Frequently Asked Questions

Wondering if Luna Grove Therapy is right for you?

Finding a therapist can involve a surprising amount of guesswork. A profile might tell you someone's credentials and specialties without telling you what therapy with that person is actually like—or whether they work with what you're experiencing.

Here you'll find straightforward answers about who I work with, what I help with, what therapy with me is like, and when another provider might be a better fit.

About Luna Grove Therapy

  • I'm Silvana Martinez, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and the therapist behind Luna Grove Therapy.

    I provide individual psychotherapy to adults in Utah. My work is especially focused on trauma, family-of-origin experiences, cultural and family expectations, people-pleasing, guilt, boundaries, identity, and relationship patterns.

    I often work with people who have spent much of their lives taking care of other people's needs, keeping the peace, meeting expectations, or trying to be who they were supposed to be—and who are beginning to wonder what it would mean to build a life that actually feels like their own.

  • Luna Grove Therapy is based in Utah and provides therapy exclusively through telehealth.

    Because I am licensed as a clinical social worker in Utah, I can work with clients throughout the state as long as they are physically located in Utah at the time of the therapy session.

  • No. Luna Grove Therapy is a telehealth-only practice.

    All sessions take place through a secure video platform.

  • Yes. I provide therapy in English and Spanish.

    For bilingual clients, therapy also doesn't have to stay entirely in one language. Sometimes an experience, relationship, memory, or emotion is simply easier to describe in the language in which you experienced it.

Who I Help

  • I provide individual therapy to adults age 18 and older.

    I often work with adults navigating trauma, difficult family relationships, family-of-origin experiences, cultural or family expectations, people-pleasing, guilt, boundaries, perfectionism, identity, and recurring relationship patterns.

    You don't need to have the perfect diagnostic label for what's happening before coming to therapy.

    Sometimes the problem is simply:

    I'm exhausted from being everything to everyone.

    I know I'm allowed to say no, so why do I feel so guilty when I do?

    I don't actually know what I want anymore.

    I understand where my patterns come from. I just don't know how to stop repeating them.

    Those are things we can work with.

  • Yes. Adult children of immigrants and people navigating bicultural experiences are an important part of my practice.

    Growing up between cultures can involve experiences that don't always fit neatly into traditional conversations about mental health.

    You may love your family deeply while struggling with their expectations. You may feel responsible for their happiness or guilty for wanting something different. You may have learned early to translate, mediate, achieve, adapt, stay quiet, keep the peace, or take on responsibilities because that's what your family needed.

    As an adult, you may find yourself asking:

    How much do I owe my family?

    Why does saying no make me feel so guilty?

    Can I choose myself without rejecting where I come from?

    Who am I when I'm not trying to make everyone else happy?

    Therapy can be a place to explore those questions without requiring you to choose between caring about your family and caring about yourself.

  • No.

    A broader theme of my practice is working with adults who learned that being loved, accepted, safe, or “good” meant taking care of other people's needs.

    Those patterns can develop in many kinds of families and relationships.

  • Yes. Luna Grove Therapy is LGBTQ+ affirming.

    Your identity doesn't automatically become the focus of therapy just because you're LGBTQ+ or transgender. It can be central to our work, one part of a much bigger story, or barely relevant to what brought you in.

  • Yes. Trauma and family-of-origin work are major parts of my practice.

    Trauma doesn't always come from one easily identifiable event. Sometimes it develops through repeated experiences of instability, emotional neglect, criticism, fear, conflict, controlling relationships, or having to become responsible for things you shouldn't have had to manage.

    I'm interested not only in what happened, but in understanding and processing the patterns you developed in response to it.

  • Yes.

    People-pleasing doesn't always look like being agreeable all the time.

    It can look like automatically figuring out what everyone else needs before considering what you need. It can mean rehearsing how to say no and then saying yes anyway. Or feeling responsible for fixing someone's disappointment, overexplaining your decisions, avoiding conflict, or setting a perfectly reasonable boundary and spending the next three days wondering whether you were selfish.

    We can work not only on setting boundaries, but on understanding why having boundaries feels so difficult in the first place.

What Therapy With Me Is Actually Like

  • My approach is trauma-informed, integrative, and focused on processing rather than simply managing symptoms.

    Depending on what we're working on, I may draw from Internal Family Systems (IFS), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), EMDR, and other trauma-focused approaches.

    I don't expect every person or every problem to fit neatly into one therapy model. The approach should serve the person—not the other way around.

  • Sometimes people already understand their patterns intellectually.

    You might know why you people-please. You may already know your childhood affected you. You might be able to identify exactly where your guilt comes from—and still feel it just as strongly.

    Processing means going beyond simply identifying a pattern and making space to work with the experiences, emotions, beliefs, protective responses, and relationships underneath it.

    The goal isn't just to become better at tolerating a life that isn't working for you.

  • No.

    Therapy with me is conversational. I'll listen, but I'll also ask questions, help you notice connections and patterns, offer another perspective, and gently challenge things when that seems useful.

    I'm not going to spend fifty minutes silently staring at you while occasionally asking, “And how does that make you feel?”

  • No.

    Practical strategies can be useful, and we can absolutely use them when they serve a purpose. But I don't approach therapy as a weekly assignment of coping skills or worksheets.

    I'm much more interested in understanding what's underneath the pattern and helping you process what keeps bringing it back.

  • Absolutely.

    You don't need to censor your normal language for me.

    If the most accurate description of your week requires an F-bomb, we'll survive.

  • No.

    Some weeks you'll arrive knowing exactly what you want to talk about.

    Other weeks it may be:

    “I don't know. Nothing happened.”

    That's okay. We can start there.

  • Item descriptNo.

    Trauma therapy does not mean telling me every painful thing that's ever happened to you during our first few sessions.

    We'll establish a relationship, understand what's bringing you to therapy, and determine together what feels appropriate to work on.

    You have a say in the pace of therapy.ion

  • That's okay too.

    Humor can be a coping strategy, a way of connecting, a protective response, a genuine part of your personality—or several of those things at once.

    We don't need to eliminate it. We can get curious about when it shows up and what it might be doing for you.

  • No.

    Setting boundaries does not automatically mean ending relationships.

    My job isn't to decide who belongs in your life. We can explore what you want, what feels sustainable, what your limits are, and what choices align with your values.

    Sometimes that means changing a relationship. Sometimes it means changing how you participate in it.

    You get to decide.

  • I'll help you think through decisions, understand patterns, consider possibilities, and explore what different choices might mean.

    But I'm not here to take over your decision-making.

    If you've spent much of your life trying to live according to everyone else's expectations, replacing those expectations with mine wouldn't be particularly helpful.

EMDR & Trauma Processing

  • Yes. I incorporate EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) into trauma treatment when it's appropriate for the person and their treatment goals.

    EMDR isn't something I automatically use with everyone who has experienced trauma. We'll consider your history, current needs, readiness, and goals when deciding how we approach trauma processing.

  • EMDR intensives are coming to Luna Grove Therapy in December 2026.

    An EMDR intensive provides a longer block of dedicated therapy time for focused trauma processing rather than limiting the work to a traditional weekly therapy session.

    More information about EMDR intensives, including availability, structure, and fees, will be available closer to launch.