About

Hope Makes Room for the Change You’re Ready For

You find your way to therapy after a long stretch of holding steady on the outside while something quieter goes unspoken underneath.

Responsibilities pile up, and relationships ask more than you have to give. Old experiences you never fully resolved keep surfacing at the worst moments.

You’ve been strong for a long time, and lately you’re tired of doing it without anyone seeing you.

Change can feel frightening, because it asks you to loosen your hold on what is familiar, even when the familiar place stopped feeling good a while ago.

That is the honest part of this work, and I will not pretend otherwise.

Fear resists change. Hope makes room for it.

Hope opens the door just wide enough for one next step. Then another.

That is where we begin.

You’ll Feel Understood, and Honestly Challenged

Sitting across from me feels warm and unhurried. People tell me they relax in a way they didn’t expect to.

I listen closely, not only to your words, but to what sits underneath them. You will feel how committed I am to understanding your actual story rather than a tidy summary.

And because I want you to reach what you came here for, I will challenge you, too. Gently, and in ways that move you forward.

You will not spend the hour in silence while I wait. I stay active in the work, naming the patterns as they surface and handing you practical steps to try before we meet again.

I do not force your life into one method. I blend skill, insight, and a good deal of intuition so the work fits you.

If Faith Has Left You Feeling You’re Never Enough

For some people, faith is where comfort lives. For others, it is where the hurt began.

You grew up believing God was keeping score and that you kept falling short. Over time, a faith that was meant to hold you started sounding like a running list of where you failed.

I hold my own faith seriously, and I take yours seriously, too. Part of this work is gently separating the shame that borrowed religious language from the grace that was always underneath it.

That grace, not punishment, is where I start. Your beliefs stay yours. Together, we make room to sort out which of the inherited voices were ever really worth trusting.

Leave With Something You Can Use Tonight

The change you are after does not happen only in my office. It happens at 11 pm when the worry starts circling, or on the drive home, or the first hard morning after a loss.

So the tools I teach are built to travel with you. A teenager can practice quietly under a desk at school, and no one sitting nearby ever knows. A parent lying awake, afraid of what their child might do, gets something concrete to hold on to instead of the fear.

When grief is the reason you came, we take it at the pace grief needs. There is no rushing a goodbye. Some of the most important work we do together is slow on purpose. Over time, you notice yourself handling stress in steadier ways, saying what you mean more clearly, trusting your own judgment again.

You start coming to therapy to refine how you’re growing rather than to survive another hard week.

And as you find your footing, you build the confidence to keep moving on your own.

Diane Ussery, LCSW

Licensed Clinical Social Worker
CA License LCSW 107912

Works with

Teens 13–17, adults 18–64, and elders 65 and above

Format

Online throughout California

First step

Free 15-minute phone consultation

About Diane Ussery, LCSW

Inspire Positive Change, Rooted in Hope

I know what it is to be the strong one for everyone else while quietly wishing someone would be strong for me. I have felt shame, and I have felt dismissed and invisible.

So when I say I want to be here for you, I mean it.

I’m lucky enough to say this is my third career. The first two were boring.

Being a therapist is where I’ve finally landed.

Therapy helped me through my own hard seasons, so I know the other chair well. Getting here took some big changes, too, including quitting a full-time job and going back to graduate school as an older adult.

I began my career in inpatient psychiatric care, learning from adults living with severe mental illness. Hospice work deepened my understanding of presence and compassion. Later, working with men in a correctional facility expanded my sense of what healing can look like in hard places.

What a wild ride.

Through all of it, one dream stayed steady: my own private practice, working one-on-one with teens and adults. In 2023, I opened Living Hope Christian Therapy Group. My lived experience and my faith shape how I connect – with presence, humility, and deep respect for each person’s story.

I Love to Learn

My most recent training was a Certification in Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Children and Adolescents, which gave me concrete, real-world tools for helping big emotions become manageable.

Outside of Therapy

I enjoy time with my family and my cocker spaniel, Max. I love to travel, and so far France is my favorite, for the lush gardens and sipping espresso at a sidewalk café.

Retreats, time with friends, warm baths, and my faith round out the list. I love all things therapeutic.

Fun surprise: I’ve walked five half marathons, and somehow squeezed two of them into six months thanks to COVID chaos.

When You’re Ready to Feel Better, I’m Here

You made it to the end of this page for a reason.

Something in you is ready for things to be different.

Contact me today, and we’ll take the first step together.