Aalaa Alshareef
Individual and Couples Therapist
Dr. Aalaa Alshareef, LMFT, an individual, family and couples therapist, helps her clients to process and heal psychological and relational issues. Family and Couples Therapy can help you come back to health and balance. She believes that therapy is both science and art. The art of therapy can be seen as a joint venture between clients and therapists and the science reflects in providing assessments, treatment plans, and evidence-based interventions. She believes in the collaboration between clients as experts in their lives and herself as a therapist who is trained in providing therapy services.
As a systemically-oriented therapist, Dr. Alshareef acknowledges the importance of broadening the view of clients’ systems by searching for strengths, resources, and constraints. She provides personalized treatment plans for each client and takes their unique context into consideration. The road to change requires curiosity, empathy, encouragement, and persistence. She is honored that clients allow her to witness their journey and walk the road with them to help achieve their therapy goals. She is trained to help clients adapt solution sequence instead of the problem sequence and help them maintain the progress they make in therapy.
Education & Experience
Dr. Alshareef holds a doctoral degree in Family Social Science, specializing in Couple & Family Therapy. She is a Minnesota Board of Marriage and Family Therapy Licensed Associate Marriage and Family Therapy (LAMFT #4072). She helps individuals, couples, and families who struggle with health conditions both mental and physical. She has experience working with individuals, couples, and families who struggle with ADHD, anxiety, chronic health conditions, depression, loss and grief, stress, trauma, and relationships issues such as boundaries, parenting, sex and intimacy, infidelity, trust, and more.
The human experience is so complicated, which makes any single treatment model limited to thoroughly attending to every level of clients’ experiences. So, she utilizes Integrative Systemic Therapy. She believes that the integrative approach bridges the gaps between different models and enables her to develop treatment plans that are personalized and more comprehensive.
Dr. Alshareef has special training in:
- Integrative Systemic Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Medical Family Therapy
- Pre-Marital Counseling
- Sensate Focus to Treat Sexual Issues
- The Neurobiology of feeling safe: Working with Boundaries Inside and Out.
Dr. Alshareef speaks both Arabic and English. She is a culturally sensitive therapist. She believes that each family has its own culture. Each family is unique in how they conceptualize change and challenges. She helps couples and families to interact safely and effectively based on their own culture, religion/spirituality, socioeconomic status, and values.
Dr. Alshareef is also a Clinical Supervisor for our Cranberry location. She provides comprehensive systemic supervision to licensed and pre-licensed therapists as well as our counseling interns.
Aalaa’s Therapy Philosophy
Behind each wound is a story. People walk through life with powerful, solid, and heavily built stories. Some stories are sensitive and secretive, making them even more challenging to carry because there is not only the wound of having endured them but the secret they have become. Aalaa has a safe “enough” space for clients to share, explore, change, and grow. She will explore clients’ expectations of the therapy and provide them with personalized therapy.
How to Get Started
Dr. Alshareef provides in-person therapy in our Cranberry location. If you’re interested in working with Dr. Alshareef, you can reach us at 412-322-2129 or email us at info@counselingwellnesspgh.com to get started. Or contact us here.