About Dr. Mcayla
I'm Dr. Mcayla
I'm a psychotherapist, author, and EMDRIA-Certified clinician with nearly two decades in private practice. I hold a master's degree in marriage and family therapy and a doctorate in psychology, and I'm licensed in California and Florida.
In 2013, I received a grant from the EMDR Institute to conduct an extensive year-long study of the 5-Day EMDR Intensive, and I have been refining that work ever since.
My work draws on psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality to reach the beliefs people formed long before they could question them, the ones that quietly shape how they live and relate.
I understand this work from the inside. I spent years caught in patterns that logic alone could not move, and the moment they finally shifted changed the direction of my life. That experience is why I do this work, and why I wrote my book, Behind the Story.
Behind the Story: Redefining Who You Are
The mental block before the thing you are most qualified to do. The pattern you keep repeating in relationships you chose with open eyes. The imposter feeling that survives every success, the anxiety with no obvious cause, the low that arrives after the win. These are treated as separate problems. They share one origin.
Somewhere in childhood, every one of us learned what it took to be safe, valuable, in control, and enough. We learned it from the people around us and the way they responded to us, and we built everything on it. We all learned it wrong. That is why the good moments never last. The deal closes, the apology comes, the words you waited years for finally arrive, and for a day or a week you feel it. Then it fades, and the next pursuit begins. The feelings we chase are measured by outcomes and by other people, and anything measured that way has to be earned again tomorrow.
There is a reason the finish line keeps moving. Behind the Story explains the mechanism: how the sense of self you were handed as a child quietly runs every decision now, and what it takes to get out of survival mode and learn how to live. The foreword is by New York Times bestselling author Raymond Aaron. A revised edition is in preparation.
