Citlali Herrera, LCSW

My name is Citlali (Lali) Herrera (she/her), and I’m a LCSW and holistic therapist based in New York and New Jersey. As a first-generation daughter of Mexican immigrants, I know what it’s like to be the “easy one”—the responsible daughter who stayed quiet, kept the peace, and made herself useful.

I now work with millennial and zillennial women who grew up the same way: emotionally overlooked, expected to carry the emotional weight of their families, and praised for how well they abandoned themselves.

If you’re a parentified daughter navigating self-doubt, hyper-independence, or guilt every time you try to set a boundary, you’re not alone. My clients are often successful on the outside, but internally exhausted. They were the emotionally attuned children of emotionally immature parents—the ones who learned to shrink their needs, manage everyone else’s, and avoid conflict at all costs.

Sound familiar?

You might find yourself saying things like:

“I don’t want to be a burden.”
“I’m tired of always holding it together.”
“Why do I attract emotionally unavailable partners?”
“I don’t even know what I need anymore.”

Therapy with me is a space to unravel these old patterns—not just intellectually, but somatically and spiritually. I blend traditional talk therapy with deep subconscious work, integrating hypnotherapy, ketamine-assisted therapy, inner child healing, and nature therapy (ecotherapy) sessions to help you access parts of yourself that have long been hidden, exiled, or silenced.

In our work together, we might:

~Trace the roots of your people-pleasing, perfectionism, and chronic guilt back to the unspoken rules of your childhood home.
~Explore how your anxious attachment style developed as a survival strategy—and how to start feeling safe enough to trust yourself and others.
~Use hypnotherapy to gently uncover and reprocess the internalized beliefs that keep you stuck in cycles of “never enough.”
~Integrate ketamine therapy as a sacred medicine-assisted portal to deeper awareness, compassion, and new neural possibilities (if this feels right for us)
~Reconnect you with nature as a mirror and teacher through eco-based walk & talk sessions.

No matter the modality, the foundation is always the same: helping you come home to yourself.

I’m not the kind of therapist who just nods and asks, “How does that make you feel?” I bring warmth and directness. I say the things that need to be said—especially the ones no one ever said to you growing up. I believe in naming the unsaid, not to stir up pain for pain’s sake, but because clarity is a form of liberation.

Clients often find me when traditional therapy has only taken them so far. They’re ready for depth, for integration, for something that honors both their psychological wounding and their spiritual wisdom.

I hold a Master’s degree in Social Work from NYU, and I’ve trained extensively in trauma therapy, hypnosis, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and mindfulness-based approaches. I’m fully certified hypnotherapy and in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) and offer both preparation and integration sessions for clients using psychedelics.

My therapy practice is currently online for weekly psychotherapy, with in-person options for nature therapy sessions in northern Westchester County and ketamine journeys in a cozy, private office space.

If you’re navigating anxiety, burnout, identity loss, or grief over the childhood you never got to have—this work is for you.

You’re not too much. You’re not too needy. You’re not broken.

You’ve simply adapted to survive intergenerational family dysfunction. Now, you get to learn how to love yourself. Fully. Freely. Without earning it.

If you’re ready to begin, I offer a free 15-minute intro call. Let’s see if we’re a good fit.

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