How i work
You make sense. This simple yet fundamental concept heavily influences my approach to therapy. I took it to heart at my first training placement. Over a decade later in private practice, I still find myself in awe as I work with people who make unique connections between who and why they are.
The process of talk therapy brings understanding and change in life. It’s not easy. As we explore what brings you in, I ask us to trust one another. You’ll share fears, wishes, and thoughts, difficulties and feelings. By doing all this, we make connections between your relationships, experiences, tendencies. I listen carefully and pursue inquiry using skill, talent and experience to help us understand these connections. Therapy together is an endeavor to ignite change through understanding.
If you are hoping for a list of tasks or to-do/don’t-do’s, you would work better with a different therapist. If you prefer more of a buddy or a chatty relationship, a different therapist might match better. Therapy will focus on you and sometimes us, not me. We are many therapists in the Bay Area. I encourage you to look around for someone who seems right for you.
Specialization areas
Generally speaking, I work with adults caught in tough life moments whom are looking for a little more support and space for themselves. Areas of my specialization include: 1- people feeling stuck or unfulfilled; 2- individuals preparing for and/or new to parenthood; 3- professionals working in SF tech world; and 4- individuals new(ish) to the local culture in San Francisco and often to the United States. I also work with couples. If you’re interested in potentially working together yet don’t feel like you relate to the areas mentioned above, I encourage you to still reach out. My experience and interest goes beyond these noted areas and, I agree, we might work well together. Please give a call so we can find out.
HELD BACK. SOMETHING’S MISSING.
We can feel held back, stuck or weighed down. Maybe we sense that something’s missing in our life. People I work with often feel unfulfilled and anxious in certain situations or generally all the time at this point in their life. Some are tired and sad finding themselves in the same place again and again. For some, this sense increased dramatically during the pandemic and continues to feel heightened.
If you see yourself in one of these circumstances, imagine if that discomfort, weight, or burden lightened. Suddenly you have more space for new relationships, opportunities, and focus. Let’s make time and space for deeper exploration, so that you can become even more aware, acknowledge and make shifts how it makes sense for you.
BECOMING A ParenT.
You’re in a transition. Voluntary and involuntary changes are part of the preparation for parenthood. It’s a lot of change.
If you’re a parent already, you may find yourself caught between differing expectations and realities within yourself, between you and your core person/people, not to mention you and society. New or longstanding feelings, anxieties, or patterns may become primed. Feel free to reach out for a little extra space and support of your own. It’s important to take care of yourself too.
the SF TECH/MARKETER world.
San Francisco has its own culture that weaves in the SF startup/Silicon tech world. Once an insider, I’ve gained a nuanced and insightful understanding for those who work as technologists, marketers and entrepreneurs. You’re in a unique, exciting, and challenging world—let’s figure out how you can flourish.
FITTING IN A NEW PLACE, INSIDE AND OUT .
It’s tough being in a new place trying to navigate a new culture. The process of adjusting, adapting, acculturating is real and can be trying. Firsthand experience and in-depth research permits me to really appreciate how varying expectations, demands, values, and beliefs are hard to integrate.
Whether it's your recent move to San Francisco, California state, the United States, or Western individualist culture in general, it’s a change. Same goes for a new job or a new school program. I enjoy helping people find personal strength in the tenuous balancing act of fitting in to their new culture while also staying true to themselves and where they came from. Together we work to understand what is important to you and how you manage in your current placement.
background
I am a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice and a clinical supervisor to training psychologists. In 2013, I earned a doctorate of clinical psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Prior to private practice, I worked as a psychotherapist, a clinical supervisor, and a clinic manager within San Francisco at community mental health clinics, an inpatient psychiatric hospital, university wellness center, and private practice settings.