Therapy can be transformative and I’ve had the privilege to join many on their path to healing. Therapy takes effort and can be challenging at times. It asks you to be honest, courageous, and vulnerable so that you can uncover your authentic self and live life in a way that connects to you.
My intention is to create a safe and welcoming space so that you can explore your inner world. I take a collaborative approach and my therapeutic style is direct, genuine, and warm. I’m curious to find out the real you and help you discover your own innate wisdom to help you live a full life. The process may bring tears or be light with laughter. It’s a journey! And ultimately it’s your journey; I’m just a helpful companion along the way.
I am an integrative psychologist, which means that I use different evidence based therapeutic approaches to best fit the needs of my clients. See below to learn more about therapeutic approaches I use in my work:
- Emotion focused therapy is a type of humanistic therapy that is based on the premise that emotions are key in structuring inner experience and motivation, and shaping our relationships.
- Mindfulness is a method of increasing awareness of yourself and your environment by observing your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations in a nonjudgmental way and cultivating attitudes such as acceptance, letting go, and gratitude.
- Insight Oriented therapy focuses on deepening our understanding to our emotions, motivations, fears and desires and making the unconscious conscious so that we can live a life that is aligned with our current goals and priorities.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy is a short-term, goal-oriented psychotherapy treatment that focuses on changing patterns of thinking and behavior that are unhelpful.
- Acceptance and commitment therapy invites people to open up to unpleasant feelings and situations where they are invoked to increase psychological flexibility.
- Existential psychotherapy is a style of therapy that places emphasis on the human condition as a whole and centers on issues of death, meaninglessness, isolation, and freedom.
- Humanistic Therapy focuses on a person’s individual nature and their personal instincts to find wisdom, growth, and fulfillment within themselves.
- Legacy Therapy is a growing form of palliative care that encourages aging or terminally ill patients to share their stories in a way that can be captured for their friends and families.
TRAINING
I’m a licensed psychologist with a PhD in Clinical-Health from the University of Miami, FL and have over a decade of experience as a clinician. My main area of clinical training was in health psychology with further training in psycho-oncology, end of life, managing chronic illness, trauma, grief, and insomnia during internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the Long Beach VA Medical Center. I also have extensive experience in mindfulness, and began my training in Vipassana meditation during my undergraduate studies at UCLA as a research assistant in mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) studies.