Dr. Lillian Mecum

A short introduction

About Dr. Mecum

Lillian Mecum, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow at Coastal Therapy Group who works with young adults, adults, and children at our Carlsbad and Vista offices and online throughout California. She works relationally and psychodynamically, drawing on Internal Family Systems and feminist-multicultural theory, with skills from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, DBT, and mindfulness practice woven in where they are useful. Her clinical training spans a university counseling center, a community mental health clinic, an intensive outpatient program, and an inpatient psychiatric hospital, and her doctoral research at the Trauma Research Institute examined how trauma is transmitted across generations from mothers to daughters. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant University and completed her APA-accredited internship at CSU San Marcos, where she served as the counseling liaison to the Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi American Student Center.

Much of her work is with people carrying something inherited: a family pattern that keeps repeating, a trauma that reshaped how safe the world feels, or a harsh inner critic that formed early and never got questioned. She works with trauma, anxiety, relationship concerns, multiracial identity, and the LGBTQIA+ community.