Therapy

I am currently an intern therapist completing a Master’s in Social Work focused on Indigenous Trauma and Resiliency. I bring a relational, strengths-based and trauma-informed approach to our work together. I believe therapy should be a space of collaboration, honesty and mutual learning, one that can at times be challenging, but also filled with joy and celebration. I’m in this work to help people access more choice, connection and commitment to the people and the work that they care about.

I draw from somatic practice, relational approaches, attachment theory, harm reduction and healing justice. I am a queer, mixed-race, Filipino-American, and I bring my lived experience to our work together, alongside a lens of informed curiosity for those with experiences and perspectives I don’t personally share. I am interested in supporting people working through mood issues, grief and loss, complex trauma, and family of origin challenges.

I have also been deeply embedded in anti-imperialist community organizing work with other Filipinos in diaspora since 2017, work that I am committed to supporting alongside my role as the therapist because I believe in the importance of dismantling the systems of oppression that land many of us in therapy in the first place. I am dedicated to the work of helping people rebuild connections with self and others because I know that in the same way that trauma reverberates through generations, healing will too.

If any of this resonates, I’d love to meet you and would be honored to work alongside you!

Clinical Experience

  • Complex trauma

  • 2SLGBTQ+ communities

  • Issues facing those in helping professions including activists and organizers

  • Diasporic communities

  • Polyamorous, non-monogamous, or “non-traditional” relationships

  • Adjusting to life transitions

  • Depression, anxiety and other mood disorders

About

Photography by Danny Montemayor

How to work with me

I offer a free 15-minute introductory call to anyone interested in working with me to determine if we would be a good fit!

I currently work at Little Seed Wellness, and you can book an intro call with me here. I can take Aetna, BlueCross and BlueShield, Cigna and Evernorth, ComPsych, Magellan and Medicaid insurance plans and have a limited number of sliding scale spots available as well.

If you are a community organizer who has faced barriers to accessing therapy and mental healthcare, please contact me and I can support you in finding some options.

My Guiding Principles

  • I am invested in this work not just to help people heal for the sake of healing alone, but to get us one step closer to a world where the causes of social injustice are uprooted and all people are free from oppression. I come to our work with an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and pro-people lens. I am especially interested in working with other community organizers and activists on their healing journeys, though I invite anyone who resonates with my principles to work with me. I believe that all of our liberation is connected and that, in the words of Black civil rights activist and freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” 

  • I come to our work with a strengths-based, rather than deficit-based, approach. I believe that everyone has a right to self-determination, and I aim to center and uplift each person’s own agency and choice. I believe in a collaborative and flexible approach that is grounded in personal autonomy. Working with me, centering individual choice and agency is considered alongside the first principle of liberation for all people, and I aim to provide an honest and loving mirror to balance individual and structural perspectives when needed. I also commit to taking care of myself and honoring my own dignity, with the knowledge that it is a prerequisite to being able to provide you with the best possible care.  

  • I take an ecological approach to healing and believe that “collective trauma is transformed collectively” (Page and Woodland, 2023). Individual support and services play a critical role, but I believe they will be ineffective or provide only a temporary alleviation if they are not equipping individuals with the skills they need to build community and relational infrastructure. Healing is not an individual act, so in our work together, I aim to help you bring our work out of the 1-1 context and into your everyday life and community. I hope I have wisdom to share, but I know you will also find so much more within yourself and the community you build around you.  

  • Part of respect is being honest about who I am, where I come from and what I aim to do. Sharing these principles is just one effort to do this. I want each person who works with me to be able to opt in or out of collaboration based on an informed decision about if they feel comfortable working with me. I strive to always be transparent about how I have to navigate the systems I operate within. I commit to consistent self-reflexivity and  accountability for my part in any harm that may happen. And I always approach our work with a spirit of informed curiosity, doing my own work to understand the world you may be coming from, while also striving to understand your individual and unique experience and perspective.