Cheryl Youngblood, LCSW

Cheryl Youngblood is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) based in California who brings a compassionate, strengths-focused approach to working with individuals and families. With 12 years of clinical experience and a long history of service in child, adolescent, and family settings, she draws on her prior leadership as director of a foster and adoptive services agency to inform her understanding of trauma, attachment, and family system dynamics. Cheryl has developed particular expertise supporting people facing trauma, domestic violence, self-injurious behaviors, post-traumatic stress, caregiving stress, and the complex emotional challenges that arise from adoption, foster care, and family-of-origin issues.

She is gerontology informed and welcomes collaboration with mature adults and those caring for elderly family members, addressing issues such as retirement adjustment, grief, transitions to assisted living, and the practical and emotional demands of caregiving. Her work emphasizes empathy, respect for life experience, and practical strategies that honor each person’s strengths and wisdom. Cheryl integrates a client-centered, multicultural, and eclectic stance with evidence-informed techniques to help clients manage anxiety, depression, relationship concerns, addiction-related patterns, attention and focus challenges, and life transitions.

Her therapeutic toolkit includes clinical approaches such as Client-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT), Motivational Interviewing, Narrative Therapy, and Solution-Focused Therapy. She also uses mindfulness-based practices and experiential tools such as guided imagery, breathing exercises, sensory techniques, tapping, and meditation to support clients in cultivating present-moment coping and emotional regulation. Cheryl aims to create a supportive, nonjudgmental space where practical interventions and compassionate listening work together to promote insight, resilience, and forward movement.