Saludos Psychology Group

Dr. Kimberly Fitzgerald González

Licensed Clinical Psychologist

Florida #10967 - California PSY31536

Saludos Psychology Group — telehealth psychology serving California and Florida

Science-based therapy is good therapy.

Individual · Couples · Families

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Evidence-Based Therapy

Evidence-based therapy means the approach your clinician is using has been tested — in controlled studies, with real patients, measured against outcomes that matter. It is not a philosophy or a school of thought. It is a standard of proof. The standard requires randomized trials, measurable outcomes, replication across independent studies, and peer review by scientists whose job is to find the flaws. When a therapy is evidence-based, it means researchers put it in front of the hardest question in clinical science — does this actually work, for this problem, in this population — and it passed. Not all therapy has cleared that bar. Evidence-based therapy has.

The Biopsychosocial Model

A foundational approach in modern psychology that recognizes that mental health is shaped by the interaction of biological factors (brain chemistry, genetics, physical health), psychological factors (thoughts, emotions, behavior patterns, personality), and social factors (relationships, culture, environment, life experiences). Treating the whole person means attending to all three dimensions — not just the symptom that brought someone to therapy.

The Health Belief Model

A research-supported framework that helps us understand why people seek help, what motivates change, and what gets in the way. When clients understand the nature of their condition, the rationale behind their treatment, and the steps that lead to change, they are more likely to engage fully and achieve lasting results. Explaining the how and the why is not just good practice — the research tells us it is associated with significantly better outcomes.

Dr. Fitzgerald González implements science-based therapy that is integrative by design. Rather than applying a single modality, methods are drawn from the full spectrum of research-based theoretical foundations and research-based approaches — selecting and combining therapeutic tools based on what each client needs at each stage of treatment.

Click a category to expand · Click any therapy for its description

Cognitive & Behavioral

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Cognitive and behavioral therapies work on the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and actions. The core insight is that how you interpret events — not the events themselves — drives emotional responses. These approaches teach concrete skills to identify distorted thinking patterns, interrupt unhelpful behavioral cycles, and build more adaptive responses to stress, fear, and difficult emotions. They are among the most extensively researched therapies in all of psychology.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Behavioral Activation Therapy Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE) Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) Schema Therapy

Trauma-Focused

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Trauma-focused therapies are built around the clinical reality that traumatic experience does not stay in the past — it reorganizes the nervous system, reshapes the sense of self and safety, and continues to drive behavior long after the original event. These approaches work directly with traumatic memory and its physiological residue.

Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) Seeking Safety Somatic Experiencing Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT)

Women's Health & Wellness

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Women's health therapies address the psychological dimensions of experiences that are specific to or disproportionately affect women — reproductive health, body image, relational dynamics shaped by gender, and the ways that societal expectations around femininity intersect with mental health. Gender is treated as central, not incidental, to clinical presentation.

Body Image Therapy Developmental Feminist Therapy Female-Centered Therapy Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) Reproductive Mental Health Therapy Trauma-Informed Female-Centered Therapy Women's Responsive Therapy

Humanistic & Relational

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Humanistic and relational therapies place the therapeutic relationship itself at the center of the healing process. These approaches hold that people have an innate capacity for growth and self-understanding — and that the right relational conditions, rather than techniques, are what allow that capacity to emerge. The quality of the connection between clinician and patient is not incidental to treatment. It is the treatment.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) Motivational Interviewing (MI) Narrative Therapy Person-Centered Therapy

Family Systems

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Family systems therapies treat the family — not the individual — as the primary unit of clinical attention. Symptoms that appear to belong to one person are understood as expressions of patterns operating across the whole system. Changing one person without addressing the system they live in often produces limited and short-lived results.

Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) Bowen Family Systems Therapy Functional Family Therapy (FFT) Internal Family Systems (IFS) Multisystemic Therapy (MST) Structural Family Therapy Strategic Family Therapy

Mindfulness-Based

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Mindfulness-based therapies train the capacity to observe thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations without automatically reacting to them. The goal is not to eliminate difficult internal experiences — it is to change the relationship to those experiences so they no longer drive behavior in ways that cause suffering.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Mindfulness Therapy

Culturally Responsive

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Culturally responsive therapies recognize that psychology has historically been built on the experiences of a narrow demographic — and that applying those frameworks uncritically to people from different cultural backgrounds produces distorted assessments and ineffective treatment. These approaches center cultural identity, immigration experience, systemic oppression, and collective values as clinically relevant data.

Culturally Adapted CBT Culturally Responsive Therapy Immigration and Acculturation Therapy Liberation Psychology Multicultural Therapy Narrative Therapy with Cultural Humility

Psychodynamic

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Psychodynamic therapy draws on psychoanalytic theory in a more flexible, present-focused format. The emphasis is on how unconscious patterns — particularly those formed in early attachment relationships — show up in current functioning and the relationship with the therapist. It takes the past seriously without being anchored in it.

Brief Psychodynamic Therapy Psychodynamic Therapy Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP)

Lifespan Development

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Lifespan development therapies recognize that psychological needs and challenges shift across the arc of a life. The clinical questions facing a young adult navigating identity are fundamentally different from those facing someone in midlife or later life confronting loss and mortality. These approaches are calibrated to the specific developmental tasks of each life stage.

Adjustment to Aging Therapy Career and Identity Therapy Developmental Therapy Empty Nest and Role Transition Therapy End of Life Therapy Grief and Bereavement Therapy Life Transitions Therapy

Integrative & Holistic

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Integrative and holistic therapies draw on multiple theoretical frameworks and recognize that the mind, body, and spirit are not separate systems. Psychological distress lives in the body, in energy systems, in creative expression, and in the way a person inhabits their physical existence. These approaches use those dimensions as pathways to healing that purely verbal or cognitive approaches may not reach.

Body-Based Psychotherapy Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) Energy Psychology Expressive Arts Therapy Holistic Wellness Therapy Integrative Psychotherapy Mind-Body Therapy Somatic Therapy

Men's Health & Wellness

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Men's health therapies address the specific ways that gender socialization shapes psychological experience and help-seeking behavior in men. These approaches meet men where they are — working within the frameworks of identity, stoicism, and relational style that men actually bring to treatment, rather than expecting them to conform to a therapeutic model built for someone else.

Compassionate Mind Training for Men Emotionally Focused Therapy for Men Male Trauma Recovery Therapy Men's Narrative Therapy Men's Relational Therapy Motivational Enhancement Therapy Stoicism-Informed Therapy

Psychoanalytic

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Psychoanalytic therapies operate on the premise that much of what drives human behavior is unconscious — shaped by early relational experiences, unresolved conflicts, and internalized representations of self and others formed before explicit memory was possible. They are suited to patients for whom surface-level symptom reduction is not enough — who want to understand, not just manage.

Classical Psychoanalysis Contemporary Relational Psychoanalysis Ego Psychology Object Relations Therapy Self Psychology

Psychoeducation

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Psychoeducational approaches treat knowledge as a therapeutic tool. Understanding what is happening — why the brain responds the way it does, what maintains a problem, how specific techniques work — is an active ingredient in treatment, not just background information. These approaches are practical and skill-focused.

Problem-Solving Therapy (PST) Psychoeducation Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)

Emotional & Mental Health

Anxiety, depression, trauma & more

Emotional & Mental Health

  • The accumulation of pressure that exceeds what one person can absorb
  • A persistent flatness that resists explanation and ordinary remedy
  • Emotional responses that are disproportionate to their triggers
  • The psychological residue of experiences that have not been fully processed
  • Navigating loss without a clear roadmap for what comes after
  • The depletion that follows sustained high output over time

Relationships & Family

Conflict, attachment & family dynamics

Relationships & Family

  • The particular complexity of intimacy with people who know you completely
  • Parenting as a sustained act of psychological and emotional labor
  • Relational patterns that repeat across time and partners
  • The architecture of boundaries in systems that resist them
  • Attachment, trust, and the conditions under which they are rebuilt
  • The intersection of money, loyalty, and family identity

Divorce & Separation

Navigating one of life's most difficult transitions

Divorce & Separation

  • The dissolution of a shared identity constructed over years
  • Co-parenting as a sustained relationship with someone you are leaving
  • Reconstructing a life whose architecture has fundamentally changed
  • Managing an ongoing dynamic with a former partner when children remain
  • Helping children develop a coherent narrative around family change
  • Grieving someone who remains present in your life

Personal Growth & Identity

Self-worth, purpose & clarity

Personal Growth & Identity

  • Identity that has become conflated with role, title, or function
  • The gap between the life one is living and the one one intended
  • Decisions that reflect what one has been conditioned to want rather than what one actually values
  • Confidence as an internal construct rather than an external performance
  • The deliberate construction of a self one can respect

Career & Life Direction

Stress, transitions & professional growth

Career & Life Direction

  • Achieving at a high level in a direction that has lost its meaning
  • The psychological cost of sustained interpersonal conflict in professional environments
  • Output that has outpaced the internal resources available to sustain it
  • Navigating professional transition without a clear forward trajectory
  • The cognitive and physiological consequences of high-visibility performance demands
  • Aligning professional identity with personal values

High Performers & Leaders

Peak performance & leadership psychology

High Performers & Leaders

  • Sustaining elite output when the biological and psychological reserves are depleted
  • The particular burden of being the person others orient toward
  • An internal standard that no level of achievement satisfies
  • Cognitive precision under conditions that do not allow for error
  • Leading with psychological integrity while managing one's own interior demands
  • Visibility, success, and the complex psychological terrain they produce

Athletes & Performance Psychology

Mental performance & competition psychology

Athletes & Performance

  • The psychological determinants of elite athletic performance
  • Cognitive and emotional regulation under competitive pressure
  • Confidence as a trainable construct rather than an innate trait
  • The full recovery of psychological readiness following physical injury
  • Output variance that reflects psychological rather than physical limitation
  • Identity construction beyond the athletic role

Behavioral & Lifestyle

Habits, motivation & healthy coping

Behavioral & Lifestyle

  • The gap between intellectual understanding of a behavior and the capacity to modify it
  • Patterns of avoidance that are functionally effective in the short term and costly over time
  • Substance use as a regulatory mechanism for unaddressed psychological material
  • Sleep architecture and its relationship to cognitive and emotional functioning
  • Building a behavioral repertoire congruent with one's actual goals and values

Life Transitions

Navigating change & major life shifts

Life Transitions

  • The psychological work of assimilating into an environment that does not yet feel like one's own
  • Relational transitions that alter the fundamental structure of one's daily life
  • Parenthood and the reorganization of identity it requires
  • Circumstances that render a previously coherent life plan obsolete
  • Health events that permanently alter one's relationship with one's own body
  • Aging as a psychological process, not merely a physical one

Trauma & Difficult Experiences

Processing the past & building resilience

Trauma & Difficult Experiences

  • Formative experiences whose psychological effects extend well beyond their chronological boundaries
  • A developmental environment that failed to provide what was required
  • Experiences that violated the fundamental conditions of safety and trust
  • The somatic encoding of psychological events that the conscious mind has moved past
  • Constructing a coherent narrative from a history that resists one

Intergenerational Wealth Challenges

The psychology of wealth, legacy & family money

Intergenerational Wealth

  • The psychological obligations attached to a family name and its attendant expectations
  • Wealth as a source of relational complexity rather than freedom
  • Identity construction independent of financial standing or family position
  • Raising children who possess material abundance and require psychological depth
  • The psychological reorganization required by sudden acquisition or loss of wealth
  • Legacy — what one inherits, what one chooses to perpetuate, and what one elects to end

Coping & Resilience

Strength, adaptability & emotional tools

Coping & Resilience

  • The psychological infrastructure that determines how one responds to adversity
  • Developing internal resources that are proportionate to the demands of one's life
  • Regulatory strategies that are genuinely effective rather than merely palliative
  • Maintaining psychological coherence under conditions of sustained uncertainty