Anke Kalaiah, LMFT

Anke Kalaiah is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) practicing in California with 15 years of clinical experience. She works with adults facing stress, anxiety, depression, relationship and family concerns, trauma and abuse, parenting strain, grief, addictions, and other life changes. Sessions are offered in English and German.

Kalaiah uses a straightforward, practical approach. She centers the client’s priorities and helps people set clear, achievable goals. Sessions often focus on skills that reduce distress and improve daily functioning. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques are used to map the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions.

She also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy to teach specific skills for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and better communication. Motivational Interviewing and solution-focused methods are used when people want short-term direction or clearer plans for change. The overall aim is to give concrete tools rather than only talk.

Anke’s background includes a bachelor’s degree in German and social psychology from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Santa Clara University in California. She became an LMFT in 2014 and has worked in diverse clinical settings.

As an immigrant clinician, she is familiar with challenges around immigration, multicultural family dynamics, and assimilation stress. In recent years she has focused on trauma, domestic and sexual abuse, divorce and co-parenting problems, blended family issues, and parenting difficulties. She invites people to begin by describing their most urgent concerns so they can decide the next practical steps together.