Meet the Team
Jessica Bany, LMFT
Jessica is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with nearly 20 years of clinical experience, specializing in helping people heal from trauma so they can feel present, grounded and connected in their lives.
She is a trained Internal Family Systems clinician and in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) — two approaches that work powerfully together. IFS helps you to understand and befriend the parts of yourself that have been driving your struggles, while EMDR helps your nervous system process and release what's been stuck. Together they create real, lasting change — not just insight, but genuine healing. And neither approach treats you as broken. They start with the belief that you already have everything you need within you.
Jessica has walked her own healing path. In 2023, she experienced a serious trauma of her own — a mountain bike accident that left her hospitalized and forced her to face acute trauma, fear and the hard work of self acceptance from the inside out. The journey changed her as a person and clinician. She brings that lived experience into the room with every client.
Outside the office, you'll find her on the trails with her Springer Spaniel, driving her classic Mustang, at the SLO city farm where her husband farms, or white knuckling it through her son's driving lessons. She is deeply rooted in the SLO community and grateful for it.
Ana C Mathis, AMFT
Ana is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist working under the clinical supervision of Jessica Bany, LMFT. Before becoming a therapist, she spent years as a classroom teacher — an experience that gave her a deep understanding of the world young people inhabit and a genuine gift for working with teens. There is something she finds magical about the way teens open up when they feel truly safe. As a parent herself, she is honored to support families through the beautiful, complicated work of growing up together.
She also works with adults navigating long-standing patterns, life transitions, and experiences that were never fully processed. Ana has begun incorporating walk and talk sessions into her work — taking therapy outside, where movement and nature help clients relax and open up in ways that feel natural rather than forced.
Ana’s path to becoming a therapist was shaped by her own profound healing journey. She knows what it means to go into the difficult places she had long avoided — and to discover that transformation is not a single moment, but a choice we make again and again. She brings that conviction into every session: that we are not broken by our pain, and that even when life gets messy, we can always choose to rise.
Ana is currently accepting new clients, with CenCal (Medi-Cal) billing available.