Approach
Most people come to therapy because they feel bad…anxious, depressed, angry, sleepless, stuck. And therapy can really help with those problems! But I think that’s just the beginning…
Like a fever that arises to help the body fight an infection, these challenging feelings are a surface manifestation of what’s going wrong inside. They are the mind’s best attempt at fixing a deeper problem. The real gift of therapy is that it can help you uncover the roots, patterns, and dynamics that give rise to these symptoms, so that you can become more whole and live your life more fully and freely.
I don’t start working with a person thinking I know what’s wrong or which direction therapy should go. Instead, I enter into a collaboration with my clients, a working alliance with the goal of discovering something new about you, something that can help you break free from the bonds of past experience so that you don’t have to keep doing things in the same painful and self-defeating ways.
Therapy isn’t just an intellectual exercise.
Real insight is gained through the emotional experiences that we live through, together. By focusing on our therapeutic relationship, we can open up a window into what’s going on in your relationships with other people and with the parts of yourself that have felt scared, painful, and cut off.
My psychodynamic approach to therapy integrates a variety of therapeutic modalities, including:
- Jungian
- Attachment-Based
- Existential
- Narrative
The consultation room can be many different things – a lab, a library, a temple, a playground.
My clients have gotten help for all sorts of things:
- Fear of failure, fear of success
- Feeling like you’re bad, guilty, or ashamed
- Not knowing what to do with your life, not knowing how to deal with the past
- Decision paralysis, being trapped in a holding pattern
- Grief, mourning
- Relationship chaos and loneliness
- Career stagnation, writer’s block
I’m interested in your fantasy life, your dreams, your daydreams, and your personal mythology. Anything in the life of the mind is fair game and open for discussion. In this sometimes serious, sometimes playful space you can discover a way to live more creatively and remember how to feel like yourself.
I work with individuals, couples, families, and groups. I also facilitate a drop-in support group, open to all, as well as a tabletop roleplaying game therapy group for teens.
Experience
I began my clinical training in 2024, providing individual, couples, and group psychotherapy at the Liberation Institute and the Marina Counseling Center in San Francisco, CA.
From 2022 to 2023, I took calls at the San Francisco Suicide Prevention Hotline, working with clients reaching out help with suicide and crisis intervention, drug and alcohol relapse, HIV/AIDS support, and Behavioral Health Access. I also assisted clients on the Youth Crisis Text/Chat Line.
I do ongoing work with educational organizations such as the Stanford International Honors Program and Eduexplora, conducting two-week intensive seminars in pre-collegiate topics such as Logic+Problem Solving, Robotics, and Video Game Design. I’ve run workshops around the world, in Peru, Chile, Brazil, India, Singapore, and Kazakhstan.
In my previous career as a User Experience Researcher, I conducted research into therapeutic uses of VR technology, conducted ethnographic research around social media, and ran user tests, interviewing individuals to better understand their experiences with media and technology.
Education
I’m a second year Masters of Counseling student at California State University, East Bay.
I’m working towards a dual licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) and Professional Clinical Counseler (PCC).
I also hold a MS in Symbolic Systems (’06) from Stanford University.
“Moments when the original poet in each of us created the outside world for us, by finding the familiar in the unfamiliar, are perhaps forgotten by most people; or else they are guarded in some secret place of memory because they were too much like visitations of the gods to be mixed with everyday thinking”
Marion Milner
On Not Being Able to Paint