Marenka Cerny, MFT Somatic Psychotherapy 2915 Martin Luther King Junior Way, Berkeley, CA 94703

"Marenka is a seasoned and skilled therapist who cares deeply about her work. I give her my highest recommendation."

"Marenka is such a deeply skilled and caring therapist. She truly cares and is very experienced. Highly recommend her!"

"Excellent psychotherapy! Marenka is a skilled and compassionate therapist with a variety of tools to aid her clients in dealing with their challenges. She helped my teen through a very trying time and brought family in for family therapy when appropriate to address interpersonal issues."

"Marenka is an insightful, caring and naturally gifted therapist. The range of what she pulls from for her work is truly inspiring. This is especially true for me considering I have worked with several therapists in and around Berkeley, and studied many different disciplines. I have seen her work as a facilitator in Circling sessions that have brought real change to the participants. She is warm and funny, and has a unique manner that brings her into the room more engaged than other therapists."

"I saw Mařenka both individually and also as a couple (and my partner also saw her individually at the time). I was always apprehensive about seeing a therapist because I found the prospect of being on the defensive exhausting, and as in life in general, I expected a therapist might jump to a lot of (understandable) conclusions. For example, I'm direct and forthright; I don't mince words. But even though in our culture, that correlates with being abrasive and running roughshod over others and their opinions, the latter doesn't describe me. I expected that there would be many such correlations that I would challenge, and that felt like I would likely end up spending a lot more time dispelling these conclusions than working through real issues. But with Mařenka, even when I did have to explain myself or offer a technical clarification on some linguistic formulation, it didn't feel like I was on the defensive. Instead, I felt that Mařenka was really trying to *understand* me, to "get" what the experience of being me is like. And that made our sessions much more effective, in that she was much more effective in (1) helping me to introspect, draw connections I hadn't made before, and see things from new perspectives, and (2) offering me concrete suggestions for how I might approach challenging situations in my life. I also appreciated her intellectual curiosity, and we discussed both her thinking around integrating attachment theory and Circling, as well as my own thoughts about some of the material she shared with me (and especially how those ideas applied to my personal psychological context!). By engaging with me *cognitively*, I felt we were better connected, as therapist and patient. Overall, I loved that our sessions were a union of a warm, supportive, nurturing environment of mutual care and of intellectual rigor. While I personally struggled with the *somatic* aspect of our sessions, I found that *as therapy*, the sessions were more useful and enjoyable than I had anticipated. For anyone seeking therapy, I would strongly recommend Mařenka. While the best fit for a therapist undoubtedly depends on many personal factors, you owe it to yourself to try with her."