Senior counseling
Kay's Susi Q work anchors our care for older adults. The senior counseling page will carry that story in full when it goes live.
Meet the founder
Kay Wenger, LMFT, LPCC
Founder of Laguna Beach Counseling, thirty-plus years in the room, and still convinced the work is mostly about the relationship, not the technique.
I started Laguna Beach Counseling in 2001 with a fairly simple conviction: that excellent clinical care and genuine human warmth could exist side by side, in the same room, without either one crowding out the other. I had trained plenty of therapists by then, and I had seen how easily a practice can start treating people like a caseload. I wanted to build the opposite of that.
More than 30 years in, that conviction hasn't budged. The quality of the work matters more to me than the scale of the business. We're not serving a market here. We're serving our neighbors, the people I run into at the market and at the Susi Q, and I've built a team I genuinely trust to hold that same standard.
The short version
Kay Wenger, LMFT, LPCC
Founder & Clinical Supervisor
I earned my M.A. in Clinical Psychology at Pepperdine, and I stayed on there for the better part of three decades, helping train the generation of marriage and family therapists now practicing across Orange County. I retired from that role in 2022, but the teaching instinct never really left. It's how I supervise the associates here.
Along the way I co-founded the National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists, chaired the MFT Consortium of Orange County, and became a clinical supervisor at the Susi Q, our local senior center. I'm solution-focused and practical by nature, trained in family mediation and critical-incident work. But if you asked me what actually helps people, I wouldn't start with any of that.
- 30-plus years in the room with couples, families, and individuals
- Pepperdine M.A. and, for decades, an educator of therapists
- NRMFT co-founder and CEO
- The Susi Q clinical supervisor for senior mental health
Techniques don't heal people. Relationships do.
Kay Wenger, LMFT, LPCC
Curiosity will take you farther than certainty.
The through-lines
One career, a few threads
The letters after a name can read like a wall. Here's what they actually add up to.
- The clinician More than 30 years with couples, families, individuals, and children, applying what fits each person rather than one favorite method.
- The educator Decades at Pepperdine's graduate school training the therapists now practicing across Orange County, and founding chair of the MFT Consortium of Orange County.
- The marriage authority Co-founder and CEO of the National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists, a national credential almost no local practice holds.
- The community anchor Clinical supervisor at the Susi Q senior center, where she built a set of mental-health programs from the ground up.
The senior work started at home. In 2010, my father came to live with me, and when I went looking for support for him, I found that most senior centers offered plenty to do, bingo, mahjong, a full social calendar, and almost nowhere to talk about what was actually hard. Someone could spend the whole day at a center and never once have space for the harder conversations.
So I built one. It started as a group called Coffee Talk, later renamed Heart to Heart, and grew from there: Feeling the Blues for individuals over 55, a women's group, a men's group, a Death Cafe, a caregiver circle, a grief and loss group. People gravitate to real stories, and that is the truest one I have about how I work. I don't lead with technique. Techniques don't heal people. Relationships do.
Where to go next
The work Kay is proudest of
Want to work with Kay, or her team?
The best first step is a free 15 to 20 minute call. Tell us what's going on, and we'll match you with the right fit, whether that's Kay directly or one of the associates she supervises.
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Navigating Life's Waves Together