A licensed psychotherapist
taking clients in Austin, TX and New York.
Pia Molina, LCSW, is a licensed psychotherapist based in Austin, Texas, offering meaning-centered, relational therapy for adults across New York and Texas. In-person sessions are available in Austin, with virtual therapy for clients throughout Texas and New York. Her work centers on the belief that healing begins through human connection and the search for meaning, even in the midst of suffering.
Pia primarily works with adults navigating grief, serious illness, and anxiety or depression during life transitions, and brings extensive experience in trauma, PTSD, and identity development in high-performance or high-pressure environments. Her approach is especially attuned to those carrying invisible pain—who may appear high-functioning on the outside but feel lost, unmoored, or disconnected within.
Her clinical training includes Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), trauma-informed somatic approaches, and the neuroscience of grief.
“Our wounds shape how we listen—but so does our longing to heal. Therapy is where both can speak, and something new can begin.”
—Inspired by Galit Atlas & the relational tradition
Specialities and extensive experience include:
Anxiety and depression during life transitions
Relationship and attachment issues
Past and/or present trauma, PTSD
Identity development in high performance environments
Cultural identity and intersectionality
Grief and loss
Cancer, serious illness, chronic pain
Adjustment difficulties related to a medical diagnosis
Caregiver support
Legacy work and palliative care
My Approach: Meaning, Connection, and Integration
The heart of my work lies in helping you make sense of your experience—even in the midst of pain—and reconnect with what matters most. My approach brings together four guiding frameworks that support healing on emotional, relational, and neurological levels:
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Inspired by Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy and developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering, this approach invites you to explore what gives your life meaning, especially in the face of illness, grief, or loss. It offers space to reflect on your values, identity, and the legacies you carry or wish to create.
Rather than avoiding pain, Meaning-Centered Therapy makes room for it. Together, we explore the emotional and existential weight of guilt, suffering, and death anxiety, what Frankl called the unavoidable human triad. Together we discover that even in uncertainty, meaning can offer direction, dignity, and a deeper sense of purpose. It doesn’t erase suffering, but it can anchor and orient us within it.
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ACT helps us relate to different parts of ourselves in a new way, not with judgment, but with compassion and curiosity. Rather than pushing away the parts of us that feel anxious, stuck, or not good enough, ACT teaches us to notice them, make space for them, and understand what they might be trying to protect. From this place of awareness, we can respond more intentionally, guided by our values rather than our fears.This approach supports psychological flexibility.
Psychological flexibility is the ability to stay connected to the present moment, even when it's painful, and to make choices that reflect your deeper values rather than being driven by fear, avoidance, or old patterns. This is self-compassionate work.
Together, we honor your complexity and center your values.
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Grief and trauma echo through the mind and body in ways we don’t always recognize. Sometimes, we’re not just grieving a person, but the world we thought we lived in: the sense of safety, identity, or future we believed we could count on. When that world is upended by loss, illness, or betrayal, it can feel like the ground beneath you has shifted.
Inspired by the work of Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor, I view grief as a form of learning, a process of adapting to a life that’s been fundamentally changed. This includes anticipatory grief, when your body begins responding to the fear of loss even before it happens.
In our work together, we’ll explore this landscape with care. Using a trauma-informed, somatic lens, I’ll support you in listening to your body’s signals with curiosity and compassion. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting, it means becoming more at home in yourself, even as you carry what’s been lost.
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Existential therapy invites us to explore the deeper questions that often arise in times of grief, anxiety, trauma, or transition: Who am I now? What truly matters? How do I live with the unknown?
These experiences are not pathologies to be “fixed,” but openings to deeper self-understanding. Rooted in the work of Irvin Yalom, this approach is especially meaningful when you're facing identity shifts, or a sense of being numb, purposeless, or far from yourself. With time and safety of mutual presence, something begins to soften.
Together we’ll explore your evolving sense of purpose and direction. Not by forcing meaning, but by uncovering it gently, in a way that honors both where you’ve been and where you hope to go.
Shaped by Experience, Rooted in Relationship
Pia offers a space to strengthen your capacity to trust your internal experience so you can move forward with greater clarity and alignment.
Before starting her private practice, Pia worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, supporting patients and families through the emotional complexities of serious illness and palliative care. She spent several years at Harlem Hospital in inpatient psychiatry and medical social work, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. There, she supported individuals in acute crisis, grieving families, and frontline teams navigating collective trauma and profound loss. She has also taught Grief and Loss in the graduate social work program at Fordham University, helping emerging clinicians approach loss with skill, humility, and care.
These experiences deeply shaped how Pia understands grief, trauma, and identity shifts, not just as emotional challenges, but as experiences held in both the body and psyche. This continues to ground her commitment to trauma-informed care. Pia brings steadiness, nuance, and compassion into the therapy space, especially for those navigating medical illness, psychiatric distress, and major life transitions.
FAQs
Session Fee
Session Cost: $200 for 50 minute sessions. Reach out for sliding scale openings.
I'm in-network with Aetna and UHC. For all other insurance plans, I'm out-of-network, but I'm happy to provide a super bill that you can submit to your insurer for possible reimbursement.
I can also send you an email with questions to ask your insurance company to find out about your benefits.
Location
I am licensed in New York and Texas. I provide in-person sessions for those in Austin, TX, my office is located in Hyde Park.
For New Yorkers, our sessions are conducted through a HIPAA secure tele-health platform.
