Hi 👋🏻 I've been no where to be found for a couple of months except on stories @femme.trauma.therapist but I'm back in action now because I have reached a PROFOUND professional milestone. I have completed my 3,000 hours of clinical work for therapy licensure in the state of California.

What does this encompass you may ask? My journey has been a long one girl, let me tell you. I have been in the mental health field for 12 years now and started working on rape crisis hotlines. Since then I have worked as a residential counselor for women with severe developmental disabilities, completed a 2 month internship in Chennai, India working in a leprosy hospital providing educational outreach for local communities on physical and mental health, studied abroad in Amsterdam on a Gender & Sexuality program exploring the emotional health of the LGBTQ+ 🌈 population in Holland. During my study abroad I interviewed sex workers in the Red Light District and did art therapy with them in addition to visiting Croatia and Turkey to provide further educational outreach for the emotional health of the global LGBTQ+ population.

I worked as a Case Manager for folks on public assistance providing emotional support and back to work services. I then completed a year post baccalaureate program in Clinical Psychology at Columbia University in New York City.

Applying to graduate school took me across the country ✈️ to San Francisco where I started a doctorate program in Clinical Psychology at the Wright Institute. I participated in that program for a year and realized I was missing my art background and had the desire to fuse clinical psychology with the arts. So, I switched tracks and completed a 3 year specialty masters in Expressive Arts Therapy at the California Institute of Studies (CIIS). Additionally, I have worked and counseled autistic children in social emotional learning summer camps.

All in all this equates to: 
• 5 years of graduate level education
• 4 years providing psychotherapy
• 3 years in private practice
• 2 1/2 years as a School Counselor 

In addition, I am an EMDR clinician and specialize in depression, sexual trauma, and anxiety. Currently, I am accepting new clients so get at your girl 😉. If you'd like to book with me online, simply send me a message on my contact page or head over to HAVN Collectives website and you will be able to see my (limited) availability 🖤.

If your therapist or (imagined) therapist could jump in your pocket, what might you need to hear them say? 

"If you're not at the table you're probably on the menu" 
-Unkown

This speaks so much truth and is why I center my therapeutic work in a social justice framework. I pull from Political Analysis Feminist Therapy, Queer Theory, and Liberation Psychology to help my clients in the face of oppression. 

When we experience toxic shame we conflate ourselves with the mistake, for example the belief "I am the mistake" may rise to the surface. There is often a value judgement attached to toxic shame such as "I'm unworthy", "I'm a loser", etc.

Part of my work with people is to shift the lens of toxic shame and reshape the narrative from "I am the mistake" to "I made a mistake". I struggle with toxic shame on and off myself which is why I love digging into this work! 

This is one of my favorite sayings of a dear mentor who has been a Psychotherapist for over 40 years. It reminds me that it's important to explore different narratives with curiosity, without. pigeon holing our. clients into a specific story or narrative. By approaching clients with curiosity, we are able to see areas of gray and nuances life that might be otherwise hard to identify. Simultaneously, this perspective allows for one to reshape. their. life knowing that we are all evolving in each and every moment.
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Let's invite curiosity into our lives without settling things in stone!