Ciara Watkins, MS, LMFT

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MT5266)

Ciara is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, experienced in working with children, adolescents, and adults, as well as families, couples, and other dyadic relationships (e.g., parent-child, sibling, and peer pairs), since 2019. She provides care to clients from diverse backgrounds and experiences, supporting them in navigating a wide range of personal and relational challenges that affect emotional well-being. Ciara enjoys working with individuals across the lifespan, but is especially passionate about supporting adolescents, young adults, and couples. Her couples work focuses on emotional connection, intimacy, communication and conflict, infidelity, parenting, and family dynamics. She practices from an attachment-based and emotionally focused framework, to help partners deepen understanding, strengthen connection, and repair relational injuries.

Ciara’s areas of clinical focus include anxiety, depression, stress management, social functioning, self-esteem and self-worth, identity development, and relational concerns. She supports clients’ navigation of interpersonal challenges, life transitions, academic and career stressors, and burnout. Through their work with Ciara, her clients develop skills in coping, emotional regulation, social, and executive functioning, fostering resilience, growth, improved work-life balance, and greater life satisfaction.

Grounded in a systemic perspective, Ciara utilizes an integrative approach, responsive to each client’s unique goals and needs. Theoretically, her work is informed by evidence-based modalities including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and she incorporates mindfulness-based and experiential techniques when appropriate. She emphasizes emotional awareness, processing, and integration as key components of therapy. Her approach reflects a compassionate, humanistic, strengths-based framework that supports clients in recognizing their abilities and cultivating greater clarity, fulfillment, and confidence. 

Ciara is highly client-centered, collaborative, and authentically supportive, creating a safe, judgement free space where clients can unmask, feel heard and understood. She views the therapeutic relationship as essential to healing, grounded in a strong, secure therapeutic alliance rooted in trust. Through attunement, presence, and active engagement, she supports clients in developing insight and self-compassion, shifting perspectives, and building strategies for meaningful and lasting change.

Ciara earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Family and Child Sciences with a minor in Psychology at Florida State University, and her Master of Science degree in Family Sciences Couple and Family Therapy from the COAMFTE accredited program at the University of Kentucky. She has experience in research and academic instruction as a research assistant, teacher’s assistant, and guest lecturer to undergraduate students on topics including family stress and family responses to community violence, which has deepened her clinical work. Ciara’s master’s thesis study, “Birth Mothers’ Experiences of Support Before, During, and After Adoptive Placement” (2023), gained publication in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, highlighting her dedication to advancing research-informed care for an understudied population. Ciara is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of Florida (MT5266) and is a member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT).