Dr. Cynthia Curnan, LMFT

Dr. Cynthia Curnan brings decades of experience helping people move beyond limiting habits and repetitive patterns toward greater self-understanding and agency. Her professional path began as a teacher of Inner Guidance, training others in practices that cultivate intuition, insight, instinct, imagination, and a deeper inner intelligence that strengthens with use. That foundation informs a therapeutic approach that looks beneath surface behaviors to the childhood wounds and learned responses that often keep people stuck.

She encourages clients to develop accurate self-knowledge and to recognize which parts of themselves are doing the thinking and making decisions. This clarity is central to her work on self-mastery - the capacity to choose differently, set goals, and manifest what matters most. Dr. Curnan focuses on helping people unravel personal predicaments, replace perfectionism with a healthier inner drive toward excellence, and reconnect with an inner sense of guidance and possibility.

Dr. Curnan earned her California license as a marriage and family therapist in 1992 and completed her PhD in psychology in 1996. She is the author of the book The Care and Feeding of Perfectionists, published in 1998, which explores multiple forms of perfectionism and strategies to transform them into constructive inner motivation. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - a professional credential that denotes specialized training in relational and family systems - she blends clinical training with a long-standing interest in inner guidance practices.

Her clinical work addresses stress, anxiety, relationship challenges, trauma and abuse, grief, and intimacy-related issues, along with related concerns such as abandonment, caregiver stress, chronic illness and pain, communication difficulties, control issues, and life transitions. She integrates several therapeutic approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Trauma-Focused Therapy, the Gottman Method for couples work, and interactive hypnotherapy. Additional tools in her practice include breathwork, dream exploration, focused meditation, inner child work, humor, and goal-setting techniques.

Dr. Curnan helps people become more present, accept their personal power, dismantle perfectionistic patterns, and move toward lives defined more by curiosity and excellence than by self-criticism. Her approach combines practical skills with deeper inner work so clients can experience clearer choices and more satisfying relationships.