Welcome! I'm Giovonni- a poet, writer, licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and certified OCD and Anxiety specialist serving residents in DC, MD, and VA. As a multicultural lesbian, I am dedicated to creating safe and affirming spaces for healing within communities of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. If you aren't experiencing anxiety or OCD, I would not be the right clinician for you. Allow me to visually paint a picture for you of what it's like to experience anxiety or OCD using a poem. Anxiety: There is a hum beneath everything I do. Restless. On edge. My mind scanning for threats that probably aren't there probably. I snap. I tense. I lie awake untangling the same worry I untangled last night. I smile fine. I function...barely. I am fine. The hum disagrees. Six months of this. Maybe more. The body keeps the score even when I pretend it doesn't. The Loop (OCD): Did I lock it? I locked it. But did I really? The thought arrives like a verdict intrusive, unwanted, wearing my voice. So I check. I count. I do it again and again until again feels safe. It never feels safe. Not contamination, not the door, not the stove it's the uncertainty I cannot hold. The ritual buys me sixty seconds of quiet before the loop loads again. I am not my thoughts. But they haven't learned that yet.
This isn't just talk therapy. It's a space where creativity and action live. Bring your poems, your playlists, your journals, your favorite books. If it helps you make sense of your inner world, it belongs here. We'll use tools like journaling and EFT (tapping) to help your nervous system release what words alone can't always hold. One request before we begin: get a journal. Write everything down. Give your emotions somewhere safe and sacred to land. You don't need to just talk about it. Here, you get to move through it. As it relates to OCD, this is DEFINITELY not talk therapy. We will do an assessment using the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. Then we will move from that to learning what your compulsions are to help us build hierachies that you will have to work on every.single.day. It will be work that feels difficult but it's not impossible if you stick with it. Our first session is an intake, which means it is really about me getting to know you. We will explore who you are, what is bringing you in, how long you have been carrying it, and what you are hoping to find on the other side of it. Think of it as the beginning of a map we are drawing together. I will ask questions, and I want you to answer them as honestly as you can, knowing that nothing you say will be met with judgment. This is a space where you are allowed to be exactly where you are. You do not have to have it figured out. You do not have to perform okayness. You just have to show up. I also want you to know that while this work is deep, it does not have to be heavy every single moment. Humor lives in this room too, when it is real and when it fits. Sometimes laughter is its own kind of release, and I will never be too clinical to recognize that. By the end of our first session, my goal is for you to leave feeling seen, heard, and like you can breathe a little easier than when you walked in.
One of my greatest strengths is that I do not just understand anxiety clinically, I understand it through lived experience. I know what it feels like to sit with racing thoughts, to overanalyze the smallest moments, to feel stuck between wanting to move forward and feeling held back by fear. I also know what it takes to interrupt those patterns and choose something different. I am also a poet and a writer, which means I listen differently. I hear what is said and what is not said. I notice the language you use to describe your life, because the stories we tell ourselves are often where the real work begins. My approach is warm, collaborative, and culturally conscious. I understand what it means to heal in a body that has been told it is too much or not enough. I understand the particular weight carried by women of color, first generation daughters, and anyone who has had to figure out survival before they ever got to figure out themselves. Together, we work on building self trust, setting boundaries, and strengthening your ability to respond to yourself with clarity instead of criticism. I will support you, but I will also gently challenge you, because growth requires both. Clients often walk away from our work feeling more grounded, more confident in their decision making, and less controlled by overthinking. This is not about becoming a different person. It is about learning how to feel safe being who you already are.
I specialize in OCD and anxiety. If that's not what you're navigating, I may not be the right clinician for you. But if it is? Keep reading. I am best positioned to serve the people who are done pretending they're okay. The ones who have been holding everything together for everyone else and are quietly falling apart on the inside. The ones who wake up tired, not because they didn't sleep, but because they are exhausted from carrying so much for so long. The worry that won't quiet. The thoughts that loop. The rituals that buy sixty seconds of peace before the doubt loads again. The anxiety that lives in your chest like a second heartbeat you never asked for. If any of that sounds familiar, you're in the right place.
Top specialties
Anxiety
LGBTQ
Obsessive-Compulsive (OCD)
Other specialties
Coping Skills
Life Transitions
Peer Relationships
I identify as
Hispanic / Latinx
LGBTQ
Person of Color (POC)
Woman
District of Columbia
Aetna
Solution Focused Brief Treatment
Life doesn't always give us the luxury of time, and sometimes what we need most is to find our footing again. Not to excavate every wound, but to remember we have everything inside us to move forward. That's the heart of Solution Focused Brief Therapy. I use this approach because I believe you are the expert on your own life. My job isn't to pathologize you or keep you stuck in what went wrong; it's to help you reconnect with what's already working, what you've already survived, and what you actually want your life to feel like. Together we get clear on where you want to go, and we build from there. We name your strengths. We find the exceptions: the moments when the anxiety wasn't so loud, when the relationship felt easier, when you felt like yourself. And we use those moments as a map. This isn't about bypassing your pain. It's about not letting it be the only story we tell.
Mindfulness-Based Therapy
So much of our suffering lives in the gap between where we are and where we think we should be. Mindfulness Based Therapy is about learning to close that gap, not by forcing yourself to "be positive," but by learning to actually be with yourself. I use this approach because I've seen what happens when we spend our whole lives running from our own inner world. The anxiety gets louder. The exhaustion goes bone deep. Mindfulness gives us a way back in: gently, without judgment. We learn to notice the thoughts without becoming them. We learn to feel without being swept away. And slowly, you build a relationship with yourself that is honest, compassionate, and grounded so when life gets loud, you have somewhere steady to come home to.
Jungian
We all carry parts of ourselves we've been taught to hide: the anger, the grief, the need, the parts that didn't feel safe to be seen. Shadow work is the practice of turning toward those parts instead of away from them. In our sessions, we'll gently bring what's been buried into the light, not to shame it, but to understand it and integrate it. Because the moment you stop fighting yourself is the moment everything starts to shift.