Mercedes Martinez-Hannon, LMFT, SEP
Psychotherapy for adults.
Anxiety - Depression - Parenting - Relationships - Regulation - Trauma
Welcome!
Sendero Somatics provides individual psychotherapy for adults. Mercedes’s work is rooted in the belief that your unique path to healing is one that allows you to fully embody your lived experiences, integrating both light and darkness. An integrated self can support nervous system regulation—alleviating dread, dysfunction, and despair.
Together, we will navigate the depths of past experiences and traumas to help you shift towards pattens of peace. We can explore how your attachment patterns shape your current experiences and relationships, especially the one with yourself. We can discover how your body holds memories, emotions, and sensations that impact your capacity for wellbeing. Working with the nervous system means working with the whole body and mind, bringing the subconscious into conscious awareness and allowing for real change to happen.
Meet Mercedes (she/her)
I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #150791) and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP). I’m multiracial, with Irish, Spanish, and Indigenous American ancestry. I’ve lived with chronic pain since childhood and come from a family affected by substance use. I share these parts of my identity because they may help signal safety and understanding to others with similar lived experiences.
My approach to healing focuses on a collaborative process that draws from Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), Attachment Science, Polyvagal Theory(PVT), and Mindfulness. I blend science with intuition to unlock your body's natural wisdom and propensity towards wholeness.
I’ve lived with the shame and emptiness that trauma brings to one’s life. I am here because I know what it‘s like to heal by receiving my own therapy. Although therapy is not a panacea, when it is the right fit, it can light the path—the sendero—that leads you back to your whole self, to reclaim what was taken from you and more often than not, taken from those who came before you.
Beyond my professional pursuits, I find joy in the simple pleasures of life: laughing with loved ones, communing with nature, and freeing myself through dance, music, and art.
Poems that mirror my therapeutic perspective:
- “The Guest House” by Rumi
- “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
- “To Come Home to Yourself” by John O’Donohue