Kristy Smith, AMFT
Psychotherapist
(She/Her)
As a depth-oriented psychotherapist, I believe in our innate capacity for healing and change. Meaningful change tends to happen when we are met with presence, curiosity, and compassion. Therapy offers a space to slow down, listen deeply, and begin making sense of the patterns, emotions, and experiences that shape our lives.
I work from the belief that nothing is inherently wrong with you. The ways you learned to cope, adapt, and survive were often intelligent responses to your environment. Yet the strategies that once protected you may now be keeping you stuck — in repetitive cycles, unfulfilling relationships, self-doubt, anxiety, or ways of being that no longer fit the person you are becoming. Together, we explore these patterns with curiosity rather than judgment, making space for understanding, healing, and choice.
At the Heart of My Work
At the heart of my work is the relationship between us — I believe it is the relationship itself that heals. I aim to create a warm, collaborative, and trustworthy space where all parts of you are welcome: your strengths and fears, your grief and longing, your contradictions and hopes.
I specialize in working with teens and young adults in their twenties and thirties navigating transition, identity development, relationship challenges, and questions of meaning and purpose. Many of my clients are living with anxiety, depression, people-pleasing, parentification, attachment wounds, difficult family dynamics, and the uncertainty that comes with major life change. I'm especially drawn to supporting people through the in-between seasons of life — when an old identity no longer fits but the next chapter hasn't yet emerged.
My work draws on psychodynamic, somatic, and mindfulness-based perspectives. Together we explore your story, building greater self-awareness, resilience, and a deeper connection to yourself.
Services & Areas of Focus
Services Offered
I offer psychotherapy for adolescents and adults, in person in San Francisco.
Areas of Focus
Anxiety and depression
Navigating relationships
Life transitions and rites of passage
Breaking old patterns
Inner child work
Somatic work
Identity development
Attachment wounds
Training & Credentials
MA Clinical Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute
AMFT #163477, Supervised by Jonathan Moss, LMFT