The approaches, in plain language.

Therapy modalities

Attachment-Based Therapy also called Attachment-Focused Therapy

A modality that looks at how your earliest bonds with caregivers shaped the way you connect, trust, and handle closeness today. Sessions use the therapy relationship itself as a safe place to understand those patterns and practice steadier ways of relating.

One of the practice’s core approaches; Dr. Angela Horng draws on attachment-focused work, often alongside the family and cultural expectations that shaped those early bonds.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) also called CBT, Third-wave CBT

A structured, evidence-based modality that works with the loops between thoughts, feelings, and actions, and practices new responses to old patterns. Third-wave methods extend CBT by changing your relationship to difficult thoughts rather than only their content.

All three clinicians use CBT: Dr. Angela Horng, Celina Alvarez Marroquin, and Christian Homniyom each name it among their core methods.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) also called DBT

A skills-based modality built on the balance of acceptance and change. It teaches concrete tools for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness, especially when feelings run intense and fast.

Dr. Angela Horng and Christian Homniyom both draw on DBT skills in their work.

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) also called ACT

A third-wave modality that builds psychological flexibility: making room for difficult thoughts and feelings instead of fighting them, while taking committed action toward what matters most to you. Values, not symptom elimination, set the direction.

A practice-wide approach; Dr. Angela Horng and Celina Alvarez Marroquin both name ACT among their methods.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) also called MI

A collaborative, judgment-free style of conversation for working through ambivalence about change. Rather than pushing advice, the therapist helps you hear and strengthen your own reasons for moving forward.

Dr. Angela Horng uses MI, and it is one of the practice’s named approaches.

Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) also called CFT, Self-compassion work

A modality designed for people whose inner voice runs harsh, ashamed, or self-critical. It trains the capacity to meet your own struggles with the same warmth you would offer someone you care about, drawing on psychology and the science of soothing.

Dr. Angela Horng draws on CFT; Celina Alvarez Marroquin weaves self-compassion practices through her integrative work.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) also called IFS, Parts work

A modality that treats the mind as a system of parts, like an inner critic, a protector, or a wounded younger self, each carrying its own history and good intentions. Therapy helps you get to know these parts and lead them from a calm, compassionate core.

Dr. Angela Horng includes IFS among the modalities she draws from.

Mindfulness

The practice of noticing present-moment experience, thoughts, feelings, body sensations, with curiosity instead of judgment. In therapy it builds the pause between trigger and reaction where choice becomes possible.

Dr. Angela Horng and Celina Alvarez Marroquin both fold mindfulness into their work.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) also called SE, Body-based trauma work

A body-based approach to trauma that works with the nervous system rather than only the story. By tracking physical sensation in small, tolerable doses, it helps the body gently release survival responses it has been holding.

A practice-wide approach to trauma work; Dr. Angela Horng names SE among her modalities.

Psychodynamic & Psychoanalytic Therapy also called Modern psychodynamic therapy, Relational psychoanalytic therapy

A depth-oriented modality that explores how past relationships, unspoken feelings, and patterns outside awareness shape present-day life. Modern, relational forms treat the therapy relationship itself as a live place where those patterns show up and can shift.

Celina Alvarez Marroquin works from a strong, modern psychodynamic and relational foundation.

Emotion-Focused Techniques

Methods that treat emotion as information rather than a problem to suppress. Work centers on naming, allowing, and moving through feelings so they can complete their course and point toward what you need.

Celina Alvarez Marroquin includes emotion-focused techniques in her integrative approach.

Person-Centered Therapy also called Client-centered therapy

A humanistic modality built on the premise that people grow when met with genuine warmth, empathy, and unconditional positive regard. The therapist follows your lead rather than directing, trusting your capacity to find your own way forward.

Christian Homniyom draws on person-centered therapy in his relational work.

Family Systems Therapy

A modality that understands each person within the web of family roles, rules, and loyalties they grew up in and live in now. Change comes from seeing the system clearly, not from blaming any single member.

Christian Homniyom draws on family systems thinking, especially around intergenerational and cultural dynamics.

Relational-Cultural Therapy (RCT) also called RCT

A modality holding that people grow through connection, and that disconnection, including the kind produced by racism, marginalization, and power imbalance, is a central source of suffering. Therapy builds growth-fostering relationships and names the cultural forces at work.

Christian Homniyom names RCT among the perspectives he draws from.

Strengths-Based Approaches

A stance that starts from what is working: your resilience, skills, relationships, and survival strategies, rather than cataloguing deficits. Problems get addressed by building on capacities you already carry.

Christian Homniyom names strengths-based work directly, and drawing out client strengths runs through the whole practice’s style.

Decolonial & Social Justice-Oriented Frameworks also called Decolonial techniques

Perspectives that question whose norms define “healthy” and make room for healing practices, values, and ways of knowing outside the Western clinical canon. Distress is understood in the context of systems, history, and power, not only individual pathology.

Celina Alvarez Marroquin and Christian Homniyom both work through decolonial and social justice-oriented lenses.

Foundations & focus areas

Trauma-Informed Care

A foundation, not a technique: every part of care assumes trauma may be present and prioritizes safety, consent, choice, and pacing. Nothing is forced, and the question shifts from “what is wrong with you” to “what happened to you.”

All work at Untangled Threads is trauma-informed by default.

Culturally Responsive & Culturally Humble Care also called Multicultural perspective, Cultural humility

Care that treats your cultural identities, family history, language, and community as central to understanding you, not as afterthoughts. Cultural humility adds the therapist’s ongoing commitment to learning rather than assuming expertise about your experience.

The heart of the practice: every clinician works from a multicultural, systemic perspective grounded in their own lived experience.

Neurodiversity-Affirming Care also called Executive functioning support

An approach that treats neurodivergence, including ADHD and autistic ways of processing, as difference rather than defect. It includes practical support for executive functioning, the mental skills behind planning, starting, and finishing things, with attention to how these present differently across cultures.

A featured service: the practice specializes in how neurodivergence looks in BIPOC communities, where it is often misdiagnosed or missed.

Intergenerational Trauma also called Generational trauma

The way the effects of trauma, from war, displacement, racism, or family violence, can pass from one generation to the next through parenting, silence, survival rules, and the body. Naming it helps separate what is yours to carry from what was handed to you.

A recurring focus across the practice’s trauma work, reflecting the clinicians’ own immigrant, refugee, and diaspora family histories.

“Little t” Trauma

The quieter wounds that never make headlines: a consistent lack of emotional safety growing up, chronic criticism, exclusion, or invalidation. Accumulated over time, they can shape a nervous system as powerfully as single catastrophic events.

Named directly in the practice’s trauma recovery work alongside “big T” trauma and PTSD.

Acculturation & Bicultural Identity also called Acculturation gaps

The process of navigating between a heritage culture and a surrounding one, including the friction when family members acculturate at different speeds. Therapy helps with the identity questions, guilt, and family conflict that can come with holding more than one culture or home at once.

A core focus, especially in Celina Alvarez Marroquin’s couples and family work bridging immigrant generations.