Our Founder, Diana Anzaldua is a Social change Activist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Board Approved Supervisor. Diana is a Trauma-Informed psychosomatics therapist in Austin, Texas. She is also a Trauma-informed Yoga teacher and the founder and owner of Austin Trauma Therapy Center. Diana teaches her clients new skills for coping and adapting to the daily stresses of life through a trauma-resilient lens. This helps trauma survivors live the life they imagined by connecting them to their true authentic self by healing core wounds. Diana and her clinical expertise has been featured in a number of magazines like: Bustle, Allure, Hello Giggles, PBS, The BBC, NASW, Social Work Advocacy, Yahoo, and The Atlantic Journal. Diana serves on the 2021-2024 Mayor’s Committee for People with Disabilities, and has received numerous awards for her work in community healing, public service and leadership. Diana is Licensed in the States of Texas, North Carolina, and Nevada. Diana is a member of the 2021 Leadership Austin and We Thrive cohorts. (scroll to bottom for shortened bio)
Diana serves on the national board for the Clinical Social Work Association, chairing the Diversity, Equity and Ethics Committee. Diana also serves on the local Boards for Jolt Action and Pease Park Conservancy.
Diana started Austin Trauma Therapy Center in 2019 through her counseling work when she began to realize so many people continue to be affected by traumatic childhood experiences from generational trauma. Having experienced her own childhood trauma, she began to look at what other trauma treatments were out there for vulnerable persons.
After learning there wasn’t a one-stop-shop outpatient trauma treatment center where individuals could go to heal from core wounds, she quickly asked herself, “what if there was a place people could go in an outpatient setting, where many trauma treatments could be utilized, to help them feel better and heal with their specific trauma–one place, one center with multiple specializations and practitioners rather than seek out individual therapies with different providers?” At that point, Austin Trauma Therapy Center was born and strives to be your only healing center.
Diana understands the tremendous amount of pain that one endures with complex trauma. She has come from a place of suffering and has made it her life-long goal to help others end their suffering by providing them with a safe space and the necessary tools and skills people need to be thrivers of trauma and heal from painful wounds.
Diana identifies as a female Therapist of color, specifically within the Latinx population and is familiar with the historical and generational impacts that people face within these marginalized and oppressed communities.
Therapeutic Healing as a Clinical Social Worker
Diana has worked in Residential Treatment Centers with children and Adolescents, as well as Intensive Outpatient Centers with Adults and Adolescents for co-occurring Substance Use Disorders and Mental Illness. Diana has worked with Opiod and other Substance Use Disorders as they relate to Addiction and detoxification. Diana also has experience working with drug court offenders, juvenile re-entry programs, Adolescent School-Based group programming on Anger Management, Veterans post-combat, LGBTQ+ youth and LGBTQ+ transitioning persons, Child Protective Services Family Cases, Sexual Trauma on both sides; persons harmed and persons causing harm, Unaccompanied Minor Youth and other Community-Based treatment programming.
Diana continues to provide therapy services to persons struggling with symptoms of PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Substance Abuse, Attachment Disorders, Grief and Loss, Complex Trauma, Mood Disorders and Anger Management. Diana is trained in CARTs, EMDR, NARM, DBT, TF-CBT, Trauma-Informed Yoga, IFS, Attachment-based work and completed Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing Intermediate III, and Resmaa Menakem’s Somatic Abolition. Diana also recently completed the LENS (neurofeedback) training in 2022.
Diana loves music, and has been a DJ for nearly 20 years, and considers herself to be a creative and tends to incorporate Art and Music into her therapeutic approach. Diana has extensive experience in working with anger and anxiety as a result of complex trauma, adolescents on the Autism spectrum and those diagnosed with Intellectual Disabilities, as well as Developmental trauma.
Trauma-Informed Healing as a Clinical Social Worker
No two people have the same lived experience, which is why Diana’s approach is solution-focused, and person-centered. This means every session is suited to the individual needs of the client. She incorporates Trauma-Informed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and insight-oriented meditation modalities. Additionally, she adds self-compassion, and various forms of expressive/movement based therapies like Trauma-Informed Yoga to help you develop the skills necessary to tolerate difficult emotions and situations in the present moment.
More about Diana Anzaldua as a Trauma Therapist
Having grown up as a teen-mom in a marginalized community and chaotic environment. Diana understands people often struggle with utilizing unhealthy, adaptive coping skills to address symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other mood disorders, and has made it her goal to help others. She can assist you with identifying strategies that will work for you to identify and modify thinking, behaviors, and actions that no longer serve you.
She has a passion for helping clients heal, by incorporating new skills to move past self-defeating patterns. Additionally, Diana also believes that everyone has the capacity to make positive changes and heal. Her motto is, “together, we can work through the barriers that may be preventing you from being the best person you can be and living your best life.”
Therapy really improved my life! It was so important for me to have a safe, compassionate place to heal. Having suffered from my own childhood trauma, and other traumatic experiences in my life, my healing would not have been possible, if not for psychotherapy.
-Diana Anzaldúa
Owner/Founder of Austin Trauma Therapy Center
Diana Anzaldúa short Bio
Diana Anzaldua, a first gen psychosomatics therapist dedicated to embodied trauma alchemy. She is the founder of the award winning health and wellness centers; Austin Trauma Therapy Center & Contigo Wellness. Diana is a social change activist and influential leader in community organized mental health equity and reform in historically marginalized communities. Her vision of decolonized healing and anti-oppressive trauma-informed leadership create safe spaces for other survivors to grow, embrace their resilience, and heal; in-community with others. Diana and her clinical expertise have been featured in a number of magazines like: Allure, The BBC, and The Atlantic Journal. Diana serves on several local and national non-profit boards and has received numerous awards for her work in community healing, public service and leadership. Diana is a graduate of the School of Social Work at the University of Texas in Austin and is professionally licensed in North Carolina, Nevada, and Texas.
