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"I survived because I remained soft, because I listened."
- Chanel Miller

ZV Headshot.png

Zoul Vidalon

Associate Marriage & Family Therapist, #149352

Phone:

(408) 641-1407

Email:

Rate: (Out of network provider)

Individual therapy: $175

Couples therapy: $185

Family therapy: $185

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Language:

English

Specialties

  • Eating disorders & Sexual trauma recovery

  • Attachment Focused Couples Therapy

  • Childhood Trauma & Play/Art Therapy

  • Neurodivergence & Identity Development

  • Healing & Navigating Adoption

Work Experience

Background

Education

Direct Service

  • Intensive Outpatient Therapist, Starlight Community Services

  • Wraparound Therapist, Seneca Family of Agencies

  • Associate Behavioral Program Supervisor, Discovery Hope

  • Registered Behaviorist Technician & Early Interventionist, Bay Area Behavioral Connections

  • Behavioral Specialist, Children Health Council

  • M.A., Counseling Psychology

     Santa Clara University

  • B.A., Psychology 

     San Jose State University

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I believe children deserve more than being asked to explain what they feel before they have the words to explain it.

For children, play is language. Art is language. What they create, act out, avoid, repeat, and imagine can tell us things they may not yet know how to say.

 

My work with children and families is rooted in art therapy and play therapy, creating space for children to express themselves through their natural ways of communicating. I want therapy to feel like a place where a child can take up space—not perform, behave, or find the “right” answer, but be curious, creative, messy, and just themselves. Through play and creative expression, we can begin to understand what is underneath the behavior and make room.

Young Children & Trauma

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I carry that same curiosity into my work with eating disorders and sexual trauma. I understand the quiet negotiations we can make with food and our bodies—the bargaining, the control, the disconnection, and the longing to feel at home in ourselves again. That lived proximity shapes how I show up clinically.

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Much of my trauma work comes back to the body: how we experience it, protect it, disconnect from it, and try to feel safe inside of it. This is what draws me to the intersection of sexual trauma and eating disorders. When trauma disrupts our sense of safety in our bodies, food and the body can become places where we try to regain control, create distance from what hurts, or quiet feelings that feel impossible to hold. I don't see these experiences as simply behaviors that need to be changed. I see them as stories worth listening to.

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My work is about creating enough safety to begin listening—to the body, to the parts that learned to protect, to the voice that may have gone quiet, and to the person underneath the survival strategies. Whether I am sitting on the floor playing with a child, creating alongside a teenager, or sitting with an adult as they begin to make sense of their relationship with their body, my goal remains the same: to create a space where you do not have to shrink yourself to be understood.

Eating Disorders & Sexual Assault

A Bit About Me

I believe tenderness is not weakness. That softness is not surrender. That being gentle does not mean giving up the power of our voice.

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This is what trauma has taught me: We can be hardened by what we have lived through, but we can also be softened by it. Trauma can teach us to make ourselves small in order to survive—to quiet our voices, question our instincts, and take up less space. But survival does not have to be the end of the story.

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We can soften without becoming fragile.
We can be open without becoming unprotected.
We can be tender without abandoning ourselves.

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There is power in finding our voice after we have been silenced. There is power in naming what happened. Supporting you in rediscovering where your voice was stripped and reclaiming your right to take up space is the journey I walk with you in.

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