Annika Sridharan
I am a licensed clinical psychologist (Psy.D) with over 30 years of experience supporting immigrants, expatriates, international students, refugees, and asylum seekers through the complex emotional terrain of migration and displacement. I founded Global Mosaïque Care to provide culturally responsive, trauma-informed psychological care for people navigating the layered challenges of building a life in a new country. My own background is a mosaic: I was born into a first-generation francophone Swiss family with parents who came from different countries — one who left seeking educational opportunity, the other who was obliged to flee due to political persecution. I came to the United States as an international student and have lived, studied, and worked across several continents, including West, Central, and Southern Africa, and South America. This personal history gives me a lived, not merely theoretical, understanding of what it means to leave home behind and build new roots somewhere else. I hold a Doctor of Psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, a Master of Science in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University, and a Certificate in Global Mental Health from the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. I am a licensed psychologist in California (PSY24660). I work with adults and adolescents — individuals, couples, and families — and offer services in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. All sessions are conducted remotely via telehealth throughout California.
First session
The first session is an opportunity for us to begin getting to know one another at whatever pace feels right for you. There is no expectation that you arrive with everything organized or fully articulated — the beginning of any therapeutic relationship is about starting to build trust, and that is a gradual process. I will ask what has brought you to therapy at this particular moment in your life, and I will want to understand the broader context: where you come from, how you came to be in your current situation, what your relationships and daily life look like, and what you are hoping to find through this work. For many people I work with, the experience of migration — whether freely chosen or forced upon them — sits close to the center of what they are carrying, and I will be genuinely interested in your particular story. I will also take time to explain how I work and what the structure of our sessions looks like, and I encourage you to ask any questions you have about my background or approach. This first meeting is as much an opportunity for you to assess whether this feels like a good fit as it is for me to begin understanding your situation. By the end, we should have a clearer shared sense of the areas you want to explore, without any pressure to commit before you are ready.
Strengths
The most distinctive thing I bring is genuine, personal familiarity with the experience of migration and cultural dislocation — not as a clinical concept, but as a lived reality. I am myself an immigrant and the product of a multicultural family with a multigenerational history of crossing borders. That shapes the depth of my understanding when clients describe the grief of distance from home, the exhaustion of cultural code-switching, or the disorientation of building an identity across multiple worlds simultaneously. Beyond the personal, I bring 30 years of specialized clinical experience across some of the most demanding areas of global mental health — working with survivors of torture, war trauma, and political persecution, with humanitarian workers struggling with secondary traumatic stress and moral distress, and with refugees and asylum seekers across multiple international contexts. That breadth means I can meet clients across a wide range of presentations, from the complex psychological territory of an expatriate managing career transition and family strain, to the profound aftermath of displacement and violence. My multilingual capacity — English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese — is more than a logistical convenience. Language is culture, and working with clients in their primary language changes the texture and depth of the therapeutic relationship in ways that matter. My clinical approach is integrative and depth-oriented, rooted in relational psychodynamic theory and informed by humanistic and liberation psychology, attachment theory, and a genuinely global lens. I am curious and I ask hard questions. I am also willing, when the moment calls for it, to be direct — to name what I observe, to gently challenge a pattern, or to raise something a client might prefer to avoid. I believe meaningful change requires honesty alongside warmth, not one at the expense of the other.
Ideal clients
I feel a particular affinity and empathy for those who left their homes and have had to rebuild their lives in new environments. As a psychologist, I have focused on supporting people who experienced trauma in different parts of the world, and have a specialization in global mental health. If you are an immigrant, or the child of immigrants, I have several decades of professional experience, as well as lived experience, that will help me understand something about your and/or your family's path of migration across countries and cultures. If you are an international student or scholar, or are here temporarily for work, my professional and lived experiences help me understand the complexities of belonging to several places and cultures. The way I work clinically is best suited for people who are interested in more deeply exploring who they are, their place in the world, and their relationships with others. An interest in depth and meaning, and a curiosity and openness to learning and growth, will be helpful for a fruitful therapeutic experience.
Treatment methods
Attachment-based
Attachment-based psychotherapy draws on attachment theory to understand how early relationships with caregivers shape our patterns of relating throughout life, and our sense of self. The therapeutic relationship is an important vehicle for change. The therapist provides a consistent, warm and responsive presence that offers a new relational experience, and helps foster change within the client. It is particularly suited for people whose difficulties stem from attachment disruptions, loss or trauma.
Compassion-Focused
Compassion focused psychotherapy views the development of self-compassion as a foundation for psychological wellbeing. The therapist helps facilitate clients' development of a warm, understanding and gentle relationship with themselves as part of the therapeutic process. This helps counter patterns of self-criticism, feelings of shame and guilt, and vulnerable self-esteem.
Multicultural
Multicultural psychotherapy recognizes that people's cultural and social backgrounds, identities and experiences are central to who they are and to their psychological wellbeing. The therapist prioritizes attending to the client's worldview, values, cultural context and identities as a meaningful part of the therapeutic process.
Existential
Existential therapy focuses on the fundamental challenges of human existence - meaning, belonging, suffering, responsibility and mortality. It is a philosophical stance that emphasizes authentic engagement between therapist and client, and invites people to explore how they are living, what gives their life meaning, and how they relate to the unavoidable uncertainties and complexities of being human.
Relational
Relational psychotherapy holds that psychological difficulties arise within relationships and are best healed within relationships, with the therapeutic relationship itself considered the primary agent of change. It pays close attention to what unfolds between therapist and client, as a window into the client's broader relational world. It draws on psychodynamic, attachment, and intersubjective traditions, emphasizing mutuality and the therapist's genuine presence.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
Top specialties
Other specialties
Serves
Licensed in
- CaliforniaLicense 24660