About Zaya
Zaya Kuykendall is a licensed mental health counselor who helps people find balance when life feels overwhelming. She draws on 16 years of experience in the helping field to guide clients toward clearer priorities and emotional regulation. Zaya focuses on practical steps that can make daily life more manageable and meaningful.
She encourages openness and honest conversation to build stability in the therapy room. Zaya uses a collaborative style - she listens, offers feedback, and works with each person to decide the next steps.
Background and approach
Sessions emphasize reconnecting with personal strengths and identifying feelings that have become hard to name. Her approach combines several evidence-based techniques, including Gestalt, motivational interviewing, and solution-focused ideas. These methods are used to address obstacles, set achievable goals, and close out unfinished business that keeps people stuck.
Therapy aims to increase self-awareness and to create realistic plans for change. Over her career she has developed experience with issues such as domestic violence, substance abuse, family conflict, women's concerns, and child development topics. That background informs how she frames problems and offers practical coping strategies.
Zaya uses a straightforward, compassionate manner when working through sensitive material. Sessions are oriented toward solving specific problems, strengthening coping skills, and improving everyday functioning. She treats therapy as a process of tending to mental wounds - naming the problem, making a plan, and moving toward healing.
The emphasis is on steady progress and on keeping clients moving forward.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Gestalt-influenced work focuses on awareness in the present moment. It helps people notice patterns in feelings and behavior and practice new ways of responding to everyday situations. This approach can be useful for those who want clearer self-understanding and more direct, experiential learning.Motivational interviewing is a conversational method that helps people resolve mixed feelings about change. It uses open questions and reflective listening to strengthen personal motivation and commitment to specific goals, especially around substance use, lifestyle shifts, or habit changes.
Solution-focused techniques look for small, practical steps that lead to noticeable change. Sessions emphasize what is already working, set short-term goals, and build on quick wins to create momentum in life and relationships.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and what feels most helpful. Together they adjust methods and pace so therapy fits the person rather than forcing a single model.
Online therapy offers flexibility for different needs. Video calls let people use visual cues and deeper conversation. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or for shorter check-ins. Live chat and text messaging are convenient for ongoing support between sessions or when writing out thoughts helps more than speaking. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Trauma and abuse
- Experience
- 16 years
- Licensed
- New York, Virginia, New Jersey, California, Utah
- Languages
- English