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Deborah Kim, LMFT
Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Consultation
In person in Berkeley, CA | Online for residents of CA and OR
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Welcome
I work in a warm, collaborative style to help you find relief and healing from what is troubling you, develop your capacity to know yourself more deeply and increase your satisfaction in connection with others.
I see adults of all ages, creative and professional folks, parents raising kids sometimes while caring for their parents, and am especially experienced with people seeking a culturally inclusive and anti-oppression informed treatment.
In my approach, I listen to not only what is going on inside of you but the ways the external world has impacted you. I believe that inside each of us is a wise knowing self we sometimes need help to access.
As you're considering therapy, you may be feeling:
Stuck and that you've lost your creative way.
Frustrated communicating with those close to you.
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.
Isolated from others because you've developed a hard shell to protect yourself.
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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When you invest the time to learn to listen deeply to yourself in therapy, stuckness dislodges, creativity emerges, and transformation can happen. As another mind, I intend to help you recognize what is troubling you that cannot be resolved on your own, encourage an understanding of meaning making on your terms and consider what constitutes your choice in things.
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. Together, my hope for you is that therapy offers an informed but easeful space for practice and possibility through our dynamic together and that we can thoughtfully understand your dynamics with others and how you wish to change your part in things going forward.
Therapy can bring us into contact with the whole range of emotions and all the parts of ourselves, which can be challenging at times. In my experience, the endeavor can yield a deeper trust in yourself and your voice, enhance your insight and allow for the freedom to imagine how things could be different.
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"You can't find your own voice if you aren't listening for it."
-Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
I work in a psychoanalytic modality because I believe that to really know yourself and be fully aligned in yourself, you have to pay attention to all manner of phenomena that have happened to you in the past and that arise in you in the present. Investing in yourself in this way allows you to learn what you really need to care for yourself and clarify what you need from others to create the right environment to heal and develop into your full potential in an enduring way.
As a former creative with a former professional background as an architect, I often use humor, metaphors and imagery to aid in our exchanges and examine dreams. Expression is not always limited to speech 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 matter 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 and affected you.
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Scheduling an Initial Consult
Call or email me to set up a free phone or video consultation (allow 20-30 minutes), 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.
I work in person at my office in Berkeley, and online with residents of California and Oregon. Together we will decide if it makes sense to move forward and meet in person with Covid safety in mind or remotely via 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.
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