The house
About MentesCristalinas
MentesCristalinas is a human development centre in Setúbal, under clinical direction: psychotherapy, experiential training and community, to build healthier relationships — with yourself and with others. With science, practice and honesty.
The vision for 2030 fits in three lines: to be the region’s reference in promoting healthy relationships; a team that shares the same standard of rigour and care; a house that one day lives beyond its founder.
The five values
- Realism — We tell the truth about what change asks of you, and about what it gives back.
- Clinical rigour — We work in ways informed by research, clinical practice, professional supervision and the ethical assessment of each situation.
- Firm kindness — We welcome with warmth and without infantilising — real compassion also knows how to say no.
- Inner harmony before outer harmony — The Self takes no sides — it listens and understands; we work first on each person’s relationship with themselves.
- Community — Growth is best accompanied; the house is bigger than any single session.
The founder
About me
I am Isabel Fernandes, Psychologist and Trainer, psychotherapist in training with the Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicoterapias Construtivistas.
Throughout my professional journey I have accompanied people through times of pain, change and rebuilding: people who feel inwardly divided, who repeat painful relational patterns, who live with an intense inner critic, or who wish to learn to relate to themselves and to others in a more conscious, secure and compassionate way.
I believe that, very often, what we consider a problem was originally born as an attempt at protection. Behind anxiety, control, emotional withdrawal, demandingness or difficulty trusting, there are parts of us that learned to protect older wounds. My work seeks to help each person approach these parts with curiosity, respect and compassion, rather than continuing to turn against themselves.
My main clinical reference is Internal Family Systems — IFS, the model in which I completed Level 3 training. I also integrate knowledge and practices from mindfulness, self-compassion, ACT, DBT, Compassion Focused Therapy and cognitive-behavioural intervention.
For several years I facilitated in-person mindfulness programmes and practice groups — an experience that strengthened my conviction that transformation does not happen through intellectual understanding alone. It also happens through experience, presence, relationship, and the possibility of feeling seen and accompanied.
It was from that meeting point between psychotherapy, experiential training and community that MentesCristalinas was born — because making peace within deserves more doors in than a consulting room.
Why MentesCristalinas?
I chose the name MentesCristalinas because, for me, a crystal-clear mind is a mind that is clear, limpid and stable enough to recognise what is happening within it.
It is not a perfect mind, permanently calm or free of pain. It is a mind that learns not to lose itself completely in agitation, fear, criticism or the wounds of the past. A mind capable of looking at itself with honesty and compassion, welcoming its different parts and recovering the freedom to choose.
The crystal represents that clarity and that stability, but also the capacity to receive light and give it back in different ways. Each person brings their own history, their marks and their singular way of being in the world. Our work is not to erase those marks, but to help understand them, integrate them and allow them to stop obscuring who we are.
MentesCristalinas was born, then, as a space where we seek to cultivate greater inner clarity, presence and security — so that we can relate more consciously to ourselves, to others and to life.
Main training
- — Psychologist, full member of the Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses — the Portuguese Psychologists’ Association (OPP licence 26660)
- — Master’s in Neuropsychology from Universidade Católica Portuguesa, with research in mindfulness
- — Psychotherapist in training with the Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicoterapias Construtivistas
- — Internal Family Systems — Level 3 training with the IFS Institute
- — Postgraduate training in Cognitive-Behavioural Intervention
- — Advanced training in third-wave therapies: mindfulness, ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) and Compassion Focused Therapy
- — Mindfulness training with Mindful Schools
- — Certified trainer (Certificate of Pedagogical Competences) since 2010
How we work
The science, the art and the practice of living in the present run through everything we do — mindfulness is not a product of ours; it is the ground we all stand on.