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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.
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Hi, I'm Deborah.
I help people work through their burnout, learn effective communication to get their needs met, and manage life transitions without compromising what they want in the service of others.
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 root causes of their suffering.
At the heart of how I work is making conscious what has been going on inside and outside of you that has led you to feel stuck, frustrated, anxious or sad. Despite your best efforts at caring for yourself and being cared for by others, something fell short of the care you still need to develop into your full capacities.
If you hold any marginalized identities via class, ability, race, sex and gender, you may have a tendency to minimize your needs and visibility by others for protection. If you have survived traumatic or abusive environments and events, you may have developed a hard shell to protect yourself that often results in not being able to discern how you really feel and tends to isolate you from others. When these conditions become prolonged, you might not realize you have been colluding with not truly being understood by yourself and others for a long time.
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 arises 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.
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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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.
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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 or Oregon 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.
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