Annalis
Garrido, LMFT

Why this work

Before therapy, Annalis spent years as a media executive. It was a career built on stories, and on noticing which ones people could not stop telling about themselves. What kept pulling at her was something quieter: human behavior rarely makes sense in isolation. People make sense in relationship.

So she went back to school for it. She earned her Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy at Northwestern University, after a bachelor's at the University of Miami in communications, motion pictures, and psychology. Alongside her practice she has worked with children, adolescents, and caregivers in New York City public schools, and she has taught NAMI's Family-to-Family program and facilitated its support groups since 2015, sitting with families trying to love someone through mental illness.

Our relationships, our histories, and our identities are not the backdrop to who we are. They are the material.

How she works

Marriage and family therapists are trained to treat the relationship itself, not only the people in it. In practice that means Annalis is listening for the cycle: the move, the counter-move, and the older fear underneath both. Naming that cycle out loud tends to be the first relief couples feel, because it gives you something to fight together instead of fighting each other.

Her work is collaborative and flexible. She draws on Emotionally Focused Therapy for the emotional cycle between partners, Internal Family Systems for the parts of us that protect and armor, interpersonal neurobiology for what the nervous system does in conflict, and CBT, DBT, ACT, mindfulness, and psychodynamic work as they fit. All of it is trauma-informed, and all of it honors each person's intersecting identities, core values, and strengths.

Bilingual and bicultural

Annalis sees clients in English, Spanish, or a mix of both. For bilingual couples this matters more than it sounds. Feelings are often stored in the language they were first felt in, and arguments sometimes switch tongues mid-sentence. In this room, you can use whichever language gets you closest to what you mean.

Outside the office

A Miami native in New York. Dancing, Cuban coffee, long stretches of time with family, and a vizsla named Luna who is convinced she is also a family member with opinions.