my approach:
thoughts for new clients:
ABOUT ME:
Our relationships with others can be both fulfilling and challenging. I specialize in helping clients develop sustainable relationships with themselves and others while understanding how cultural and socio-political factors can impede these relationships. I value collectivist and systemically aware approaches that create trust and empathy.
Together, we can develop personal insight that honors your unique needs. We are each dynamic people with different intersections of identity. We can work together to understand and accept your full identity, desires, fears, and experience.
I utilize a relational approach to counseling that highlights neurological and multicultural understandings of complex trauma. Drawing from a harm reduction and empathy-building model, we can collaboratively approach feelings of resentment, anger, fear, and despair. I work closely with those that feel discord in their relationship or find that communication can be cyclical and ineffective. Needs, boundaries, and desires can be expressed in a way that is grounded in self-insight and reciprocity. Together, we can process challenges and beliefs that have limited growth in the past.
My primary clinical experience and specialty is in acculturation and assimilation stress, trans and queer issues, couple and relationship dynamics, substance use, and anger recognition. Previously, I worked in severe and persistent mental illness and with those who have been chronically unhoused. I have conducted extensive research on chronic stress, adverse childhood experiences, neuropsychology, and cultural humility in clinical practice. I personally am a queer therapist that grew up between two different cultures. As time goes on, I find that each of these experiences informs the way that I approach my clinical relationships.
I am a certified Transcultural Counselor and registered Yoga Teacher that completed my clinical training through Northwestern University. Some of the theories I draw from are Gestalt, Gottman, Rogerian, and Systemic Family Therapy (SFT) as well as aspects of Harm Reduction, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Cultural-Relational Theory (CRT), and Mindfulness-based techniques.
