Modalities of Therapy
IFS
✳︎
EMDR
✳︎
Somatic Therapy
✳︎
Mindfulness Self-Compassion
✳︎
Trauma-focused
✳︎
IFS ✳︎ EMDR ✳︎ Somatic Therapy ✳︎ Mindfulness Self-Compassion ✳︎ Trauma-focused ✳︎
Trauma-Informed, Culturally Responsive Care
Being trauma-informed and culturally responsive means recognizing that our minds and bodies adapt to help us survive difficult experiences.
Trauma can come from a single overwhelming event, but it can also develop through chronic stress, emotional neglect, relational wounds, discrimination, or environments where we didn't consistently feel safe, seen, or supported.
Symptoms like anxiety, perfectionism, people pleasing, emotional numbness, or hypervigilance often make sense when understood as protective adaptations rather than personal flaws.
Being culturally responsive means recognizing that our identities, families, communities, and the systems we live within shape how we experience ourselves and the world. Culture, immigration, racism, privilege, discrimination, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of identity are never separate from our mental health. I welcome these conversations with openness, humility, and respect, honoring your lived experience rather than making assumptions about it.
Above all, I approach therapy from a nonpathologizing perspective.
I believe people make sense in the context of what they've lived through. My role is not to judge your adaptations, but to help you understand them, reconnect with yourself, and decide which ways of coping continue to serve the life you want to create.
I believe there is something deeply meaningful about feeling seen & understood. I do my best to see people for who they are, where they've come from, and the experiences that have shaped them.
Explained Through My Lens
Internal Family Systems
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is based on the idea that we all have different parts of ourselves, each with its own thoughts, emotions, and protective role. You might recognize some of yours as the inner child, inner teenager, perfectionist, people-pleaser, skeptic, or inner critic.
One of my favorite aspects of IFS is the belief that beneath these protective parts is your core Self: a calm, compassionate, courageous, and authentic place that exists within all of us.
When life becomes overwhelming, our protective parts often take over in an effort to keep us safe. Rather than trying to get rid of these aspects/ parts/ survival patterns, IFS helps you understand them with curiosity and compassion. As you build relationships with them, they no longer have to carry burdens from the past, allowing you to respond to the present from your authentic self that has greater clarity, confidence, and self-leadership.
EMDR
Eye-Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing
EMDR is an evidence-based therapy that helps the brain process traumatic experiences. Sometimes our minds and bodies don't have the chance to fully process overwhelming experiences because we were busy surviving them. Instead, those experiences continue to show up as triggers, anxiety, negative beliefs, or reactions that feel bigger than the present moment.
Through a structured process using bilateral stimulation EMDR helps your brain return to those experiences in a way that feels safe enough to finish processing what couldn't be processed at the time.
Rather than changing what happened, it changes the way the experience is stored, allowing your nervous system to recognize that the danger has passed.
Somatic
Therapy
Somatic therapy is based on the understanding that our emotions and experiences are not only held in our minds they are also experienced through our bodies. We know this intuitively: the tightness in your chest when you're anxious, the lump in your throat when you're sad, or the sinking feeling in your stomach when something feels unsafe.
After experiencing chronic stress or trauma, our nervous systems can become stuck in patterns of protection. For example, freezing during a presentation may not only be about public speaking, it may also be connected to an earlier experience of feeling embarrassed, judged, or unsafe.
In these moments, it can feel like our body is time traveling — responding to an old danger even when our present circumstances are different.
Somatic therapy helps build awareness of these body-based responses and create new experiences of safety and connection.
MSC
Mindfulness Self-Compassion
I use techniques from Mindfulness Self-Compassion (MSC) to help clients navigate shame, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and harsh inner critics. Many of us learn to motivate, protect, or push ourselves through criticism, judgment, and perfectionism, often believing that being hard on ourselves is what keeps us safe or helps us succeed.
MSC teaches us a different way of relating to ourselves. It combines mindfulness, the ability to notice our thoughts, emotions, and experiences without becoming consumed by them with self-compassion, which means learning to meet ourselves with the same kindness and understanding we naturally offer to others.
MSC helps build the capacity to sit with difficult emotions like shame while responding to yourself with patience and care. Rather than fighting the parts of yourself, self-compassion creates space to understand them and offer yourself the support you may have needed all along.