About Janeth Nuñez del Prado, LCSW
I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 15 years of experience sitting with people in the hardest moments of their lives — not from a distance, but close in, where the pressure is real and the stakes are not abstract.
My work lives at the intersection of psychological depth and real-world complexity. The people who find their way to me are rarely struggling in quiet, contained ways. They are navigating active legal situations, carrying the cumulative weight of high-responsibility work, or trying to hold themselves together while the ground beneath them is still shifting. They don't need someone to observe their distress from the outside. They need someone who can think clearly alongside them while they're in it.
What I bring to that is more than clinical training — though the training is deep. It is a genuine fluency in the systems that shape my clients' lives: the legal process, the institutional pressures, the ways that culture and community and family history show up in how people carry stress, make meaning, and find their way back to themselves.
I was born into a Bolivian family where stories didn't arrive in straight lines — they came in fragments, in accumulation, in the spaces between what was said and what was understood. That inheritance lives in how I practice. I don't impose a linear path on a nonlinear experience. I follow the story as it actually arrives.
I work in English and Spanish, and I bring the same quality of attention to both.
If you've landed here, something in your life is likely demanding more than you expected to give. That's not a personal failing. It's a real condition — and it deserves real support.
My Approach
I provide focused, high-quality psychological support designed to help you:
Stay grounded and think clearly under pressure
Reduce overwhelm and regain a sense of internal stability
Make thoughtful, values-aligned decisions in complex situations
Move through high-stress experiences without losing yourself
Areas of Focus
My work is especially relevant for individuals who are:
Navigating legal cases or high-stakes life circumstances
People navigating trauma alongside an active legal case
Professionals operating in demanding, high-pressure environments
Background & Training
My clinical foundation was built in environments that didn't allow for abstraction. I hold a Master's degree in Social Work from UC Berkeley and completed post-graduate clinical training at the UCSF Child Trauma Research Center — one of the country's foremost programs in early trauma, attachment, and the long arc of how adverse experience shapes a life. I trained under Dr. Alicia Lieberman and Dr. Patricia Van Horn, whose work on the relationship between trauma, loss, and resiliency remains foundational to how I understand people across the lifespan.
That training taught me to look underneath the presenting problem — to stay curious about what a person is carrying beneath what is visible, and to trust that even the most complicated presentations have an interior logic worth understanding. Over time, that orientation deepened into a genuine interest in the internal landscape: the parts of a person that protect, the parts that grieve, the parts that keep showing up even when someone has tried everything to quiet them. I don't pathologize complexity. I work with it.
I am also an expert in Motivational Interviewing (MI) — not as a set of techniques to deploy, but as a relational philosophy. MI, at its core, is about meeting the ambivalent parts of a person with curiosity rather than pressure. It is about helping to empower people to access the protective parts of themselves that they may not see. That framework has shaped how I work across every context, from individual therapy to high-stakes legal settings to professional training.
Over the course of my career I have provided therapy across the lifespan in clinical and community settings, served as an expert witness in legal proceedings, and trained attorneys, public defenders, and behavioral health professionals in trauma-informed practice, the human cost of high-stakes work, and the art of working with people who are not sure they want help. I currently serve as the embedded clinical social worker at a criminal defense and civil rights law firm — a role that keeps my understanding of the legal system not theoretical, but lived.
My work now sits exactly where psychological insight and real-world context have to align. That is not a niche I fell into. It is where I have always been headed.
A Unique Perspective
Most therapists understand psychological complexity. Fewer understand the systems their clients are actually inside.
I work embedded within a criminal defense and civil rights law firm — not as a referral partner, but as an integrated part of the team. That position gives me something most clinicians don't have: direct, ongoing exposure to the pace, pressure, and human complexity of legal work. I understand how cases move, how institutions behave, and what it costs people to navigate them.
This means when you come to me, you don't have to translate your experience into language a therapist can follow. I already speak both.
This allows me to understand both:
The internal experience of individuals navigating high-stakes legal and professional situations
The external realities of legal systems, institutional pressure, and complex decision-making
The place where those two worlds collide — and what people need to stay grounded when they do
How This Work Feels
Most therapists understand psychological complexity. Fewer understand the systems their clients are actually inside.
I work embedded within a criminal defense and civil rights law firm — not as a referral partner, but as an integrated part of the team. That position gives me something most clinicians don't have: direct, ongoing exposure to the pace, pressure, and human complexity of legal work. I understand how cases move, how institutions behave, and what it costs people to navigate them.
This means when you come to me, you don't have to translate your experience into language a therapist can follow. I already speak both.
Clients often describe our work as:
Grounding and steadying
Clear and practical
Focused on what actually helps in real time
Direct, but deeply compassionate
High-stakes situations place a real psychological demand on how you think, decide, and function.
You don’t have to carry this alone.
También ofrezco servicios en español para quienes prefieren expresarse en su idioma—porque sentirse comprendido realmente importa.
Fees for individual therapy are based on session format and may be covered by insurance or provided as private pay.
Please contact me to discuss current rates and options.