Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett · Licensed Psychologist
complex trauma · attachment injury · compulsive relational patterns · sexual abuse aftermath
The psychologist clients return to, year after year, because she is always exactly who she was before.
A sustained, predictable, human presence that holds the same quality in session 3 as it does in session 103. That kind of steadiness is not common. At Alafiora, it is the standard. For many clients, it is the first safe thing that changes everything.
The psychologist behind the practice
While this page is about me, when you become my client, care will always be centered on you.
Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett is a licensed psychologist and the founder of Alafiora, a private psychology practice built for the depth of work that most clinical settings cannot hold. She earned her Doctor of Psychology degree from Alliant University in San Diego, where her training was grounded in psychodynamic psychotherapy, attachment theory, and the clinical treatment of trauma across its most complex presentations.
Her clinical career has been built around one consistent conviction: the most important work in psychotherapy is rarely the most comfortable work, and a psychologist's willingness to go there with a client is the difference between meaningful change and a very sophisticated holding pattern.
Dr. Lapite-Garrett works with individuals whose presenting concerns sit at the intersection of sexual trauma, relational injury, identity, and attachment. She is equally comfortable with clients who have had years of prior treatment and found it insufficient, and with those who have never sat with a clinician before and are doing so now because something has finally made waiting impossible.
She is not easily shaken. She has never needed distance from difficult material to remain effective. Her presence is soft where softness is what a client needs, and direct where directness is the most compassionate thing she can offer. Many clients describe her as someone they can tell anything to without bracing for a reaction. That quality is not incidental to her clinical approach. It is the precondition for the depth of work she does.
Clients seeking a licensed psychologist for telehealth therapy who specializes in sexual trauma, attachment, and relational complexity will find in Dr. Lapite-Garrett a clinician of rare scope and steadiness. For a full list of the states where Dr. Lapite-Garrett is licensed to serve, visit the States Licensed to Serve You page.
"I don't tell my clients what they want to hear. I tell them what they need to know."
Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett
Clinical Framework
Every session is built on a frame, and the frame is what makes real work possible.
The foundation of Dr. Lapite-Garrett's clinical work is the CHAIR framework, a model that identifies five conditions necessary for therapeutic effectiveness. These are not aspirational qualities. They are the operating standards against which every session, every rupture, and every repair is evaluated.
When all five conditions are present, the therapeutic relationship becomes what it is designed to be: a genuinely safe space in which the work of lasting change becomes structurally possible, not simply hoped for. This is what a safe frame looks like in practice, and it is what allows any tailored clinical intervention to actually land.
For clients who have experienced clinical relationships where safety felt conditional, where progress felt like performance, or where the therapist's discomfort became the silent limit on what could be explored, this framework is the mechanism by which Alafiora works differently.
CHAIR framework developed by Nicole Arzt, LMFT. Applied here as the organizing architecture of clinical practice at Alafiora.
C
Consistency
Clients know what to expect because Dr. Lapite-Garrett delivers the same quality of presence, attunement, and clinical rigor in every session. Consistency is not sameness. It is reliability. The work may shift. The standard does not
H
Holding Onto Hope
Many clients arrive having stopped believing that their particular history, their specific patterns, or their most deeply held shame is something a clinician can actually help with. Dr. Lapite-Garrett holds hope on their behalf, steadily, until they can reclaim it for themselves.
A
Attunement
Attunement is the capacity to perceive and respond to what a client is experiencing beneath the words they are using. It is what makes a client feel genuinely heard rather than processed. At Alafiora, attunement is not a skill layered on top of clinical technique. It is the ground on which all clinical technique stands
I
Impact
The work at Alafiora is evaluated by its results, not its process. Every session has a clinical arc. Every therapeutic relationship has a direction. The measure of the work is not whether the client felt supported in the moment, but whether something has structurally shifted over time.
R
Repair (When Misattunement Occurs)
No clinical relationship is without rupture. What differentiates effective psychotherapy from merely pleasant conversation is the willingness to name what went wrong, to understand it together, and to move through it. Repair is not an exception at Alafiora. It is built into the standard of care.
"While your comfort and well-being are always a priority, they are never at the expense of the clinical and personal growth you came to treatment for."
Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett
How she practices
The values that are present in every session, regardless of what the session is about.
Therapy at Alafiora has a particular texture to it. Clients describe sitting with someone who is deeply present but never intrusive, whose boundaries are clear but never cold, and who meets genuine human messiness with the kind of equanimity that makes honesty feel safe. The beliefs below are not a code of conduct posted on a wall. They are the qualities that show up, repeatedly, in the room.
Come as you are
Clients are welcome in sessions exactly as they are: in pajamas or in professional attire, from a parked car or a quiet room, right after waking up or after a full day. The space does not require performance. The only preparation asked of any client is the willingness to show up and do the work. Everything else is secondary to that.
Profanity is welcome
Some experiences are better expressed with the words that actually capture them. Therapy that requires clients to sanitize how they talk about the worst things that have happened to them is therapy that keeps those experiences at arm's length. Dr. Lapite-Garrett will not only accept however a client chooses to express their story, she welcomes it. When a client indicates that profanity is part of their natural register and feels comfortable with it being part of the shared space, she will meet them there. That said, she does not assume. Just because a client uses strong language does not mean they would feel at ease hearing it in return. Comfort in the shared language of the room is always checked and always led by the client.
Humor has a place in healing
Laughter is not a break from the work. When it arrives genuinely, it is part of it. Dr. Lapite-Garrett has been in laughing fits with clients over the sheer absurdity of life circumstances that conspire to appear during sessions. That kind of moment is never a departure from seriousness. It is often the most human thing that happens all week, and it has its own form of therapeutic weight.
Progress is not a straight line, and showing up counts
Dr. Lapite-Garrett does not experience frustration with clients who are not "making visible progress." She sees that they are trying, and she knows that movement has its own pace, its own seasons, and its own form. Walking into a session when every instinct says to cancel is not nothing. It is, often, the most important thing a client does all week. That is always recognized and never dismissed.
The session space belongs to the client
Dr. Lapite-Garrett does not speak about herself during sessions because the space belongs entirely to the person who needs it. That said, clients have a right to know their clinician well enough to feel safe with them. Clients are welcome to ask questions directly during sessions. Transparency in service of trust is always honored.
All feelings are legitimate
Anger. Disgust. Grief. Boredom. Relief that does not feel like it is supposed to be there. Feelings toward Dr. Lapite-Garrett herself that feel uncomfortable to name, including romantic feelings, sexual thoughts, or the particular intensity that sometimes develops in a relationship where a person finally feels seen. Every emotional response that arises in a session, regardless of its direction, belongs in the room. The work is not to manage those feelings into acceptable shapes. The work is to understand what they are carrying, and to process them with the same care as everything else.
No topic is off limits
Fantasies that carry shame. Dreams that feel revealing. Feelings including feelings toward the therapist herself, whether they arrive as admiration, frustration, romantic attachment, sexual fantasy, or something harder to name. Patterns of thought that have never been said aloud because they seemed too strange, too dark, or too complicated. None of these are outside the scope of this practice. This is, for many clients, the first space they have encountered where absolutely nothing has to be edited before it is said.
Care is collaborative, not contained to the office
When clinically indicated, Dr. Lapite-Garrett engages in team-based care, coordinating with attorneys, physicians, executive coaches, family office professionals, and other providers who are part of a client's broader life. The therapeutic relationship does not operate in isolation from the rest of a person's world, and the best outcomes typically do not either.
A psychologist for life, when clinically indicated
Some clients choose to stay. Not because they cannot leave, but because they have learned what this kind of care is worth.
Therapy at Alafiora is not designed around a predetermined endpoint. Some clients come with a specific, circumscribed need and complete that work in a defined period of time. Others arrive and discover that what they were carrying required longer. Some clients have maintained a clinical relationship with Dr. Lapite-Garrett across years and across the most significant transitions of their adult lives.
That continuity is not dependence. It is the recognition that having a psychologist who already knows the full history, who has witnessed the growth and navigated the ruptures, who does not need to be brought up to speed when something significant happens, is a clinical asset of measurable value. Many clients who operate in high-stakes professional or personal environments describe this ongoing relationship as one of the most stabilizing structures in their lives.
Short-term, phase-specific work
Focused, time-limited treatment built around a defined clinical goal. Full clinical depth within a structured arc. A clear beginning, a clear direction, and a clear end point.
Extended depth work
For individuals whose history has multiple layers, whose patterns are long-established, or whose material requires sustained immersion. The pace is determined by what the work actually requires, not by external pressure to conclude.
Life-stage transitions
Clients navigating new relationships, major career transitions, identity shifts, loss, or the emergence of patterns connected to earlier experiences that have surfaced at a new moment. The presenting concern changes. The therapeutic relationship holds.
Long-term stabilization and growth
Clients who have completed significant trauma work and choose to continue in a less intensive capacity as an act of investment in their ongoing psychological health, not as a sign that the original work is unfinished.
Formation and Training
The depth of the training is what the fee reflects.
The clinical training behind this practice is not a credentials list assembled for a website. It is the accumulated weight of years of supervised work, independent research, peer review, and the kind of intensive postdoctoral immersion that produces a clinician who does not need to reach for a worksheet when a client brings something genuinely difficult. What follows is a summary of that formation.
Education
Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) · 2024
Alliant University, San Diego · APA-Accredited Program in Clinical Psychology. Grounded in psychodynamic theory and the treatment of complex presentations across the clinical lifespan.
Master of Arts, Clinical Psychology · 2022
Alliant University, San Diego · APA-Accredited.
Bachelor of Arts, Psychology · 2020
Undergraduate foundation in psychological science, research methods, and human behavior.
Licensure
Licensed Psychologist · New Mexico
PSY-2026-0031 · Issued April 2026
Licensed Psychologist · Indiana
20044074A · Issued March 2026
Expanding to additional states
Dr. Lapite-Garrett is actively pursuing licensure in additional states to extend Alafiora's geographic reach.
Certifications
National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC)
The highest credential in the health coaching field, awarded by the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching.
Certified Wellness Coach II (CWC)
California State Approved, 2025.
Certified Mental Health Coach (CMHC)
NBC-HWC approved training, 2025.
Certified Medi-Cal Peer Support Specialist (CMPSS)
Area of Specialization: Crisis Care, 2024.
APA-Accredited Internship · 2023–2024
New Mexico State University Counseling Center
Clinical internship concentrated in crisis management, psychological evaluation, and the treatment of sexual trauma and identity-related presentations. Co-led a grant-funded initiative addressing eating disorder competency in the borderland community. Provided crisis triage and risk management for at-risk student populations alongside thorough psychological assessment and short-term individual therapy.
Postdoctoral Fellowship · 2024–2025
Rigorous Postdoctoral Training Across Clinical, Multicultural, and AI-Informed Practice
Postdoctoral training meeting the highest standards of clinical rigor, encompassing a caseload of 90+ clients across EAP and insurance-based settings with a sustained 5/5 client satisfaction rating. Encompassed clinical psychology alongside multicultural organizational implementation and the clinical integration of AI-informed practice. Led a training seminar on trauma-informed approaches to the assessment and treatment of sexual abuse survivors, delivered to practicum trainees, postdoctoral colleagues, and senior supervisory psychologists.
Primary Clinical Modalities
Psychodynamic · Emotion-Focused · Depth-Oriented Psychotherapy
These three modalities form the core of clinical practice at Alafiora. Additional training encompasses somatic approaches, motivational interviewing, superhero psychotherapy, and behavioral activation, drawn upon as the clinical picture warrants. Process-oriented and relationship-centered treatment is the primary offering. Worksheet-driven, compliance-based models are not what this practice is built for, and clients benefit most when they understand that distinction before beginning.
Scholarship, Research, and Service
Contributing to the Clinical Field
Dr. Lapite-Garrett has contributed to research across trauma, resilience, identity, and sexual health, including her own dissertation examining resilience outcomes among African American transwomen. She has served as a peer reviewer for leading professional journals and APA conference submissions, has trained clinical staff and trainees across multiple institutions, and has spoken publicly on mental health, sexual assault, and community wellness as an invited guest of broadcast platforms and professional organizations.
Languages
English (Native) · Yoruba (Native) · Spanish (Beginner)
Psychotherapy at Alafiora is conducted in English. Dr. Lapite-Garrett is a native speaker of both English and Yoruba. Her multicultural formation, which includes deep familiarity with first-generation, immigrant, intergenerational, intercultural, and diasporic experiences, meaningfully shapes the cultural attunement she brings to all clinical work.
Beyond the credentials
The psychologist is also a person, and that is not incidental to the quality of the work.
Many clients search for a therapist who is "culturally competent." What they are often looking for is something more than competence. They want a clinician who is actually familiar with the textures of their world, not merely trained to recognize that those textures exist. Dr. Lapite-Garrett describes herself as culturally attuned and culturally affluent, not because she has completed a checklist, but because the communities her clients move in are communities she knows from the inside.
She is deeply aware of how colonial models of care have shaped the therapeutic landscape and adapts her clinical approach accordingly, while holding firmly to the evidence-based foundations that make the work genuinely effective. She stays current in the cultural ecosystems her clients inhabit: the social media conversations, the political realities, the specific dynamics of faith, family expectation, and community belonging that shape how distress forms and what healing needs to look like for a particular person in a particular life.
Relational
Dr. Lapite-Garrett is in a happy and fulfilling marriage to her husband, best friend, and high school sweetheart. She also maintains deep and long-lasting relationships with her friends and family. She often wears her rings to sessions. If she is not wearing them on a given day, she notes that her cat has likely claimed them for the third time that week.
Politically grounded
Dr. Lapite-Garrett's values are oriented around access, equity, and the protection of individual rights. She has worked with clients across the full political spectrum and holds space for all of them with equal care. Her own views do not enter the clinical room unless a client brings them there and asks.
Community-rooted
Dr. Lapite-Garrett is actively involved in her community and holds a deep investment in the wellbeing of the people around her, not only the people who become her clients.
A therapist who has her own therapy
Dr. Lapite-Garrett believes that the best clinicians are also people who engage in their own sustained, deep healing work across multiple disciplines and modalities. The ongoing nature of that work is not a liability. It is part of what makes her effective with clients who are carrying the hardest things.
Spiritual, not prescriptive
Dr. Lapite-Garrett is spiritual and is willing to incorporate spirituality into clinical care for clients for whom it is a meaningful dimension of their healing. She does not practice faith-based counseling, and she does not impose any spiritual framework. The client's own relationship with meaning is what guides whether and how this enters the room.
Prim and proper, and also completely real
Clients will always know they are sitting with a human being. Dr. Lapite-Garrett laughs, and feels what she hears, even when years of clinical experience have made her steady enough to hold it without being pulled under. Clients have described her as prim and proper, by which they mean something specific: she is consistent, composed, and never reactive. She responds with care where others might flinch. The warmth and the precision are both entirely genuine. Neither is a performance.
On AI and the limits of algorithms
What AI cannot replicate, and why it matters for the clients this practice serves.
AI has meaningfully expanded access to information, psychoeducation, and conversational support. Those contributions are real. For certain applications, AI tools have become genuinely useful, and Dr. Lapite-Garrett does not dismiss them categorically. Clients are encouraged to bring relevant AI-generated insights into session so they can be explored with the clinical depth that a chatbot cannot provide.
What AI cannot do is what this practice is built to do. It cannot hold a clinical relationship that spans years and accumulates genuine knowledge of a particular person's history. It cannot attune in real time to the physiological and emotional shifts that happen in the pauses between words. It cannot make a clinical judgment about risk, pacing, or when to press forward and when to slow down. It cannot be accountable. It cannot sit in the specificity of a person's worst moment with the steadiness that comes from being trained for exactly that.
The work at Alafiora, the kind that moves things that prior treatment could not reach and that produces structural change rather than skill accumulation, requires a human clinician with advanced training, genuine attunement, and the capacity to be affected by what a client brings without being destabilized by it. Algorithms, however sophisticated, do not produce that. Psychologists do.
What is provided at Alafiora is not scripted dialogue. It is clinical skill, advanced training, and evidence-based methodology that consistently reduces symptoms, rebuilds a stable sense of self, and creates lasting change that clients did not know was structurally possible for them.
Begin the work
The next step is a conversation, not a commitment.
A consultation is the starting point. It is a mutual evaluation of fit, pacing, and clinical readiness. Not a sales call. If Dr. Lapite-Garrett is not the right person for what a client is carrying, she will name that clearly and help identify who is. That honesty is its own form of care.