Dr. James Wood, LMFT

Dr. James Wood is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) practicing in California with 34 years of professional experience. He focuses on helping people manage stress and anxiety, cope with addictions, navigate relationship difficulties, and heal from trauma and abuse. He creates an open, nonjudgmental space where thoughts and feelings can be expressed freely, and he works to support and empower individuals as they take the often-difficult first steps toward a more fulfilling life. Dr. Wood emphasizes practical collaboration and emotional validation as part of the therapeutic process, encouraging clients to pursue changes that matter to them.

Coming soon is his memoir, Different Drummer, which traces a life that begins with a lively childhood and moves through the turbulence of adolescence into early adulthood where marriage, school, and drumming play a role. The narrative follows his service in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam and the ways that experience reshaped his understanding of himself and the world. Returning home, the book charts post-war uncertainty, college, a period of heavy drinking that ends in sobriety, and a move to California that begins a path of healing, community, and creative expression. Later chapters reflect on graduate study, psychoanalytic training, and a career as a psychotherapist, concluding with a meditative epilogue on the meaning of those life changes.