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Areas of Focus:
Stress, Anxiety, Grief and Depression
Assertiveness and Communication
Changing Careers/Retirement
Cultural Identity Formation
Adult Children of Immigrant Parents
Childhood, Adult and Intergenerational Trauma
Structural, Institutional and Assimilation Trauma
Approach and Background
Sessions are meant to meet you where you are in the 'here and now' rather than following a prescribed format. Sometimes current events or new ideas can awaken and link to things already inside of us. Often doing less and striving less allows us the room to reckon with the things inside of us that have been waiting to be seen for a long time.
I practice from a relational and intersubjective stance in contemporary psychoanalysis that understands that you and I mutually influence each other; this space of interplay is a main location for our work. With a liberation and anti-oppression stance, I aim to offer interpretations from what emerges in our session to enhance our thinking together, not as an ultimate authority and not to take away from your process of understanding yourself; hence, I always invite you to feel free to clarify otherwise or disagree.
I am also informed by attachment, trauma, critical race, decolonial, feminist, queer, gender, and social justice theories. This means that my clinical base is psychoanalytic because of its methodology of deep listening and its frameworks that help to understand how we are psychically formed in relationship to other people and phenomena. But like all theories and disciplines it requires continuous evolution and critique for ways it will inevitably fall short of being inclusive to all, thus I am a constant student in other disciplines where psychoanalytic theory has yet to develop. Additionally, I implement skills based trauma and mindfulness practices when needed.
I have presented, co-taught and organized classes on psychoanalytic issues around race, arts and culture, decolonization and abolition at Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, Access Institute and The Psychotherapy Institute.
Education/Training:
Analytic Candidate, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), 2021 -present
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, California (LMFT#105935)
The Psychotherapy Institute, Berkeley, CA (2-year psychodynamic training certificate),
The Wright Institute, M.A.
M.I.T., M.Arch
Columbia University, B.A.
Affiliations:
Community Psychoanalysis Track, The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
BIPOCanalysis collective
Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility, Section IX, Society of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (Division 39), of the American Psychological Association
The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, Candidate, Focus On Committee Member
The Psychotherapy Institute (TPI), Board Member at Large (2018-2020)
Northern California Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP)
California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists