Rancho Counseling · Rancho Cucamonga, California
Hi, I’m Alicia.
I’m Alicia Taverner, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#50414) and the founder of Rancho Counseling in Rancho Cucamonga, California. For over 15 years, I have been helping people who feel lost, exhausted, and disconnected find their way back to themselves — and to the people they love.
Book a Consultation(909) 600-0306
Who I Am
From Therapist to Healer
For the first ten years of my career, I was a therapist. I was trained and competent. I knew the frameworks, protocols, and interventions, and I supervised associates and taught them the same.
But it wasn’t until I began my own deep healing work that I moved from simply being a therapist to claiming my unique gifts as a healer.
A therapist is someone who has studied the material and understands the next step in the protocol. A healer is also trained — they have the same tools — but a healer doesn’t simply regurgitate information or perform interventions. A healer draws from their own lineage, their intuition, their embodiment, their own healing, and their heart, to guide the client back to themselves.
My work is informed not only by my clinical training, but by my own years of healing and my experiences in psychedelic healing spaces. That work changed the way I understand what it means to sit with another human being in pain. I don’t need to pull you away from a difficult emotion, rush to make meaning of it, or try to make it more comfortable. I can stay with you there.
“I can stay with you there.”
Clients often describe me as direct but deeply compassionate. I’m not interested in analyzing you from across the room or shaming you for the ways you learned to survive. I’m interested in helping you understand those parts of yourself, experience what has been waiting to be felt, and begin finding your way back home to you.
I built Rancho Counseling because I believe healing does not have to be a slow, grinding process of talking about your problems in circles. Lasting change is possible. I have watched it happen for clients who came to me feeling just as lost as you might be feeling right now.
Who I Help
Who I Help
Individuals who are holding it together on the outside and falling apart on the inside.
The people I work with are often doing everything they can to hold it together — careers, families, responsibilities — while quietly carrying a sense that something is deeply wrong. They are exhausted from over-giving, from carrying so much alone, from escaping into work or other distractions just to get through the day. They have forgotten who they are beneath all of the roles they play and all of the feelings they have learned to suppress. Insight alone hasn’t changed it: they understand why they react the way they do, and still find themselves repeating the same patterns — shutting down, people-pleasing, shapeshifting, going numb, or reacting from wounds much older than the situation in front of them.
Couples who want more than better arguments.
Couples therapy has been an important part of my work for many years. My approach is not simply about communication scripts or learning to fight more fairly. It is about helping each partner come back to themselves, so real connection becomes possible again. Often what looks like a relationship problem is also connected to what each person brings into it — their attachment experiences, protective patterns, fears, and needs. As each person begins to understand themselves differently, the relationship has room to shift too. I also offer dedicated intensives for couples recovering after an affair.
Therapists, too.
This work is close to my heart. Therapists are accustomed to being the person who holds space for everyone else, which makes it hard to recognize when they need somewhere to put down what they’ve been carrying. I offer individual therapy, intensives, and Healing Circles for therapists — spaces where you don’t have to be the clinician in the room. You get to be the person receiving the care.
You do not need a formal diagnosis, or to have it all figured out, before reaching out.
How I Work
How I Work
The work we do together goes deep, and it is gentle work, even when it goes deep.
Most sessions include connecting with the body, because the body holds what the mind has tried to set aside. Throughout our work, we use what comes up in your body as a doorway rather than a dead end. We notice the moments you want to intellectualize, make a joke, minimize, or convince yourself you should be over it by now — those responses are information. They tell us how your mind and body learned to protect you.
THE APPROACHES I DRAW FROM:
Brainspotting
A brain-body approach that uses specific eye positions to access and process experiences held beyond conscious thought. Especially helpful when you understand your patterns intellectually but still can’t seem to change them.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
A way of understanding the different parts of you: the part that keeps everyone happy, the part that never wants to need anyone, the part that shuts down. Rather than fighting these parts, we get curious about what they’ve been protecting, and build a more compassionate relationship with them.
Somatic and nervous system work
Paying attention to what your body is communicating, moving at a pace that keeps you resourced, so difficult emotions can be felt without completely taking over.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) and psychedelic integration
For appropriate clients who are ready to explore a different kind of doorway. KAP is offered with preparation, medical evaluation and prescribing in collaboration with a medical provider, and integration afterward. I also support clients preparing for, and integrating, medicine journeys that take place in other safe and legal settings. There is never pressure to incorporate ketamine into our work.
In addition to my formal trainings in trauma, Brainspotting, IFS, and somatic healing, I draw on indigenous teachings, my own lineage, and plant medicine wisdom to help clients connect with their hearts, bodies, and spirits in a way that feels grounded and real.
Ways to Work Together
Finding Your Entry Point
There is no single right way to do this work, and there is no hierarchy of healing. What matters is finding the entry point that feels right for where you are right now:
Weekly therapy
In person in Rancho Cucamonga, or online from anywhere in California. A consistent, protected space to do your work over time.
Therapy intensives
One- or two-day concentrated formats for individuals and couples, when you want uninterrupted time to go deeper instead of stretching the work across months of weekly sessions.
Healing Circles
Small group experiences for women, and for therapists, where you can reconnect with yourself in community and feel witnessed.
The goal throughout is for you to feel resourced, supported, and safe — and for you to build a deeper relationship with yourself that you keep long after our work together ends. This work is not designed to keep you in therapy indefinitely.
The Practical Details
The Practical Details
You don’t have to keep doing this alone.
I offer a free consultation so we can get a sense of whether working together feels like the right fit. There’s no pressure or commitment — just a conversation between two people, seeing if this could be the beginning of something that changes everything.
You just have to reach out.
Book a ConsultationQuestions? Call (909) 600-0306