About
Dr. Mendoza
Dr. Mendoza is a Board-Certified adult psychiatrist who received her medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. She completed her general psychiatry residency at UT Southwestern in Dallas. Her areas of specialty include trauma-related stress disorders, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar spectrum disorders and thought disorders with an emphasis on the social and interpersonal context of emotional well-being.
Her treatment approach is holistic, compassionate, insight-based and evidence informed. In addition to medication management, she is trained and experienced in a variety of therapeutic techniques including psychodynamic psychotherapy, CBT, CBT-ED, and STAIR Narrative therapy for trauma survivors. In her psychotherapeutic work, Dr. Mendoza centers the individual’s experience of the present moment to foster self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-compassion and facilitate emotional healing.
Get to Know Dr. Mendoza
What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
Psychiatry is my calling and the most rewarding part for me is witnessing a patient’s perspective change from one of self-criticism, dissatisfaction, and powerlessness to one of compassion, appreciation and regard for the person that they have become. I feel lucky to have a diverse set of tools at my disposal that promote transformation, be it medication, psychotherapy or a combination of both to lift the veil of depression, the terror of anxiety or dissociation from PTSD.
In another life, if you weren’t working in counseling, what would you be doing?
In another life, I would be a math professor, a textbook editor or a fiction writer.
What’s something your clients might be surprised to learn about you?
In addition to my interests in sociology and literary fiction, I have a special interest in the fields of chaos theory and complexity theory and how they can be applied to the psychotherapeutic process. I’m a member of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences.
What is a self-care ritual you practice?
I regularly practice yoga as a way to ground my body in the present moment and have recently discovered the healing energy of pranayama.
