Services
About My Clients
I work with LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants who struggle with anxiety, codependency, trauma, perfectionism, and relational concerns. You may also identify as high-achieving, people-pleasing, and/or over-functioning. You're used to holding it down, taking care of everything and everyone. You feel lonely, anxious, and unmet from years of self-abandonment. You want to reconnect to your authentic self beneath the patterns that no longer support your growth, purpose, and intuition.
My Background and Approach
As an integrative therapist in Oakland and online in the San Francisco Bay Area and California, I use a mind-body approach to healing that goes beyond awareness and brings lasting change. I am relational to my core, in that I view the therapy relationship as the vehicle for healing. As an IFS therapist, I embrace the complexity of the different parts of you that learned to survive by being "good" and managing everyone else's feelings and behaviors. I use somatic therapy to help you reconnect to your intuition and purpose that feel buried beneath your coping patterns. Whether we're meeting online or in person at my Oakland Lake Merritt office, you'll find that I'm highly engaged, present, and grounded. I incorporate a sense of humor--therapy can feel uncomfortable and intense, but it can also be a place to laugh together. I'm increasingly direct; I believe my job isn't to keep you comfortable, but to challenge you when you feel limited and stuck. It's in this discomfort that we grow.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
As a queer, transgender non-binary multi-racial clinician, I believe in co-creating a therapy space that embraces your complex identities and lived experiences. You don't have to shrink, justify, or defend who you are in my office. A liberation-focused therapist, I acknowledge the violence that mental health systems have inflicted on marginalized groups who need the most support. I aim to interrupt these systems by providing affirming spaces where you are seen in your agency, power, rage, distrust, and resilience. At the same time, I'm human and make mistakes. I am quick to notice when I've faltered, am open to feedback, and apologize without making it about me. I believe that we are in this together. I'm not going to pretend that the world isn't on fire or that therapy will help the world not be on fire. I won't turn away from the sadness, grief, and anger that may come up as we navigate an ever-changing, uncertain future. I'm with you in it.