You might seek healing from specific traumatic events and/or from prolonged exposure to overwhelming stress throughout a complicated childhood. The legacies your traumas left inside of you have primed your nervous system to be chronically hyper-sensitive to threat and risk. Dreaded instinctual states can take over you and your functioning at any moment, like becoming hyper-vigilant / on edge, self-critical, fearful, numb, spaced out, defeated / collapsed, or anticipating rejection -- or even worse, several at once. It has felt like part of you carries on with everyday life, while other parts of you are stuck in the traumatic past. You’re likely accustomed to your attention being split, between present reality and traumatic memories or strategizing to feel safer.

Thankfully, we’re now in a time where the mental health field has access to research-informed knowledge, tools, and technologies and practices that can all help. With trauma-specialized therapy, you could learn skills for nervous system regulation, cultivate and promote your natural healing process, and safely and gently metabolize old wounds. Trauma therapy is distinct from traditional or general talk therapy, because it requires much more to help survivors heal and move forward. I'm trained and specialized in supporting people’s recovery and healing from the effects of traumatic events and complex / developmental (childhood) trauma. I’m also a fellow complex trauma survivor who’s come a long, long way in their mental health journey of recovery and healing. These lived experiences inform the complexities I’m able to understand and hold with my clients. They’ve also shown me that true and deep healing is possible with the right supports in place.

Has it been hard to stay present, connected, or embodied? Have you gotten accustomed to your attention being split between present reality and memories, your imagination, or other mental activities? Do you sometimes lose access to memories, skill sets, or other capacities? Do other people or your surroundings feel “not real” sometimes? Does it sometimes feel like someone or something else is controlling your thoughts and actions? Do you sometimes suddenly feel a lot smaller, younger, and more vulnerable? Have you felt like there are "many different people" inside you, who strongly influence you (or even "take control over you") from inside?

These are some (but not all) of the dissociative experiences people might find distressing. I am trained and experienced with supporting folks who struggle with dissociative experiences and dissociative identities, using non-pathologizing, non-judgmental, mindfulness-based, somatic, and parts-work approaches.

Have you felt deprived of a childhood because you had to take on adult responsibilities early on? Did you try to earn more attention, respect, or care from parents by striving to become exceptional? Is there a part of you who’s unrelentingly self-critical, and/or a part of you who’s accustomed to care-taking others over yourself? Do you often feel held back by excessive guilt or shame, and do you worry that your life decisions are betraying your family’s sacrifices?

Together, we can explore the specifics and complexities of your circumstances, and help you find alignment with your own authentic needs and goals.

We live in a world where systemic oppression rooted in longstanding (and ongoing) colonization, imperialism, resource extraction, and white supremacist ideologies, have left legacies of division and harm – manifesting in institutions, in cultural practices, in our language use, within intergenerational family histories, within our own psyches, and much more.

It’s all too common for BIPOC / global majority folks to be simultaneously grieving current events, while also dealing with compounding triggered reactions evoked from earlier experiences and in reaction to ongoing dangers and racial violence / oppression.

BIPOC / global majority folks need spaces to unpack their experiences, be fully witnessed and understood, feel held and supported, and bring resource and nourishment to wounded and grieving places inside them. You deserve all these things, in a space where you feel understood and don’t need to educate or even code switch.

I’m also committed to my own ongoing inner work, to ensure the therapy spaces I hold are anti-oppressive for all identities, experiences, abilities, and body types.

Are you looking for a therapist who considers the nuances of how your gender identity, gender expression, and/or sexual orientation inform your experiences? Are you needing trained support while you explore your queerness and/or gender identity?

Our gender and sexual identities can feel like core dimensions of who we are. The world’s queerphobic and gender-binaried dominant cultures expose queer and gender expansive people to distorted and harmful beliefs about themselves, starting from very early ages and onward. The influences of these beliefs can be pervasive.

I’m not only trained and specialized in working with queer and/or gender-expansive experiences, but I also bring lived experiences that inform the complexities I’m able to understand and hold with my clients. The way I work is also informed by intimately witnessing and knowing the queer and/or gender expansive experiences of others throughout my journey (e.g., personal connections and clients I’ve supported).