About Me
My path to this work began long before I became a therapist. As a highly sensitive daughter of immigrants, I grew up deeply attuned to the emotional atmosphere around me, often before I understood my own needs. Over time, I started noticing how perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the quiet pressure to hold everything together weren’t just mental habits: they lived in my body too.​
Understanding my mind-body connection became a personal journey. I saw firsthand how anxiety, stress, and self-criticism can show up physically, and how powerful it is to learn that our brains and bodies are capable of change. Those experiences shape how I show up in this work today.​
Therapy with me is collaborative and flexible. I draw from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), somatic approaches, and mind-body modalities like Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET). My work is further informed by specialized training under pioneers in the field of mind-body medicine, including Dr. Howard Schubiner and Alan Gordon, whose research and treatment approaches have helped shape modern understanding of neuroplastic pain and chronic symptoms.
I earned both my Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and my Master’s degree in Social Welfare from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where I specialized in Mental Health and Health. I’ve worked with adolescents through older adults across community mental health clinics, community college settings, and now in private practice.
Outside of the therapy room, you can usually find me exploring the outdoors, experimenting with different art mediums, or bothering my two cats, Fig and Herman. I believe being human is messy and strange and beautiful, and I try to bring that same openness and warmth into the work I do.
Approaches
to Pain and Other Symptoms
Pain Reprocessing Therapy
PRT helps clients understand how the brain can generate real symptoms in the absence of ongoing tissue damage. Together, we work to reduce fear around symptoms, reinterpret bodily sensations through a lens of safety, and gradually retrain the nervous system to respond differently. This approach can be especially effective for chronic pain and other persistent mind-body symptoms.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
ACT helps clients develop a different relationship with discomfort rather than becoming trapped in the cycle of fighting, avoiding, or controlling symptoms. I help clients build psychological flexibility, make space for difficult thoughts and sensations, and reconnect with the activities, relationships, and values that matter most to them.
Exposure and Response Prevention
ERP is often used when chronic symptoms are maintained by fear, hypervigilance, reassurance-seeking, or avoidance. Together, we gradually practice approaching feared sensations, activities, or uncertainties while reducing safety behaviors, allowing the brain to learn that these experiences are tolerable and not dangerous.
Internal Family Systems
IFS views symptoms, emotions, and protective patterns as parts of us that have developed for a reason. I help clients build curiosity and compassion toward the parts that may be fueling stress, perfectionism, self-criticism, or symptom monitoring, creating space for deeper healing and self-understanding.
Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy
EAET focuses on the role that unprocessed emotions, conflict, trauma, and relational experiences can play in chronic symptoms. Clients learn to identify, experience, and express emotions more fully, often reducing the nervous system activation that can contribute to persistent pain and other symptoms.
Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy helps clients reconnect with the body's signals in a safe and intentional way. By increasing awareness of physical sensations, nervous system states, and patterns of tension or activation, clients learn to regulate stress, process emotions, and develop a greater sense of safety within their bodies.
As a therapist, I believe healing is not something you have to earn—it’s a capacity we all carry, and therapy can help create the conditions for it to unfold.
Get in Touch
I know reaching out can feel like a big step. If you have any questions, I'm happy to discuss them during a free 15-minute consultation.
To schedule, please email or call me, and I'll get back to you within 24 hours.
(240) 544-7949
