Child, Adolescent, and Adult Psychologist

About Me

I’m Dr. Gretchen Palau, a licensed clinical psychologist in California (PSY30844) and Hawaii (PSY-2030). I’ve always been interested in relationships and how people’s relationships with others influence how they think and feel. I have extensive experience and training working with people, especially those who have been traumatized. I understand the lasting effects of trauma and its implications that can lead to stress, anxiety, depression, self-hatred, low self-worth, sleep issues, eating disorders, and addictions. My life experience, education, and training has informed my beliefs:

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• I believe that the effects of trauma and/or early childhood trauma/s can last a lifetime without intervention and it can change how someone views the world and how the world views them. 

• I believe that people want to feel better but don't always know how to make themselves feel better.

• I believe that learning to love yourself can be difficult, but once you do, you’ll never stop.

• I believe that it’s hard to tolerate uncomfortable feelings, but each of us is capable of learning how to increase our tolerance.

• I believe that many of us feel less than and unworthy, but we can learn to feel our worth.

• And I believe that you are worth it.

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Earning both a masters degree and a doctorate in clinical psychology provided me the opportunity to train and work at various community mental health agencies in the Bay Area. I have worked with elementary school-age children as a school-based counselor in the East Bay, and provided therapeutic services to traumatized adults and children dealing with homelessness and housing insecurity at a homeless shelter. As a doctoral trainee, I worked at Rubicon Programs Inc., in their CALWORKS welfare to work program, offering therapeutic services to parents and their children. I spent my predoctoral internship training at San Francisco General Hospital in the Infant Parent Program and Pediatrics, offering children and their families psychoanalytic, trauma-informed, therapeutic services both in-home and in the hospital. 

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Before moving into private practice, I worked as a registered clinical psychologist with Discovery Counseling Center in Danville providing trauma-informed therapy for children, teens, adults, and their families. At Discovery, I also supervised doctoral interns, created play therapy seminars for new therapists and co-facilitated a senior group for women. Concurrently, I worked as an adjunct professor at John F. Kennedy University in their psychology doctoral program, teaching Family Systems.

Before becoming a psychologist, I earned an undergraduate degree in developmental psychology and later a teaching credential. I spent several years as an elementary school teacher and an early childhood educator. I went on to earn a graduate degree in elementary education. This afforded me a deeper appreciation of how children learn, the importance of play, the benefits of socialization and friendship, and the pressures that children and their parents experience in relation to each other and to the world. As I grew as an educator, I was also fortunate enough to become a parent of two children. Learning to consciously parent them gave me an opportunity that continues today; to understand more fully my responsibility as their mother.