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As a primary therapist at Lido Wellness Center (LWC), Monique works with patients on multiple levels, treating patients both on an individual basis, as well as facilitating group therapy. In addition to process groups, she leads healthy relationships groups and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) weekend planning groups. Monique also assists in the LWC Family Program and actively meets with patients and their families on understanding the complexities of their loved one’s struggles and how to help their family member achieve their recovery goals.

Working in mental health for the past 16 years, she began as an ABA therapist, using applied behavior analysis as a form of treatment. She pursued a career in social work and has worked in various settings including residential treatment, acute psychiatric hospitals, and in IOP/PHP levels of care with patients experiencing different levels of psychosis. It is this breadth of experience that she believes has given her the ability to conceptualize what her patients may be experiencing and helps her select the modality that may work best for their treatment.

While working on attaining her bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), she was nominated for the Outstanding Undergraduate Award. She then went on to earn her master’s degree in social work from the University of Southern California (USC) where she was a member of the Phi Alpha Honor Society. She is also proud recipient of the 2013 Hispanic Heritage Award.

With a specialty and passion for CBT, she respects LWC’s interdisciplinary approach and varying staff perspectives that each professional brings to his or her job. Coming from her foundation in social work, she believes that LWC is aligned with her core beliefs and values as a therapist and appreciates the work/life balance that LWC practices and encourages with its staff.

For Monique, her job extends to a deep gratitude that she is able to walk with someone on their journey to not only find who they are today, but also to help them harness their ability to heal from within. She prides herself on providing her patients with the perspective of giving themselves grace and encourages them to see past their struggles to employ self-love as part of their healing. As she encourages her patients to do, she journals weekly and sets her intention daily and reflects nightly on the gratitude she had felt through the day.

Meet Samar Papaie, a highly experienced EMDR therapist with a passion for helping individuals work through trauma. With seven years of experience in mental health treatment, Samar is currently a Trauma Specialist – EMDR therapist, as well as a facilitator of a process group, using a psychodynamic and attachment-based approach to therapy.

Samar’s extensive background in mental health treatment includes working in a level 14 group home with adolescents in the foster care system, where she witnessed firsthand the deep impacts of attachment trauma on an individual. She has also worked in a school district, where she has seen the effects of mental health on academic performance and in community mental health with children, adolescents, and their families for five years.

What sets Samar apart is her unique background as a first-generation, bilingual therapist who has worked with clients from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. She believes it is essential to integrate culture into mental health treatment and to have discussions about how the outside world impacts a client’s mental health.

In her work, Samar is passionate about helping her clients on their mental health journey, guiding them as they challenge negative thought patterns, work through anxiety and depression, explore the depths of their trauma, create healthier relationships, and break maladaptive generational patterns.

Samar received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Chapman University with a minor in sociology, followed by a master’s in social work from Columbia University. She also received her Pupil Personnel Services Credential from UC Berkeley to practice school social work. In addition to her formal education, Samar has received extensive training in EMDR, Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Parent Child Interaction Therapy.

In her free time, Samar enjoys spending time with her loved ones and her pup, hiking, and practicing yoga as a way to maintain her own mental wellness.

As a Drama Therapist and Psychodrama Facilitator at Lido Wellness Center (LWC), Alexis loves exercising creativity in the many ways she supports patients. Before joining the LWC team, Alexis worked for a decade in treatment centers as a Drama Therapist, specializing in substance abuse, sex and love addictions, dually diagnosed clients, and women recovering from trauma. She proudly joined the LWC team because of its wide-reaching reputation and stellar staff, eager to commit herself with the same excellence and level of care.

In her practice, she incorporates the use of Drama Therapy techniques to urge clients outside of their comfort zone by safely pushing their boundaries through the use of physical and verbal expression of their emotional experience. By providing a safe and secure place to facilitate personal growth and healing, Alexis guides patients through cultivated activities, role playing, and dramatic interactions specifically designed to promote positive behavioral changes, improve interpersonal relationships, and improve mental health and emotional well-being. One of her favorite experiences is facilitating Psychodrama scenes with her patients and witnessing the immediate resulting impact. For Alexis, the most rewarding aspect of working at LWC is being given the opportunity to thrive in such a supportive and professional environment, surrounded by a highly collaborative and skilled team and supported by the vast resources made available to LWC staff and patients.

Alexis is a proud UCLA Bruin where she received her BA in Musical Theatre. One of the highlights of her life was taking a leap of faith at 25 and moving across the country to New York City to attend New York University to earn her Master’s in Drama Therapy. In attending to self-care in her personal life, she maintains a philosophy of balance, listening to what her body needs in any given day. She makes it a priority to be active or move throughout the day by running, stretching, or working out. She also attends to her mental and emotional health by stimulating her mind with music and podcasts as a way to reward herself through relaxation. Alexis also runs a private practice in which she works primarily with individuals and couples and also facilitates a drama therapy group for adults with Down Syndrome in partnership with the Down Syndrome Association of Orange County (DSAOC). She believes that there is no perfect formula for incorporating wellness and self-care into one’s personal life, so she does her best to remind herself that every 24 hours brings something new!

Alysa is dedicated to facilitating experiential and educational groups at Lido Wellness Center (LWC) that help move energy into healthy new patterns. She brings a welcoming and organic leadership style to Lido Wellness as she empowers patients to not only practice mindfulness, but she also works with them to find their personal strength and wellspring of resilience to help them bring peace into their daily lives.

Alysa’s teaching style is inspired through helping her patients find their freedom to explore topics that represent what is most relevant in their lives at the moment. She feels the most satisfaction from her work when she sees the lights come back on in her patients’ eyes – what she describes as going from “dull hopelessness to undeniable awe and wonder.”  She believes that while everyone goes through phases of darkness and is sometimes blindsided by chaos cycles or the spirals of despair, there is value in pausing, choosing to plug into sustainable sources of energy, and then allow life to take that positive turn. That ability for patients to effectively pivot to ground themselves into the truth of who they are is abundantly supported at Lido Wellness where individuals have the opportunity to find a safe and effective place to pause, learn, and heal.

She feels at home working at LWC, which she perceives as an oasis for real recovery where patients are truly seen and heard, which allows them to not only feel safe and supported, but in turn allows them to support one another. She believes the camaraderie with the clients who seek healing at LWC goes beyond trauma bonding where the environment is conducive for healing. She sees Lido Wellness Center as a place that has raised the bar for treatment centers with its high standards and ethics combined with a great physical space, strategically created schedules to help patient heal, and the qualified and dedicated professional team.

Having earned a bachelor’s degree in business marketing from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Alysa went on to Florida International University earning her graduate degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology. She then went on to explore her own personal healing journey and became a Certified Yoga Therapist in 2012. While teaching yoga and meditation mostly in therapeutic settings, she discovered writing to also be a cathartic form of release and soon became a Certified Gateless writing coach to help others move through words. She is interested in learning more about the mind/body connection and is exploring more about somatic experiencing, neuroplasticity, epigenetics and the energetics of healing. She is proud to begin each day with a meticulous morning routine of meditation, journaling and physical movement.