Therapy should be a place where you can be honest without having to perform.
Kalani Whitmore, CSW, believes that you are the expert on your own life. Her role isn’t to tell you who to be or what decisions to make, but to help you better understand yourself, identify what matters to you, and build the skills to move toward the life you actually want.
Kalani earned her Master of Social Work from Utah Valley University in 2025 and is currently pursuing independent LCSW licensure. Her clinical work has been shaped by experience working with substance use, incarceration, and re-entry, as well as training in Cognitive Behavioral Interventions for Substance Use (CBI-SUA) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). These experiences have deepened her understanding of behavior change, shame, motivation, and the ways our mental health can be influenced by the systems, expectations, and circumstances around us.
Kalani especially enjoys working with LGBTQ+ clients, people exploring identity or sexuality, neurodivergent individuals, people navigating substance use and addiction, and those working through faith transitions or questioning beliefs they grew up with. She also works with clients navigating relationships, self-worth, anxiety, emotional regulation, major life transitions, trauma, and experiences of marginalization.
Her approach is warm, direct, curious, energetic, and collaborative—with the occasional irreverent comment when it feels appropriate. Kalani believes therapy should be both compassionate and honest. She wants clients to feel understood and grounded while also being challenged to look at things from a new perspective. Sessions may include practical coping skills, deeper exploration, thoughtful questions, or actual homework you can take with you into the rest of your life.
She is particularly passionate about LGBTQ+ affirming care, substance use and addiction, incarceration and re-entry, neurodivergence, sexuality and relationships, shame and self-worth, people-pleasing, and the ways culture, institutions, and social expectations shape the way we understand ourselves.
At the heart of Kalani’s work is a simple belief: you don’t have to fit yourself into a box just because someone else handed you one. Therapy can be a place to figure out what is actually yours—your values, your identity, your relationships, your goals—and what you’ve simply been taught to carry.
Outside the Therapy Room
Kalani is from Sandy, Utah, and is a self-described lover of research and data. She is always happy to share an article, recommend a book, or go down a fascinating research rabbit hole.
She is also a big-time bird enthusiast (the rainbow lorikeet currently holds the top spot), absolutely obsessed with Formula 1, and—despite being a therapist who loves listening—has a surprisingly difficult time listening to podcasts or audiobooks.
And yes, she is lactose intolerant. No, that has not stopped her from accepting ice cream under essentially any circumstances.
Her therapy room tends to feel lively, friendly, and a little less like a sterile office. There is room for growth and challenge, but also room to laugh when something is actually funny.
Nonjudgmental. Real. Collaborative. Direct. Warm. Funny. Thoughtful.
That’s the kind of therapist Kalani strives to be.
