My approach is warm, relational, trauma-informed, and integrative. Rather than seeing the collection of symptoms that need to be “fixed,” I want to understand the story behind them. However, therapy with me is not just about understanding the stories or the past. It is about helping you build a different relationship with yourself in the present. 

We can work toward developing greater emotional safety, trusting your own experiences and needs, building a more stable sense of self-worth, creating healthier boundaries and relationships, and making choices that feel increasingly aligned with the person you are becoming.

Some sessions may be reflective and exploratory; others may be practical and focused on what you need right now. We will move at a pace that feels manageable while creating room for both acceptance and change. As for modalities, I use an integrative approach that includes Cognitive Behavior Theory (CBT), a brief psychodynamic approach, Parts Work, Emotion Focused approaches, mindfulness, and somatic-related techniques (i.e., polyvagal system theory). 

Well, that was a long list of terms. To put it simply, whether you are healing from childhood wounds, navigating relationships, questioning your identity or direction, adjusting to a major life transition, or simply wanting to understand yourself more deeply, you do not have to arrive with everything figured out.

We can begin with where you are, understand how you got here, and gradually create more freedom and power in where you go next.

Specialties

Cultural & Relational Trauma

Trauma does not always come from a single overwhelming event. It is complex. Sometimes it develops quietly through repeated experiences of emotional neglect, criticism, instability, family conflict, high expectations, conditional acceptance, or having to become responsible for yourself or others too early.

Culture can add another layer. You may have learned to prioritize family harmony over your emotions, associate achievement with worth, or feel guilty when your needs conflict with family expectations.

I approach these experiences with priorities of safety, stabilization, and cultural sensitivity. Our work can be targeted at making room for love, resilience, values, and strengths you carry from your background and the experiences that may still need understanding and healing.

Attachment & Childhood Wounds

Our earliest relationships can become templates for how we experience closeness, safety, trust, and conflict later in life.

You may become anxious when someone pulls away, fear abandonment, avoid vulnerability, struggle to trust others, people-please to preserve relationships, or repeatedly find yourself putting your own needs second.

These patterns are not character flaws. Often, they developed as ways of maintaining connection or protecting yourself.

Together, we can understand where these patterns came from, recognize your emotional and relational needs, strengthen boundaries, and gradually develop a greater sense of security in both your relationship with yourself and your relationships with others.

Self-Worth & Personal Growth

You may look capable from the outside while privately wondering whether you are good enough.

Perhaps achievement, approval, productivity, appearance, being needed by others, or being the “good” child or partner has become closely connected to how we measure our own worth. Even when things are going well, it may be difficult to feel satisfied because the standard keeps moving.

Together, we may explore perfectionism, self-criticism, people-pleasing, comparison, shame, identity, and parts of yourself that you learned to suppress in order to belong.

To me, personal growth is not about endlessly improving yourself until you finally become “good enough.” It is about understanding yourself more deeply and developing greater freedom to become fully yourself.

Life Transitions, Identity & Cross-Cultural Experiences

Transitions often raise deeper questions than the practical decisions in front of us.

Graduation, starting a career, moving to another country, immigration, entering or ending a relationship, changing family roles, or realizing that the life you once imagined no longer feels right can leave you wondering:

“Who am I now? 

What do I actually want? 

Which expectations belong to me, and which ones have I inherited from others?”

For international students, immigrants, and people living across cultures, these questions may also involve belonging, language, family expectations, and the experience of becoming slightly different versions of yourself in different places.

Therapy can offer space to slow down, reconnect with what matters to you, and move through these transitions with greater clarity and confidence.

Anxiety, Depression & Emotional Overwhelm 

Anxiety, overthinking, emotional ups and downs, self-doubt, and relationship difficulties rarely exist in isolation. Rather than focusing only on eliminating uncomfortable emotions, I am interested in helping you understand what those emotions may be communicating and how we can better take care of them to feel better.

Together, we can strengthen emotional regulation and practical coping while also exploring the deeper patterns underneath, so that you have more choice in how you respond to yourself, your relationships, and stressful situations.