Shira Myrow, MA, LMFT (#93504)
Couples & Individual Counseling & Marriage Therapy
I am a trauma-based psychotherapist in private practice in Santa Monica, California deeply committed to helping people transform painful experiences and dysfunctional relationships into secure, resilient narratives. I see clients in person and virtually.
I help people turn rupture into repair—and transform painful communication patterns into intimacy, trust and lasting connection.As a couples psychotherapist, I’ve spent nearly two decades guiding individuals and couples through the hard, courageous work of relational healing.
Whether it’s habitual conflict, emotional disconnection, or the legacy of trauma, I support my clients in uncovering the deeper patterns at play—and building the emotional skill set to shift them.
Together, we’ll get underneath those patterns. We’ll trace them to their roots, reframe the internal narrative, and build practical tools that create real, sustainable change. Whether you’re navigating habitual conflict, codependency, emotional burnout, or complex trauma—these are terrains I know intimately.
My work is grounded in clinical rigor and relational depth. I bring advanced training in Emotionally Focused Therapy, the Gottman Method, Relational Life Therapy, Depth Psychology and Internal Family Systems as a foundation. I also integrate mindfulness-based techniques that will help you cultivate awareness, emotional balance, and inner resilience—without bypassing the hard truths.
My Story: What led me to this work
I came to psychology not just as a profession, but as a personal imperative—to make meaning of my own trauma.
As the daughter of a treatment-resistant schizophrenic mother, I grew up without the foundation of secure attachment. There was no emotional roadmap. No blueprint for connection. I had to learn how to relate to myself and others without a model for what love felt like in practice.
That experience seeded a lifelong devotion to help others heal what was never modeled and build inner maps of safety, intimacy, and self-trust. My work is always, at its core, relational. Focused on the repair of attachment wounds. Rooted in the belief that with the right guidance, even the most painful experiences can be transformed into profound sources of strength.
In recent years, that path has expanded.My own healing and clinical journey led me to explore the transformational power of psychedelic-assisted therapy. I completed facilitator training with MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), and went on to co-found I-Psychedelic Therapy with my colleague, Dr. Alexa Altman. Together, we’ve developed an integrative, relational, and trauma-aware approach to psychedelic healing—offering preparation, integration, and consultation for individuals and couples on the journey.
My Approach: Unraveling patterns to restore intimacy
The way that we see ourselves and the world— is shaped by a web of internal stories that we unconsciously repeat over and over in our minds. It can create tremendous suffering in our relationships and in our lives. It may look like depression, anxiety, uncertainty or conflict within ourselves or with loved ones.
As poet David Whyte writes "We are shaped by our shaping of the world and are shaped again in turn." In other words, our experience is filtered through our unconscious beliefs and expectations. Many of those beliefs are patently false but we believe them anyway. It's what we know.
What if you could redefine and rewrite the inner narratives that don't serve you? Redeem the story about your self that is so confining and limiting? Repair your sense of who are you? You could radically change your life.
I help people unearth the architecture that keeps them stuck—in love, in conflict, in stories that no longer serve.
We begin with the pain points and follow the thread toward insight, relational skillfulness, and self-trust.
The first step toward healing is simply the willingness to begin.