Psychotherapy · Santa Clarita, California
Some weeks are harder to hold together than others.
I am Brandy Roggentien, a licensed clinical social worker. For 25 years I have worked with anxiety, trauma, low mood and the ordinary difficult stretches of a life, by phone and video, anywhere in California.
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) #22723, California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Telehealth across California. Monday to Friday, 9:00am - 5:00pm Pacific.
- 25+ yearsIn clinical practice
- Since 2005In private practice
- #22723California LCSW license
- StatewideTelehealth anywhere in California
What people bring
Most of it starts with something you have stopped mentioning.
People rarely call on the worst day. They call on an ordinary Tuesday, after months of managing something quietly.
It might be that you have not slept properly since spring. That you dread Sunday evening. That something happened years ago and you have never said it out loud in a room with another person. That the person you used to be seems to have gone somewhere and you cannot work out when.
None of that needs to reach a crisis before it is worth treating. A great deal of what I see is people who waited far longer than they needed to, because they were not sure it counted.
What I work with
- Anxiety and panic that has started to shape your week, your routes and what you say yes to.
- Trauma, including the kind people have stopped calling trauma because it happened a long time ago.
- Low mood, loss of interest, and the difficulty of starting anything at all.
- Grief, including the loss of an animal, which is a real bereavement and gets treated like a small one.
- Children, teenagers and school difficulties, drawing on years of school social work.
- Life under pressure: caregiving, work, money, a marriage that has gone quiet.
The work
Three places most of my practice sits.
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Therapy
Cognitive behavioral and trauma-informed work for anxiety, low mood, panic and grief. Short and focused, or ongoing, depending on what you need.
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Trauma care
For single events and for the long, early kind that shaped how you read a room. Paced so that you are never pushed into telling more than you meant to.
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Children, teens and schools
School social work, special education, and families trying to get the right support in place. I have sat on both sides of that table.
How I work
Direct, and trained to look at what maintains a pattern.
Clients tell me the directness is the useful part, and so do the two clinicians who refer to me and have said so publicly further down this page. You will not spend six weeks circling a subject before anything gets named. If I think something, I will say it, including when what I think is that you do not need me.
My training is behavioral. I trained through UCLA's program under Ivar Lovaas and his associates at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, and worked there as a supervising senior behavior specialist and applied behavior analyst. That background means I think about what is keeping a pattern in place, not only about where it came from. Both matter. Only one of them changes the week you are about to have.
Since then: private practice since 2005, telehealth, school social work, special education curriculum development, workshop training for county superintendents across several districts, and adjunct faculty lecturing at Brandman University and CSU Bakersfield.
Formats
Two ways people work with me.
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Short and focused
Three sessions of about 45 minutes, by phone or video, taken as you need them. Suited to one defined problem where you want clinical input rather than a long course of therapy.
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Ongoing therapy
Continuing work at whatever frequency fits, for things that need more than a few conversations. We review it honestly rather than letting it run on out of habit.
What colleagues and clients say
Two of these are from other clinicians.
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Brandy is an incredibly powerful therapist. She is direct and always comes with solutions to issues clients struggle to see.
Joan KnowldenLMFT, CTS
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Brandy is an incredibly brilliant, compassionate, intuitive therapist that is extraordinarily engaging with all age groups.
Dr. Lance SteinbergMD
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She is wonderful to work through my life struggles with. Her calm presence, depth of knowledge, and willingness to go above and beyond are unparalleled.
Karen T.Client
Questions people ask first
Straight answers.
What is the first session actually like?
Mostly you talking and me listening, then me telling you what I think. We cover what brought you here, how long it has been going on, what you have already tried, and what you want to be different. By the end of it you will have a sense of whether we fit, which matters more than any credential on this page.
How long does therapy take?
That depends on what you bring. Some people want three sessions on one specific problem and then they are done. Others stay for a year because the work is deeper than that. I will give you my honest read early rather than letting it drift, and I will tell you when I think you are finished.
Is it phone, video or in person?
Phone and video. That is what most clients prefer and it is what lets me work with people anywhere in California, from the Santa Clarita Valley to the Antelope Valley and well beyond. No drive, no waiting room, no sitting in a car park composing yourself afterwards.
Do you take insurance?
Ask me when we speak and you will get a straight answer. Where I am out of network, I can provide a superbill you can submit to your insurer for possible reimbursement. See fees and insurance.
What if I have been in therapy before and it did not help?
Tell me that on the first call, and tell me what specifically did not work. It is useful information rather than a bad sign. Often the fit was wrong, or the approach was wrong for that problem, or the timing was wrong. Sometimes a person needed someone more direct than they got.
One more thing I do
Emotional support animal and service dog assessments.
A smaller part of the practice, and the part people most often arrive already confused about.
Over the years a lot of my clients have described the same thing without meaning to: the panic attack was shorter because the dog was there, the night was survivable, they got out of bed because something else needed them to. Where that is clinically real, I can document it so a housing provider has to consider it.
It is an assessment, not a product. California requires a licensed practitioner to hold a relationship with you for at least 30 days and to complete a clinical evaluation before providing that documentation, which is why no honest provider in this state can hand you a letter tonight. If the clinical picture does not support it, I will tell you so.
- Emotional support animal letters and what an assessment involves.
- Psychiatric service dogs and what counts as a trained task.
- California ESA law, the 30-day rule, and what your documentation has to contain.
Start with a phone call
Tell me what has been going on. It takes about ten minutes, it costs nothing, and at the end of it you will know whether I am the right person for it.