Kelley Kitley, LCSW, is CEO and Founder of SERENDIPITOUS PSYCHOTHERAPY, LLC. She is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice and has treated patients in Santa Monica and Chicago for the past twelve years. An action oriented therapist, she believes the therapeutic process is a partnership and she works with clients using a holistic approach to achieve their mental health goals. While she predominantly uses positive psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help clients heal and become the best version of themselves, she has a eclectic array of experience and specialized training to draw upon.
Her areas of expertise include anxiety and panic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. Kelley also works with patients in longer term treatment to work through, rape and sexual abuse traumas, eating disorders, substance abuse, loss and phase of life issues. Kelley is particularly effective working with women and their partners through pre- and post-natal anxiety and depression, and in the area of sexual dysfunction.
Kelley has been featured as an expert women's mental health expert in over 100 national publications, podcasts, radio, and tv including WSJ, Huffington Post, Shape, Self, Women's Health Magazine, Fitness Magazine columnist, NBC, NPR, and WGN.
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Kelley grew up as the eldest child in a chaotic household above the family tavern in a Chicago neighborhood with two charismatic alcoholic parents, four younger siblings; and a colorful extended family close by. As a teenager, after recovering from an eating disorder, she knew she wanted to be a therapist to help others heal from traumatic childhoods. Her experiences as a student at an all girl’s school were influential years in her life. Kelley’s opportunities from ages 15-18 provided her an outlet to develop competence, confidence, resiliency, and take initiative and responsibility for her own future inspite of her dysfunctional family dynamics. She immersed herself in service projects and developed passions for social justice and spirituality.
At 17, she earned the WGN Extra Effort Award for dedication to service, for riding her bike from Minnesota to Chicago to raise money for AIDS research, and for her work as a camp counselor for people with Muscular Dystrophy.
In college, after spending a month in Guatemala working in an orphanage through her university’s Campus Ministry Program, Kelley felt called to move to California to be an Americorps volunteer for City Year. She spent her “off-year” working with immigrant inner-city youth and their families developing programs for educational success. After completing the service year she earned a scholarship and studied abroad in Spain with hopes of becoming fluent in the Spanish language that she might better serve the populations she worked with. Kelley went on to studying at the University of Illinois at Chicago and earn a Bachelors and Masters degree in Social Work. Kelley was a caseworker in child welfare, traveled to El Salvador to build Solidarity, ran and coached marathons, and worked at her parents’ bar to pay cash for tuition to avoid student loans. She survived personal adversity when her parents divorced shortly after she first left for college, and again at age 22 when she experienced a random act of violence and a sexual assault which ultimately impacted her development as a woman, a person, and a professional counselor. Her capacity for resilience remained steady.
She married her husband in 2004 and moved to Santa Monica; again taking a leap of faith to try something new. In Southern California she was grateful for the experiences of living blocks from the beach and working 4 years at a Catholic High School as a counselor, religion and health teacher, starting her own family, and starting her first private practice. Three children later with a desire to be closer to the “village” to help raise her energetic children, she and her family moved back to Chicago.
Kelley specializes in women’s mental health motivated by her own personal struggles with substance abuse that began at age 12 and her postpartum anxiety after each of her four pregnancies. She’s committed to leaving a legacy of healthy family dynamics in her own nuclear family and in all the lives she impacts.
Her friends, family, and colleagues describe her as authentic, genuine, focused, motivated, inspiring, driven, compassionate, and empathic. She has a gift to “tell it like it is” in a gentle, non threatening way. Kelley seeks the privilege of sharing her energy and expertise through 'MY self' with national motivational speaking engagements at treatment facilities, media appearances, social media,-blogging, and clinical work.
Her autobiography is a story of adversity and trials in youth, lessons learned as life was lived courageously, and triumph and healing as an adult. The decades of turbulent years of navigating addiction in her self and her extended family inform the woman in recovery and the counselor she is today.
