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Welcome
Inside each of us is a wise knowing self that we sometimes need help to access.
I work with folks from conventional to radical lifestyles, younger to older adults, and am especially experienced with those with marginalized identities. I am a depth oriented, trauma informed therapist with a background in art and professional architecture.
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.
As you're considering therapy, you may be feeling:
Frustrated communicating with those close to you.
Stuck and have lost your creative way.
Conflicting feelings of sadness and/or dissatisfaction despite your successes.
Grief from losses and life changes.
Difficulty accepting praise and visibility as you battle an inner critic that thinks you're still not enough.
Exhausted from the complexities of being the child of immigrants, holding marginalized/disenfranchised identities, and/or nonconventional ways of living.
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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When you invest the time to learn to listen deeply to yourself in therapy, stuckness dislodges, creativity emerges, and transformation can happen. The partnership of another mind can help you recognzie what is troubling you that cannot be resolved on your own.
We develop through relationships yet often turn away from them due to injury and hurt, but the path to change cannot be achieved in isolation. Therapy offers an informed space for practice and possibility.
Therapy can bring us into contact with the whole range of emotions, 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 is warm, interactive, guiding and gently challenging to help you develop a flexible mindset and face truths that have been hidden away. I use a blend of modalities to promote your psychological well-being and meet your needs in treatment.
As a former creative, I often use humor, metaphors and imagery to aid in our exchanges and examine dreams. Expression is not always limited to the verbal register and your associations in a variety of forms are centered.
As a Korean American person of color and adult child of immigrants, your experiences of being marginalized, disempowered or degraded matters to me and I am committed to examining the impact of interlocking systems of oppression on your life.
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"Remember that consciousness is power...
Tomorrow's world is yours to build."
-Yuri Kochiyama
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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 of the social world on our identities (race, politics, law, economy, culture etc.) 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 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.
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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.