How Alafiora Works
An overview of the methods behind the work, and where each one is described in full.
Most people looking for a psychologist are not comparing theoretical orientations. They are trying to work out whether the person across from them is going to understand what is actually happening, and whether anything is going to change. The methods below exist so that what the work actually involves can be read before it is paid for, rather than taken on trust.
Every method below is applied to the same three domains: love obsession and love addiction, compulsive sexual behavior and sex addiction, and sexual trauma. Reading these is useful for a specific reason. They describe what a session is likely to feel like before anyone has paid for one. A person who wants to understand where a pattern came from is describing a different kind of hour from a person who arrived because of the nightmares, and both kinds of hour happen here, and neither has to be chosen blind.
Fourteen Approaches, Four Groups
How This Section Is Organized
These are not fourteen services to pick between. They are the parts of one approach, and most courses of care draw on several of them at once, in a sequence that follows what a particular person actually needs rather than a fixed protocol. Nobody is asked to choose a method, and nobody is assigned one because of what they arrived with.
The grouping below is by what an approach is for, not by school of thought. Where a method has a real evidence base, that evidence is named and cited on its own page rather than gestured at.
The frame the whole practice sits inside.
The umbrella the rest of the work happens under, and the standards it holds itself to. The place to start for the short answer to "what kind of therapy is this."
Depth-Oriented Care
What depth-oriented therapy actually means, the research behind treating underlying patterns rather than symptoms alone, and how licensed psychologist Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett applies this umbrella approach to love obsession, compulsive sexual behavior, and sexual trauma across every stage of care.
Read more about Depth-Oriented Care →Psychodynamic Therapy
What psychodynamic therapy actually is, the specific research behind its documented effect sizes, and how licensed psychologist Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett applies unconscious-conflict and developmental-history work to love obsession, compulsive sexual behavior, and sexual trauma in session.
Read more about Psychodynamic Therapy →Evidence-Based Practice
What "evidence-based therapy" actually means, according to the American Psychological Association, and how Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, applies validated techniques within a depth-oriented, individualized approach rather than a fixed, one-size-fits-all treatment protocol.
Read more about Evidence-Based Practice →Working with what drives the pattern.
Attachment, emotion, and the capacity to read one's own mind and someone else's. These are the techniques that address the mechanism underneath a fixation or a compulsion rather than the behavior on top of it.
Attachment-Centered Care
What attachment-centered therapy actually means, grounded in Mikulincer and Shaver's adult attachment research, and how Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, works with the relational templates and felt security underneath love addiction, compulsive sexual behavior, and sexual trauma.
Read more about Attachment-Centered Care →Emotion-Focused Work
What emotion-focused therapy actually means, grounded in Leslie Greenberg's individual model, not couples-based EFT, and how Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, works with the emotion underneath love addiction, compulsive sexual behavior, and complex sexual trauma in session.
Read more about Emotion-Focused Work →Mentalization-Based Therapy
What mentalization-based therapy actually means, grounded in Fonagy, Bateman, and Allen's research, and how Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, works with the damaged capacity to read one's own mind and another's underneath love addiction, compulsive sexual behavior, and trauma.
Read more about Mentalization-Based Therapy →Dream Analysis
How Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, works with dream material in depth-oriented therapy, and the honest, important difference between classical dream analysis and Imagery Rehearsal Therapy, the specific, research-backed treatment for recurring trauma nightmares.
Read more about Dream Analysis →Working directly with trauma and with sex.
Specific, named methods for the two domains that most often bring people here, including the honest account of which credentials this practice does and does not hold.
Trauma-Focused Care
What trauma-focused and trauma-specialized therapy actually means, including Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure's evidence base, and how Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, draws on trauma-specialized technique within a depth-oriented, individualized practice.
Read more about Trauma-Focused Care →Sex Therapy
How Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, treats compulsive sexual behavior, sex addiction, hypersexuality, and sex anxiety, and the specific, honest distinction between her doctoral-level clinical training and the separate AASECT sex therapist credential she does not hold.
Read more about Sex Therapy →Harm Reduction
What harm reduction actually means in therapy for compulsive sexual behavior: the client, not a fixed abstinence mandate, chooses the treatment goal.
Read more about Harm Reduction →Who is holding the treatment plan, and what gets to come into the room.
Care that does not require a client to leave part of themselves at the door, and that treats the direction of the work as the client's to set.
Consent-Oriented Care
What consent-oriented therapy actually means: ongoing, collaborative informed consent as the operating structure of the relationship itself, not a one-time intake form.
Read more about Consent-Oriented Care →Culturally Attuned & Identity-Affirming Care
How Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, lets race, class, political conviction, reproductive history, generational family structure, and chosen family shape therapy, grounded in the APA's own Multicultural Guidelines rather than a single assumed version of any client's identity.
Read more about Culturally Attuned & Identity-Affirming Care →Faith-Based Counseling & Therapy
How Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, welcomes prayer, scripture, and organized religious practice into clinical work for clients whose faith is built around a specific tradition, sacred text, and community, while remaining a psychologist rather than a religious authority.
Read more about Faith-Based Counseling & Therapy →Spiritual Counseling & Therapy
How Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, a licensed psychologist, engages clinically with tarot, energy work, herbal practice, and a felt connection to the natural world, with the same seriousness given to organized religious belief, and adapts session format to fit what actually feels right for a client.
Read more about Spiritual Counseling & Therapy →One Psychologist, One Approach
Why the Method Never Changes Hands
Every approach on this page is held by the same clinician. Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett is a licensed psychologist whose doctoral training was in clinical psychology, grounded in psychodynamic theory and the treatment of complex, overlapping presentations. There are no associates, no rotating providers, and no case handoffs at Alafiora, which is why a course of care can move between these methods without anyone starting over.
That structure is what makes drawing on several approaches at once possible rather than chaotic. A client whose trauma history is driving a compulsive pattern is not referred out to a second clinician for the second half; the same person holds both, in the same hour, using whichever of these methods the work actually calls for that week. Where those hours happen, and on what terms, is set out on Where Alafiora Practices.
What none of this is: a fixed protocol, a manual worked through in order, or a promise about how long anything takes. The Getting Started page describes how a first conversation actually begins.
Every session at Alafiora is held by one licensed psychologist
Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett is the founder and sole practitioner of Alafiora. There are no associates, no rotating providers, and no case handoffs: the person who reads a client's history in the first session is the same person still holding it two years later. She is licensed in New Mexico and Indiana, with additional state licensure underway.
Her training is doctoral-level, which typically extends several years beyond a master's-level license in assessment, diagnosis, and the treatment of complex, overlapping presentations. She keeps a deliberately small caseload so that depth is possible, participates in ongoing peer consultation and clinical training, and maintains her own personal therapy.
Whatever brought someone to this page today is never put on trial here
A consultation is a brief conversation with no obligation attached. Those already certain they are ready are equally welcome to begin directly with a first session.