“Getting sober doesn’t mean giving up your life. It means reclaiming the life that was taken away from you.” – Julie Kraft, LMFT

As a therapist, teacher, and award-winning author, Julie has channeled her passion for recovery into helping others for more than a decade. Known amongst friends and colleagues as “the world’s best listener,” Julie’s abilities to empathize, understand, and guide clients toward the life they want most have emerged in her writing, as well. “I imagined myself working individually with each of our readers,” Julie says of creating The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction and The Gift of Recovery. “These are clients we will never meet face-to-face. We wanted to offer genuinely effective skills and techniques readers could use right away to get the most from their recovery.”

From early in her career, Julie took a special interest in working with addiction and substance abuse. “There is nothing more devastating to a life,” she says. “Addiction steals not only from the addict, but from everyone he or she loves. But the other side of it all – recovery – is the most amazing thing to witness. I get to see people light up from the inside, to see families and friends find each other again. Not everybody gets to witness miracles daily at their job, but I do!”

Julie earned her master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of San Diego in 2009. She completed her internship at the VA San Diego Healthcare System, strengthening her skills in couples work, substance abuse recovery, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for depression and anxiety, and the healing of trauma. As a licensed therapist, Julie spent several years at Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital in San Diego, treating individuals and leading groups in their intensive outpatient programs for Dual Diagnosis and Opiate Dependency. She developed curriculum for outpatient programs that would be stimulating, educational, and fun for patients. Julie says, “In my opinion, a room full of people who are newly sober laughing together is a foundation of recovery. Yes, we talk about the tough stuff. No, we don’t hide from the pain. But there is nothing wrong with finding out that recovering can be joyful! That’s something I carry close to my heart.”

Julie has been a blogger for Huffington Post, a guest on That Sober Guy and has presented at the West Coast Symposium on Addictive Disorders and the CADAAC Annual Conference, among others. She has received specialized training in Motivational Interviewing, Emotion Focused Therapy, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Julie taught Systemic Treatment of Substance Abuse at the University of San Diego’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences until relocating to Northern California.

Julie sees clients in private practice both in person and through telemedicine. You can find more about her practice at www.juliekrafttherapy.com