Irene Saunders

Walking into a session with Irene Saunders, most people notice something unexpected: a quality of ease that makes it possible to say what they haven’t been able to say elsewhere. Saunders is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker based in La Jolla who has spent more than two decades in clinical settings — including the psychiatry departments at UCSD and Rady Children’s Hospital and at Scripps Clinic — before building a full-time private practice. That depth of training informs how she works: drawing on multiple therapeutic schools and shaping each engagement around what a specific person actually needs.

She works with adults, couples, and families navigating depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, trauma, abuse recovery, addiction, eating disorders, grief, divorce, and relationship difficulties — among others. A particular thread through her practice is a mind-body method called focusing, which she integrates with other approaches and which clients frequently describe as clarifying and quietly powerful. For people who find it hard to complete meaningful personal work — not from lack of intention, but because sustained inner attention keeps getting pulled away before anything can take root — this kind of embodied, structured reflection can be the missing piece.

Saunders offers both in-person and online sessions, and invites prospective clients to reach out for a complimentary fifteen-minute phone consultation.