About Us

Dr. Vianca Escudero Sopeña (she/hers/ella) conducts individual therapy and psychological assessments with children (6 and up), teens and young adults in both English and Spanish. 

She also offers parent skills coaching, play therapy and family therapy as well as 1:1 DBT skills coaching for kids, teens and adults. She has particular expertise supporting children, teens and families dealing with conditions of emotion dysregulation and chronic suicidality and self-harm. 

Dr. Escudero Sopeña has a particular gift for communicating with difficult-to-reach, or highly dysregulated or socially anxious clients. In addition, she is skilled at treating OCD, perfectionism and specific phobias. She is compassionate, patient and clear in her instruction of skills to each member of the family, and facilitates and models handling difficult conversations with ease. She works closely with the parents of clients who have a hard time understanding their child in a manner that truly balances both sides-- leaving their child feeling seen and understood, and leaving the family with a greater sense of confidence about how they can continue to develop and maintain that  understanding and come together as a unit.

 She often collaborates with other colleagues within and outside of the practice to ensure the families she serves are receiving comprehensive and integrated supports, often seeing members of the same family alongside Dr. Baker or Dr. Victorine in an effort to support the entire family unit most effectively. 

Dr. Escudero Sopeña is a highly skilled play therapist, creating intentional and unique opportunities for children and teens to learn skills, deepen emotional awareness, and understand themselves and others more completely (often without calling it therapy!) She is incredibly passionate about her work, and is a fierce advocate and cheerleader for her clients. 

Her passion extends to her neurodiversity-affirming framework, within which she provides powerful psychoeducation about various neurodevelopmental and related differences in a way that highlights the human, rather than the label itself, and teaches her clients to celebrate their differences while also learning skills to mitigate the impact of living in a neurotypical world and move toward the life they want.

Dr. Escudero-Sopeña works intentionally with the clients and families that she serves to develop a comprehensive and individualized treatment plan with clear, client-centered goals. She attends closely to the cultural, systemic, and identity-related factors that contribute to psychological distress for her client and their loved ones by providing compassionate, person-centered and thorough skills integration using  evidence-based approaches such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as well as Mindfulness-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT). 

As an assessment psychologist, Dr. Escudero-Sopeña specializes in the evaluation of complex psychological and neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD, as well as giftedness/2E identification and  specific learning differences in children, teens and young adults. She is particularly skilled with differential diagnosis, especially with more complex or misunderstood psychiatric conditions such as trauma-related or identity-related contextual variables and nuanced neurodevelopmental presentations in gifted/ "low support needs" populations. 

Dr. Escudero-Sopeña has completed the Foundational and Adolescent and Family-Focused DBT trainings through the Behavioral Tech Institute as well as DBT for Children (DBT-C) training facilitated by the developer of this protocol for parents and kids (Dr. Francheska Perepletchikova, Ph.D.) . Additionally, her training has included DBT-focused doctoral coursework and pre-and-postdoctoral supervised clinical fellowships at comprehensive DBT practices in the DC Metro. She has experience within and beyond her post-doctoral training and supervision in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for depression and anxiety, neurodiversity-affirming care, and play therapy approaches to skill building and emotional awareness in kids and teens.

Dr. Escudero-Sopeña completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at  Albizu University in Puerto Rico. Her dissertation involved the creation of a treatment manual for primary caregivers of older adults using Self- Compassion Focused Therapy. Her undergraduate degree in Psychology was completed at The University of Puerto Rico, and her pre-and-post-doctoral fellowships were completed at a comprehensive DBT practice in the DC Metro area.

In her spare time, Dr. Escudero-Sopeña enjoys baking, crocheting, and serving as an unofficial tour guide of D.C. for her friends and family. 

Dr. Escudero-Sopeña is licensed in Virginia, as well as via telehealth under 40+ PSYPACT states and territories (see map of participating states: https://psypact.org/mpage/psypactmap )

Virginia License #: 0810008242

PSYPACT/APIT Mobility #: 16155