Maria Rheba Estante

Maria Rheba Estante is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor based in Sacramento, California, and the founder of Exposure Therapy Designs. A Clinical Fellow of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (AAMFT), an EMDRIA Certified EMDR Therapist, and a member of the International OCD Foundation, she holds one of the rarest clinical profiles in California: deep, structured expertise in both OCD and PTSD treatment.

For OCD, Maria draws on Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — the gold-standard, structured approaches that target OCD at its root. For PTSD and Complex PTSD, she integrates EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure, Brainspotting, and the Flash Technique, selecting and sequencing approaches based on each client's history and readiness.

Before entering mental health, Maria spent more than a decade in public relations — working at boutique agencies and Hill & Knowlton, specializing in financial communications, media relations, and conference development across the energy, finance, healthcare, and technology sectors. That background informs her work: she is precise, outcome-oriented, and committed to helping clients understand and engage with their own treatment.

Her clinical career spans a decade in community mental health before private practice — including a county outpatient clinic with dual-diagnosis populations, a mobile crisis response internship conducting 5150 evaluations, a Veterans Service Organization, substance abuse counseling and medication-assisted treatment, and mental health assessments for federal probation and pretrial services.

Maria brings a deeply personal dimension to her practice. As an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen who has relocated internationally twice, she understands firsthand the complexity of navigating identity, belonging, and cultural transition. Her commitment to culturally responsive care is foundational — she maintains zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind and centers cultural humility in every therapeutic relationship.

Maria sees clients exclusively via telehealth and is licensed in California and five additional states. She is currently accepting new clients and is in-network with Lyra Health, Cigna, Kaiser, UBH, and HMSA.