Logo for Yulia Shitareva, Psy.D., featuring a stylized speaker icon with a brown top, white body, and blue accents, and text with her name and credentials.

Dr. Yulia I. Shtareva, Psy.D. | Clinical Psychologist in Austin, TX & Nationwide Telehealth

I offer compassionate, evidence-based psychotherapy and psychological testing for adults and couples. My approach integrates a relational, experiential, and holistic lens with modern neuroscience, trauma theory, and psychological assessment.

If you’re struggling with anxiety, complex trauma, relationship distress, work stress, neurodivergence, or meaning loss, I help you move beyond coping toward lasting change.

I am provisionally licensed in TX as a postdoctoral fellow and am working toward my independent license in WA State.

My Approach

My work is trauma-informed, insight-oriented, and grounded in a biopsychosocial model which means I consider your mind, body, and environment as interconnected systems. Together, we’ll explore how early attachment, lived experiences, and current stressors shape your emotions, behaviors, and relationships.

Clients describe my style as relational, caring, thorough, and scientific.

I bring a blend of warmth and data, integrating emotional attunement with measurable progress. I use brief and/or comprehensive psychological testing to clarify diagnoses, guide treatment, and track real-world improvement. If you’ve completed a neuropsychological evaluation in the past, I strongly recommend that we integrate those findings into your treatment plan.

I am trained (and integrate) in the following therapeutic approaches:

  • Relational & experiential psychodynamic therapy

  • PACT couples therapy (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy)

  • IFS (Internal Family Systems) & Parts Work

  • Behavioral Cognitive therapies such as ACT, DBT, CBT and exposure-therapies

  • Somatic and attachment-focused therapy

This combination allows us to move from insight into embodied change. Doing so we learn not just why you feel the way you do, but how to experience life through your nervous system.

Why Relational-Experiential Therapy Works

Research consistently shows that depth-oriented, relational therapies create longer-lasting change than short-term talk therapies like CBT. See my FAQs page to learn more. When clients engage in relational and experiential work, they can:

  • Identify the root causes of anxiety, shame, addiction or self-sabotage

  • Rewire old patterns in real time through corrective emotional and relational experiences

  • Strengthen self-awareness, emotional regulation, and relational capacity

This is how we turn understanding into transformation.

Background & Research

My doctoral dissertation was the first to identify the psychological cycle of authoritarianism – which showed how political and cultural trauma can unconsciously shape identity, rigidity, and emotional suppression. This research is deeply personal to me as a refugee from the former Soviet Union, and it informs how I help clients unpack cultural, familial, and religious trauma.

I practice under ongoing supervision and consultation with Dr. Krista Jordan, Ph.D., ABPP, a board-certified clinical psychologist and attachment-trauma specialist, and I continually update my training and education to integrate the most effective relational and neuroscience-based interventions into my practice.

Education & Training Highlights

  • Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology, Antioch University Seattle

  • M.A. in Psychology, Antioch University Seattle

  • B.A. in Psychology, Northwest University

  • Focused trainings: Complex trauma, PACT, ACT, DBT, Primary Care Behavioral Health, Relational Cultural Therapy (RCT), and Experiential Therapy

  • Providing psychotherapy and psychological testing since 2021 under doctoral-level supervision

Specialties

  • Complex and developmental trauma

  • Relationship and attachment challenges

  • Anxiety, low self-esteem and shame

  • ADHD and neurodivergence

  • Intergenerational and transgenerational trauma (especially political and cultural trauma)

I work with adults 20+, including college students, professionals, and couples, who are ready to explore the deeper patterns shaping their emotional life.

Professional Communities

  • American Psychological Association (APA) (member #00259319 since 2017)

    • APA Division 055 Society for Prescribing Psychology

      APA Division 056 Trauma Psychology

I also speak…

Russian

Religion

Secular and non-religious

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What It’s Like to Work with Me

Therapy with me is collaborative, genuine and transparent. I value your feedback and adjust our work continuously based on your needs, consultation, and evidence-based practice.

Clients often tell me they appreciate that I’m:

  • Grounded yet challenging

  • Compassionate and comprehensive

  • Data-driven while deeply human

I offer support between sessions via text, phone or online when clinically appropriate. I refer to trusted professionals and specialties when clinically indicated. My role is to help you connect your psychological, physical, and relational health so that improvement in one area strengthens all others.

Personal Note

I was born in Moscow, Russia but raised in the Pacific Northwest after my family immigrated as political refugees in the 1990’s. My multicultural upbringing gives me a deep appreciation for how culture, migration, and ideology shape identity. My dissertation built on my lived experience as a descendant/survivor of authoritarian regimes. Visit my Publications page to read my research paper and get a peak into my personal history.

Outside of psychology, I reconnect with my creative roots through music and Persian dance, and recharge through exercise, nature, saunas, cold therapy and time with my husband and our cats, Pumba & Jasper. I believe creativity, love, and movement are vital to mental health and I bring that philosophy into my therapeutic approach.

Connect

I offer in-person sessions in Austin, TX and life coaching nationwide.

Click “Book Consult” or send me a secure text message to speak with me today: 512.957.9628

Follow my educational community on Instagram: @dryulia_