Dr. Casey J. Simon

I began my professional life behind the camera after earning a B.A. in Film and Television Production from Loyola Marymount University, capturing images for directors who—whether they admitted it or not—were staging their own unconscious dramas. Filmmaking taught me that every frame is a confession, every cut a defense mechanism. That realization pulled me from studio backlots into the far more intricate theater of the human mind.

While transitioning into clinical practice, I served as an adjunct instructor at Pepperdine University in the Department of Communication, where I taught courses that explored how meaning, emotion, and identity are shaped through language and image. The experience deepened my appreciation for the symbolic nature of communication—a theme that continues to inform my clinical work today.

At California Lutheran University, I earned an M.S. in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy, where love, rage, and shattered trust played out in the daily reel of family life. Still, I wanted to go deeper—into the edits no one screens in public.

I later completed a PsyD in Clinical Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, specializing in depth psychology and psychodynamic theory. There, I traded storyboards for dreams, exploring how archetypal symbols and unspoken desire can light up a room—or quietly undo it.

I specialize in personality disorders—particularly borderline personality disorder—where identity can feel precarious and emotions move without warning. Beyond that high-wire act, I work with the person, not the symptom list: the aftershocks of trauma, the tangle of mood and anxiety, the rituals of OCD, the undertow of complex grief, and the quieter ache of meaninglessness that sometimes hides beneath achievement or survival.

My approach is psychodynamic and depth-oriented. Skills and tools have their place, but they’re supports—not the destination. The work is to understand what hurts, why it repeats, and what it asks of you, so change becomes more than coping.

A professor once put it plainly: with certain personality organizations, the hunger for reassurance can feel like a bottomless well—five more minutes, one more coffee, and it’s still not enough. Our task isn’t to keep pouring; it’s to help name the hunger, understand its history, and build a self that can hold it.