New to Grow
I have a lifetime of experience and practice. My passion in my practice is helping people find their true selves buried under the suffocating weight of the trauma and abuse they have survived. I am not a stranger to therapy. I have had good and not-so-good therapists, and those experiences helped inform the kind of therapist I wanted to be, both in what I want to do and what I want to avoid. My upbringing discouraged me from seeking help outside of an insular community, so I know firsthand how powerful taking that first step is. Seeking therapy doesn’t mean you are weak. It means you are wise enough to admit that you need help, and strong enough to take that step toward healing. Once you take that step, every step after it gets a little easier. Here’s a little about my training. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California (LMFT #119674). I received my Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. My education focused on somatic psychology, which studies how the mind and body affect each other. My experiences and passions led me to focus on all kinds of trauma, its causes, and how to manage and heal from it. Beyond being your guide and therapeutic partner… I am a wife and mother. I find my peace and center in forests and near the ocean. A good story and board games bring me joy. I relax on my Catio with my two black cats and enjoy music.
In our first session together, here's what you can expect
By partnering with me, you gain a supportive guide who will walk you through the difficult ground of your experiences. We find the trails that lead you through the dark lands back out into the open fields where you can thrive. I take a collaborative, conversational, and informal-seeming approach to therapy. I am here to be present and on your side while bringing kindness, nonjudgment, compassion, and openness to your experiences and circumstances. We all need more of these things. To many – like you – they’re like an oasis in the desert.
The biggest strengths that I bring into our sessions
Sometimes people work with e get better and fly away into their lives. Most of the time this is very hard because of the attunement and attachment that I foster in therapy. I don't go in a straight line because I met people that come to me where they are in the moment. I have a ton of tools. That combined with my knowledge of the human nervous system and how habits/ memories are formed serve to help most anyone I work with to feel ease. No one ends with me without a handful of tools they can use on their own and a better understanding of themselves.
The clients I'm best positioned to serve
All of your time is spent managing the emotions of the people around you. You feel others’ pain as if it were your own, but never their joy, laughter, or calm. And every moment that you try to relax or enjoy yourself feels selfish and fills you with guilt. But someone will eventually take care of you how you care for them, right?
Somatic
I was trained as a somatic therapist. In sessions I with not only check on a wide range of theirs like sleep patterns and exercise/diet. When we get to emotions and feelings I help people identify emotions through body sensation first then work on them identify the emotion. We always look at boundaries and how they are being set. This is usually done through looking at how the client feels about boundaries and asking for their needs.