THE TENDERS THERAPY

Compassionate, trauma-informed somatic therapy and spiritual care in California.

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Meeting you in the tender places

About the practice

The Tenders Therapy is a psychotherapy practice in Los Angeles built on the understanding that our minds, bodies, and spirits are deeply connected, and that we must tend to all aspects of a person in the healing process.

Tending to the whole person, including the impact of stress on the physical body, is an important component to treating trauma, grief, anxiety, depression, and more. The stress that we carry negatively impacts our bodies, and past traumas can be stored in our bodies on a cellular level.

With training in modalities such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Somatic Experiencing (SE), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Brainspotting, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), our clinicians' integrative approach will meet you where you are and tend to the wounds that you carry. We utilize methods that target trauma stored in our bodies and nervous systems, integrating various modalities to best serve each unique individual and their lived, felt experience.

The founding tender

Meet Cameron

Cameron Holliday, LCSW

LCSW · Founder & Clinical Director · she/her

Cameron Holliday is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 15 years of post-graduate experience in the mental health field and is the founder of The Tenders Therapy, as well as the healing arts space The Heart Space LA.

Cameron is a certified EMDR therapist and EMDR consultant-in-training, and has completed advanced training in Internal Family Systems (IFS), all three levels of Somatic Experiencing (SE), Somatic Practice with Kathy Kain (Touch Training for Trauma Therapists), and Brainspotting. Additionally, Cameron is a certified psychedelic-assisted therapist through the Integrative Psychiatric Institute (IPI) and supports clients in exploring altered states of consciousness and integrating what is discovered. Cameron also holds a Masters degree in Education and has many years of experience working with children, families, and adults within the educational system, from elementary school through higher education.

Before becoming a therapist, Cameron was a high school English teacher working in a large public high school in New York City. She quickly learned that social and emotional barriers — and past trauma — often interfered with the education and basic life functioning of many of her students. In 2009, she transitioned her work to mental health. Her conceptualization of trauma includes acute stress following a major traumatic incident, as well as the daily trauma that oppressed groups endure due to racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and more. She strives to uphold the tenets of social justice in her clinical social work practice — a guiding principle for The Tenders. She is also passionate about supporting clients in spiritual healing.

EMDR CertifiedSomatic ExperiencingInternal Family SystemsBrainspottingPsychedelic-Assisted TherapySomatic Practice Touch Training

The Tenders

Meet our team

Each of our therapists brings unique expertise, training, and lived experience.

Shari Gerstenberger, AMFT

Shari Gerstenberger, AMFT

she/her

Shari Gerstenberger is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Somatic Coach who offers a warm, collaborative space for individuals and couples to explore intimacy, sexuality, and relationships, as well as anxiety, depression, and trauma. She weaves together body-based practices and attachment work while integrating tools from her varied background in psychodynamic therapy, sex therapy, somatics, EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP). Shari also draws upon her personal practices of Buddhism, mindfulness, and dance in her work.

She is passionate about creating safe spaces for clients to explore tender parts of themselves with compassion, and to reclaim their relationships to their bodies and voices.

Sex & SexualityCouplesSomaticEMDRAEDPInternal Family Systems

Liv von Oelreich, AMFT, APCC

Liv von Oelreich, AMFT, APCC

she/her

Liv von Oelreich is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and an Associate Professional Clinical Counselor. Liv studied at Pepperdine and went on to train in both the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) and EMDR while working in community mental health at Southern California Counseling Center (SCCC). She works to create a warm environment and foster a safe space for the challenge of healing work, while holding the framework of the neurobiology of trauma.

Liv incorporates somatic knowledge from her background as a bodyworker, and also integrates her diverse experiences traveling around the world as a photographer and documentary filmmaker. Liv believes firmly in the importance of healing trauma, creating healthy boundaries, and holding hope for the astounding endurance of human resiliency.

TraumaEMDRSomaticCRMBody-Based

Deenah Vollmer, AMFT

Deenah Vollmer, AMFT

she/her

Deenah Vollmer is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist whose practice draws from Jungian analysis, psychoanalysis, mindfulness, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and the Enneagram. Deenah works with individuals seeking greater alignment in their relationships, careers, and creative lives. Her specialties include grief work, motherhood, life transitions, and couples therapy.

With a background in writing and the performing arts, she brings a lived understanding of the creative process to her work, particularly in supporting artists. She is the co-founder of Clown Therapy, a group modality that blends play and embodiment with therapeutic processing and integration. Deenah holds an MA from Pacifica Graduate Institute and an MFA from Columbia University, and also offers Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy as part of her integrative approach to healing.

GriefMotherhoodCouplesPsychedelic IntegrationArtistsEnneagramPsychedelic-Assisted Therapy

Our Space

A sanctuary for healing

The Tenders is tucked into a quiet corner of Atwater Village. The warm, home-like environment supports clients and clinicians alike in a safe container for the healing process.

The space is also utilized for offering healing arts and community gatherings through The Heart Space LA.

The practice space — warm natural light, plants, and home-like textures

The main therapy office — warm, light-filled space for clinical sessions

The back office — a private consultation room

A detail of the practice — plants, natural light, and warm textures

How we can tend to you

Services

Individual Therapy

In one-on-one work with adults and adolescents, our clinicians support healing in the most tender of places, supporting clients through grief, trauma, depression, anxiety, and more.

Group Therapy

In an increasingly isolated and artificial world, connection with others is needed now more than ever. We can heal in connection with others, with the support of a skilled therapist helping to hold this container.

Psychedelic Integration & Spiritual Care

As more and more people are taking part in psychedelics for healing, it is essential to have skilled psychedelic integration support. Several of our clinicians are trained in offering integration support, as well as in providing transpersonal psychotherapy and spiritual care.

Consultation

We are available to provide professional consultation for clinicians seeking support for their clients in areas of trauma-focused care, modalities such as Somatic Experiencing, IFS, and EMDR, and regarding psychedelic integration support.

Therapeutic Approach

Our modalities

Our practice integrates multiple evidence-based, body-oriented somatic modalities. The stress we carry negatively impacts our bodies, and past traumas can be stored on a cellular level. These modalities target trauma in the body and nervous system.

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing

Evidence-based therapy that helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories, reducing their emotional charge and enabling our innate natural healing intelligence.

Somatic Experiencing

SE

Body-oriented approach to healing trauma by tracking physical sensations and releasing stored survival energy trapped in the nervous system.

Internal Family Systems

IFS

A compassionate, somatic framework for understanding the whole person as a system of protective and often wounded parts, each carrying its own story and purpose in need of integration with one another.

Brainspotting

BSP

Uses fixed eye positions to access and process trauma stored deep in the subcortical brain, beyond the reach of talk therapy alone.

“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.”
— Adrienne Rich

“It takes a great commitment to change, and an even deeper commitment to grow.”
— Ralph Ellison

“I have come to the conclusion that human beings are born with an innate capacity to triumph over trauma. I believe not only that trauma is curable, but that the healing process can be a catalyst for profound awakening — a portal opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation.”
— Peter Levine

What we tend to

Areas of focus

Across our team, we support clients with a wide range of therapeutic needs, including but not limited to:

The Healing Time

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life

all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again

where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say

holy holy

— Pesha Gertler

Let's begin

Reaching out is the first step towards healing. Get in touch to schedule a free consultation and find the right therapist for you.

Phone +1 (213) 716-1719

Email [email protected]

Office

3038 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90039