Loraine (Dominique) Bernardo, M.A.

Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist No. 129047
Tel: (510) 496 6002 ext. 16

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out it.”
- Maya Angelou
Though Dominique was born in Manila Phillipines, Oakland is where her heart is. As a queer woman of color, there is absolutely nowhere else she wants to be. It is this exact quality that allows her to bring her curiosity, eagerness and commitment to serve the East Bay community.
Dominique believes therapy is about finding balance. She has been a life-long learner and finds joy in getting to know different aspects of the human experience. She uses her mind, compassion and humor (she takes her humor seriously!) to understand the heart of her clients and help them find themselves. She believes each client has a story to tell, both the literal and figurative, about the experience of their lives. By incorporating mindfulness, and sometimes laughing together, she and the client can bring the person back into the present, to be in the here and now. She is not a passive therapist but one who brings her own humanity into the therapeutic relationship.
Dominique engages with her clients in order to help them bring acceptance and the knowing of impermanence into their lives. She believes that much suffering is caused by attachment to one’s desires. She uses a variety of therapeutic approaches and techniques to help clients discover and have choice around some of these attachments. She utilizes CBT, Mindfulness, and trauma focus processes into the work with clients. No matter what tools she brings it is based on helping the client employ their innate strengths and the use of compassion and unconditional positive regard so that the clients feel seen, understood and accepted for who they are.

Clinical areas of interest:
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LGBTQIA+ related issues                                       
Anxiety/Depression
Grief                                                                       
Immigration

Loraine (Dominique) Bernardo holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology from California State University, East Bay. She is currently a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist supervised by Rob Wolf, LMFT, License #10281.