Carla Lucia, M

"I did a few couples counseling sessions with her and I found them to be helpful. About a year later I decided to give her a try on my own since I felt comfortable with her. I was using my EAP benefits, so I honestly had no reason not to go back since I had several sessions at no cost to me. She was a good person to vent to, but as a counselor, there is a lot of room for improvement. The only tool or suggestion she provided was to put a rubber band on my wrist and snap it when I thought of something negative. She sat there in silence the entire time and would not offer feedback or any type of recommendation. Although, I did hear several stories about her and the problems she had with her ex husband. Again, I figured I would use up my free sessions and just use it as a venting session since I wasn’t getting anything out of it. I had no intention of continuing after my allotted sessions were up, and I was upfront and honest about that. Well, after asking her several times to recount my visits because I think it was the end for me, she said I had one more. She checked and double checked, but she assured me I had one more. I came back the following week and at the end of the session she told me I ran out of sessions the prior week and that I now need to pay for this one. Of course I was mad, and we went back and forth for several minutes. She apologized and said she won’t bill me. A couple weeks later I see that she in fact billed me despite her messing up and also telling me she wouldn’t bill because of her mistake. She was the second counselor I saw in a year that unfortunately was not a reliable or trust worthy provider. Finding helpful honest counselors really shouldn’t be this hard."

"My husband and I scheduled couples counseling with Carla for the first time today. I went in open minded with positive vibes that it would be productive. However the session turned out to be extremely unprofessionally handled. We should have checked better her experience before hand and looking at it now she perhaps specializes better with kids. From my understanding, counselors provide a framework in which they conduct their sessions and avoid as much putting their own emotions into tough conversations so as to remain neutral. Carla seemed to have much difficulty doing that, repeatedly giving her opinion and making multiple comments like “oh my goodness, how could they do that!” “ oh my goodness poor you to have to deal with such horrible folks!” - to my husband, when he was discussing issues he had with my parents. Saying that in front of me, who is also her client, just seemed completely unprofessional, especially that she did not even try to hear from me yet. When we first got there, my husband asked her how she conducts her session and if there is a frame work. She stumbled to give us an answer before saying that she will hear from him, then hear from me about why we are here. 45mins into the session, my husband was still talking. The entire time, she had reactions to what he was saying like she was watching a soap opera or listening to juicy gossip about someone’s marriage. There were no productive follow up questions except to add fuel to fire by her own input of how she felt about the situation. There was 10min left and I interrupted her to ask why I hadn’t been given a chance to speak yet, and sarcastically she said, “oh sure i’ll give you the full last 10 mins.” We had come with the intention to address inter cultural issues in our marriage as I am Asian and my husband American. Clearly this was not her strong suit as she berated me repeatedly with saying things like “this is not how things are done in America.” “ well, this is America, so .” And shrugging her shoulders - despite my husband and I expressing to her at the very beginning of the session that we are here to learn to communicate better to help each other be more accepting to one another’s culture. She was incapable of remaining neutral to help us be productive during the session and unfortunately added so much fuel to fire that even my husband had to tell her that this was not going to work for us if her view point was skewed like that. All in all the session felt so unprofessional that it was like she was a viewer of a soap opera. Couples looking for marriage counseling, I would highly suggest looking elsewhere if your goal is to stay together."