Marina Edelman didn’t always plan on becoming a therapist — and that’s exactly what makes her one.

Before she ever sat across from a client in a therapy room, Marina was sitting across from executives in a boardroom. She began her career as a financial analyst for a Fortune 500 company, working in the kind of high-pressure, high-stakes environment where performance is everything and vulnerability is rarely an option. That world gave her something most clinicians simply don’t have: a firsthand understanding of what it feels like to carry professional stress, navigate complex power dynamics, and still be expected to show up fully every single day.

But Marina wanted to do more than analyze numbers. She wanted to help people.

Driven by a desire to create real, meaningful change in people’s lives, she made the pivotal decision to transition into psychology — earning her Master of Arts in Psychology from Phillips Graduate Institute in Los Angeles. In 2006, she opened her private practice in Westlake Village, California, and she has never looked back.

Nearly two decades later, Marina has built TrueMe Counseling into a practice defined by the same qualities that have shaped her entire career: rigor, empathy, and a refusal to settle for surface-level solutions. She is a Gottman Method Certified Therapist, trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and applies Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with the same analytical precision she once brought to financial modeling — now directed at the patterns, wounds, and beliefs that hold people back from the lives they deserve.

Her approach is anything but passive. Marina believes that clients shouldn’t have to wait months to feel progress. From the very first session, she works actively alongside you — identifying root causes, offering direct and honest feedback, and building a concrete plan for relief. She calls it the “Active Feedback” method, and for her clients, it’s the difference between talking about change and actually experiencing it.

Marina founded TrueMe Counseling because she believes that healing is not a luxury — it’s a necessity. And everyone, regardless of their background or circumstances, deserves access to care that truly meets them where they are.