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Psychotherapy & Contemporary

Psychoanalysis

Berkeley, CA

Inside each of us is a wise knowing self that we sometimes need help to access.

Hi, I'm Deborah.

I help people find relief from persistent negative emotions, healing and insight through a deeper understanding of themselves and a greater ability to relate more effectively with others.

Schedule a Consult

I work with people from conventional to radical lifestyles, younger to older adults, and am especially experienced with those with marginalized identities. Often people find me after trying behavioral therapies and are ready to look at the causes of their suffering. I am a psychoanalytic therapist with a background in art and professional architecture.

As you're considering therapy, you may be feeling:

Frustrated communicating with those close to you.
Grief from losses and life changes
Stuck and have lost your creative way or sense of living a meaningful life.
Ready to heal after being raised by emotionally immature parents.
Conflicting feelings of sadness and/or dissatisfaction despite your successes.
Exhausted from the complexities of being the child of immigrants, holding marginalized/disenfranchised identities, and/or nonconventional ways of living.

Many people I see enjoy the combination of working insightfully with new ways of paying attention to themselves through their dreams, words and sounds, physical sensations, interpersonal and social phenomena, and other ways of knowing.

If you're ready to explore how to (re)find your way that is wholly emergent from you and not how others wish you to be, we might be a good match.

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"What we cannot imagine cannot come into being."

-bell hooks

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Benefits of Therapy

If you've been stuck and can't get a hold of what is troubling you, it's time for the partnership of a trained therapist's mind to help you recognize what cannot be felt, thought about or resolved on your own. Attending therapy is an investment in learning how to listen deeply to yourself and confront difficult feelings. When one attends consistently to this practice, stuckness dislodges, creativity emerges, and transformation can happen.

We develop through relating with others yet often turn away from relationships due to injury and hurt, but the path to change can rarely be achieved in isolation. Therapy offers a professionally informed, safe space for practice and possibility in relating better with others and all the parts within ourselves.

Therapy can bring us into contact with the whole range of emotions and thoughts, which can be challenging at times. In my experience, the endeavor can yield a deeper trust in yourself and your voice and allow for the freedom to imagine how things could be different.

My Style

I am warm, interactive, guiding and gently challenging with the necessary rigor to help you develop a flexible mindset and face truths that have been hidden away. My approach aims to meet you where you are at to foster safety, relaxation, trust, validation and respect.

You don't have to be a wordsmith to be understood in therapy. I often use humor, metaphors and imagery to aid in our exchanges and encourage you to be true to your style of communication. Expression is not always limited to verbal expression and your associations in a variety of forms are centered.

As a Korean American, adult child of immigrants holding multiple intersectional identities, your experiences of being marginalized, disempowered or degraded matters to me and I am committed to examining how historical trauma and interlocking systems of oppression have impacted your life and have inevitably become internalized.

More About

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"Remember that consciousness is power...

Tomorrow's world is yours to build."

-Yuri Kochiyama

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What is Contemporary Analysis?

I work in a contemporary psychoanalytic modality, which means I train in the art of deep listening with a socially and culturally conscious lens of anti-oppression. I believe we are not just impacted by who were our early life caregivers but also the impact on our identities of the social world (cultural, material and political.) And as a result, there is a lot we don’t know that is unconscious for better or worse.

I think of the unconscious like a rich wilderness that we can only hope to be in contact with when we aren’t looking at it straight on and by feeling as relaxed as possible. It’s like putting our ears to the earth that is you and naming what we sense and observe and finding clues and signs that can help us heal and make sense of what has been unresolved in you.

For this reason when possible, I encourage free association rather than coming prepared to session, and we may talk about dreams, random associations that come up in session or between sessions, or even notice something that was related to an event weeks prior.

While most people seek once a week treatment, for those that are ready to commit to more intensive work, I recommend psychoanalysis which entails attending three to five sessions per week. Psychoanalysis is often life changing and life saving for many people.

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Scheduling an Initial Consult

Call or email me to set up a free 20-minute phone or video consultation, in which I will ask you some questions to learn what is motivating you to seek help, and you can ask me any questions too.

Together we will decide if it makes sense to move forward and meet in person with Covid safety in mind or if you are a resident of California proceed to a secure telehealth video platform.

My office is located on College Ave. (near Alcatraz Ave.) in Berkeley with easy street parking, free public parking at Safeway and Rockridge BART station a 12-minute walk away.

Contact Info

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