety of topics and has been featured in media publications including the APA Monitor and Slate.
Dr. Lesser Allen is passionate about working with individuals navigating life transitions, parenthood, the perinatal and postpartum period, marital and relationship conflict, complex familial dynamics, identity confusion, and career stress. She works from a trauma-informed and highly relational perspective and has experience treating anxiety, depression, addiction, grief, trauma, psychosis, emotion dysregulation, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, and borderline personality traits. She loves working with parents to help them cultivate authentic, resilient relationships with their children of all ages, from infancy through adulthood.
Her work is informed by the study of attachment, psychodynamic theory, DBT, humanistic psychology, relational theory, mentalization based therapy, and interpersonal neurobiology. She utilizes an integrated approach that empowers clients to better understand the many factors (both internal and external) that contribute to their distress, build on personal strengths to better their own lives and those of others, overcome and grow from traumatic experiences, and foster self-compassion.
Dr. Lesser Allen earned her undergraduate degree in American Studies and film at Barnard College of Columbia University. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at William James College. After graduate school, she completed an internship in clinical neuropsychology at the Yale School of Medicine. Her two-year postdoctoral fellowship training was in clinical neuropsychology and rehabilitation medicine at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. She has completed training in the treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders through Postpartum Support International.