Leila Pirnia
Education & Licensing
-
Bachelor of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
-
Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology, Pepperdine University
-
Dually Licensed Psychotherapist in California
-
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #150408)
-
Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC #19451)
-
Member of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology; member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT)
Specialties and Certifications
-
Couples Therapy
-
Communication & Repeated Conflict
-
Emotional Disconnection & Resentment
-
Attachment & Relationship Injuries
-
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
-
Neurodiverse Couples
-
ADHD, Autism & AuDHD
-
Executive Functioning & Unequal Mental Load
-
Emotional Regulation & Relationship Repair
-
High Achievers, Executives & Professionals
-
Emotional & Sexual Intimacy
-
Parenting & Family-System Stress
-
Midlife & Life Transitions
-
Relationship Discernment
-
Giftedness & Twice-Exceptionality
About Me
Before becoming a psychotherapist, I spent many years in the corporate and technology world. That earlier career still influences how I think: I tend to look for patterns, understand systems, and want to know why something that makes perfect sense on the surface isn't actually working. I bring that same curiosity to couples therapy.
I live in Los Angeles with my husband and two children. You can learn more about my background, clinical work, and areas of research and interest at Pirnia Therapy.
My clinical training is psychodynamic and depth-oriented, including training at the Center for Professional Counseling of Los Angeles, and I have worked with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families across private-practice, community mental-health, and school settings.
As a School-Based Mental Health Therapist with Outreach Concern, I provided psychotherapy to children and adolescents at Holy Family School in Pasadena and Carpenter Community Charter School in Studio City, working with behavioral, emotional, social, and academic concerns. I also served as a Graduate Research Associate in Dr. Shelly Harrell's Culture, Wisdom, and Resilience Lab at Pepperdine University.
Before entering the mental-health field, I spent many years in technology and business leadership roles, including president, CFO, COO, and founder. That experience continues to inform my work with professionals, entrepreneurs, executives, and couples navigating demanding careers.
.jpg)
"Where there is honesty and a willingness
to change,
there is hope."
When You Keep Having the Same Fight
Most couples don't come to therapy because they don't care about each other. They come because the ways they've learned to protect themselves have begun to work against the relationship.
You may be having the same argument over and over. One person pushes to talk because the issue feels urgent; the other becomes overwhelmed, defensive, or shuts down. One person feels increasingly alone or burdened; the other feels as though nothing they do is ever quite right.
Or maybe you aren't fighting much anymore. You function well together, manage work and family, and look fine from the outside, but somewhere along the way you've stopped feeling close.
I work with couples who want to understand why they keep getting stuck and what would actually need to change for the relationship to feel different.
Looking Beneath the Argument
The thing you're fighting about is often only part of the problem.
A disagreement about chores can eventually come to mean I can't depend on you. A partner asking for space can be experienced as You don't care about me. A request for more connection can begin to feel like criticism or proof that you're failing.
Once those meanings become attached to everyday interactions, couples can find themselves reacting not just to what is happening now, but to years of accumulated experience with each other.
I like to slow those patterns down and understand them. What does each of you experience in the moment? What meaning do you make from your partner's behavior? What happens inside you next? And how does the way you protect yourself inadvertently trigger the very response you're afraid of in your partner?
When we understand the pattern clearly, couples often become much less interested in proving who started it.
How I Work
My style is warm, engaged, curious, and active. I don't see my role as simply refereeing arguments or teaching you a set of communication rules. Communication skills can be useful, but they work much better when we understand what makes them so difficult to use with the person who matters most.
Sometimes our work is practical. We may change how you approach difficult conversations, build better systems around responsibilities, establish clearer boundaries, or practice ways to repair after conflict.
At other times we need to go deeper. We may explore attachment patterns, old relationship injuries, family-of-origin experiences, or the parts of each of you that become frightened, angry, controlling, withdrawn, critical, or desperate for reassurance when the relationship feels threatened.
I draw from psychodynamic and attachment-oriented therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Emotionally Focused Therapy, family systems, CBT, ACT, DBT-informed approaches, and executive-function interventions.
I value insight, but I don't want therapy to remain an intellectual exercise. Understanding the problem should eventually help you do something different when the problem actually happens.
Balanced Couples Therapy
Couples therapy works best when neither person enters the room already designated as “the problem.”
There may absolutely be behaviors that need to change, injuries that need to be acknowledged, or areas where one partner has carried substantially more of the burden. Balanced therapy doesn't mean pretending that every problem is 50/50.
It means taking both people's experiences seriously enough to understand the whole system. I want each partner to be able to say, She understands what this has been like for me, while also becoming increasingly curious about what the relationship looks like from the other side. That combination of validation and accountability is critical to a successful outcome.
Couples Who Function Well Everywhere Except Here
I have a particular affinity for high-achieving and highly analytical couples. Many of my clients are used to solving difficult problems. They lead organizations, manage demanding careers, raise families, make complicated decisions, and are often the people everyone else relies on.
It can therefore be bewildering to discover that the skills that work beautifully in the rest of life don't necessarily work in an intimate relationship. Logic may not resolve an attachment injury. Efficiency can feel very different from connection. Problem-solving may arrive when a partner first wants to feel understood. And a person who is extraordinarily competent professionally may struggle with emotional regulation, vulnerability, or executive functioning at home.
I understand that world both clinically and personally from my previous career in business and technology leadership.
Neurodiversity in Relationships
Neurodivergence is one of my primary areas of specialization, and I work extensively with couples affected by ADHD, autism, AuDHD, giftedness, twice-exceptionality, and executive-function differences. But I don't assume every relationship problem in a neurodiverse couple is caused by neurodivergence.
Sometimes a problem reflects a difference that needs accommodation. Sometimes there is a skill that can be developed or a system that needs to be built differently. And sometimes years of living with those differences have created resentment, attachment injuries, or relationship patterns that now need attention in their own right.
Being able to distinguish among those things can be enormously helpful.
Parenting, Careers and Life Transitions
Relationships rarely exist in isolation. Couples may find themselves struggling more when they become parents, raise a child with additional needs, face career changes, enter midlife, care for aging parents, experience financial pressure, or discover that the roles that once worked for them no longer do.
I often work with couples navigating these transitions, particularly when both people are carrying significant responsibilities outside the relationship.
Sometimes therapy is partly about repairing what's been hurt. Sometimes it's about renegotiating a relationship that needs to evolve because the people inside it have changed.
Do We Have to Be in Crisis?
No.
Some couples come in at a crossroads. Others come because they recognize a pattern they don't want to spend another ten years repeating.
You also don't have to know exactly what you want therapy to accomplish before we begin. We can start by understanding what isn't working, what each of you misses about the relationship, and what you would hope could feel different.