Whoever you are and whatever reason brings you here, you are welcome. I feel privileged to witness your story and the transformation that often unfolds during our time together. Being part of your healing journey is a sacred experience for me.
My Services
Solving Problems and Dilemmas
In therapy, you might arrive with conscious awareness of certain life issues but feel stuck or uncertain about how to move forward. In talk therapy with a trusted therapist and through exploratory inquiries, you can find clarity by organizing thoughts and emotions in a safe manner and space. This process helps remove barriers hindering your ability to solve problems effectively.
Trauma & PTSD
Developmental childhood trauma, whether from emotional or physical neglect, abandonment, inadequate love, lack of attunement, attention, support, care, or from emotional, physical, sexual abuse, hostile family environment, bullying, rigidity, criticism, and strictness, impacts our adult life because often the trauma from those painful experiences remains, hidden, unprocessed and locked within our bodies and psyches.
Intellectually, we know that these experiences took place in the past, yet the sensations, memories, and overwhelming emotions manifest as if they are happening right now when triggered by current external or internal stimuli, evoking feelings similar to those experienced from the past. The impact of unprocessed trauma on our sense of self, safety, worth, relationships, and quality of life is enormous. In therapy, we begin by building trust, safety, and necessary supportive tools. Then, we proceed with opening and activating the past stuck traumatic memories to help you integrate them into your broader awareness in a healing manner. Because trauma is stored in the body, we utilize body-based therapies for treatment, which include: EMDR (Eye Movement, Desensitization Reprocessing), somatic experiences, movement, mindfulness practices, and trauma-informed yoga.
Relationship Issues
You may consider therapy due to challenging or conflictual relationships with a spouse, child, parents, family members, friends, or colleagues. Perhaps you find all relationships hurtful or unfulfilling, leading you to avoid relationships or commitments entirely, or perhaps you're caught in a co-dependent dynamic. Therapy helps you understand attachment figures and styles from your early life and how they shaped your internal mental model or sense of self as a child, impacting your current relationships. With increased awareness and our brain's neuroplasticity, we can transform relational patterns and develop new adaptive strategies. History doesn't determine destiny.
Substance Use Disorder
You may find yourself in therapy because you have experienced unbearable pain in your life, and substances became your solution for numbing the pain. The wise part of you, may be contemplating a different approach, particularly if your choices have been harmful to you or others. But abstinence may be terrifying for the fear that those repressed pains you’ve been attempting to numb, flood and overwhelm you with unpleasant emotions. Not knowing whether you poses the skills or ability or tolerate the emotional turmoil that follows is a scary step.
In therapy, we will explore all ambivalence, fears, dilemmas, and the shame associated with substance use. Substance use gradually and progressively changes your neurobiology and ultimately hijacks the brain. At this point, you are no longer the master of your mind, and overcoming dependency becomes an astronomical endeavor that can no longer be considered in isolation or independently. It requires a support network of experts, healers, and loved ones to guide through this journey. Don’t attempt to do it alone.
Living an Examined Life
You may consider therapy because you want to live an examined life, become the best version of yourself, expand your awareness, explore your spiritual self, or discover what gives you meaning and purpose. Therapy is an excellent place to start. Talk therapy, inquiry, value exploration, mindfulness practices, meditation, and spiritual exploration would be part of what guides our work.
Anxiety, Depression, Numbness, Feeling Stuck
Whether experiencing depression, anxiety, or feeling stuck, therapy aims to explore underlying patterns contributing to these conditions. Our bodies and minds are working effortlessly to communicate with us, signaling distress and alerting us about our internal world, often through symptoms like anxiety, worry, dread, lethargy, numbness, and hopelessness. In therapy, we take a deep explorative dive and aim to decode these messages to promote healing.
