IFS and relational psychotherapy in Berkeley

all parts of you, welcome

A greenhouse with illuminated interior light surrounded by trees and plants at dusk.

You might be here because...

  • You're standing at a threshold, a new role, a relationship shift, or the aftermath of a big experience, and you want a place to slow down and make meaning of what's changing.

  • You understand healing in your head, but you're longing to feel it in your body and carry it into real life, into how you rest, relate, lead, and love.

  • You’re learning to recognize the different parts of yourself—and want a relationship with those parts that is more compassionate and less adversarial.

  • You're committed to collective change, yet the same reactive patterns keep surfacing in you, your team, or your community. You're curious what it would look like for the work out in the world and the work inside to grow from the same roots.You’ve survived something significant and want therapy that can hold the complexity of what happened without reducing you to your trauma.

  • You want a therapist who is willing to be curious, able to be with you in the most tender of places, and proactive with you rather than simply hand you tools and send you on your way.

  • Some part of you knows that something needs to change, even if you don't yet know exactly what.

How I work


Therapy that goes beneath the surface

I believe therapy can be more than learning to manage symptoms or become better at functioning within a life that no longer fits.

Sometimes healing asks us to look more honestly at the patterns we've inherited, the roles we've learned to play, the relationships that shaped us, the ways we learned to protect ourselves, and the parts of ourselves we had to leave behind.

My work is rooted in the belief that you don't need to be fixed and you were never broken to begin with.

You need space to become more fully in relationship with yourself.

That can mean getting curious about the inner parts that seem to contradict one another. It can mean grieving what you didn't receive, making sense of what happened to you, examining the systems and relationships that shaped your experience, or discovering that an old way of surviving is no longer necessary.

I think of this as transformative and liberatory healing: not becoming a more acceptable version of yourself, but developing the freedom, capacity, and self-trust to live with greater choice and to contribute to collective healing and transformation.

We will go at the pace your system allows. And we will take the complexity of your life seriously.

In-person in Berkeley, virtually in California


Approaches + Specialities

Relational

Therapy happens in relationship. I pay attention not only to what you're telling me, but to what emerges between us—the places where you feel understood, misunderstood, challenged, protected, or seen. Our relationship becomes part of the work.

Internal Family Systems

I use IFS as one way of approaching the complexity of your inner world. Rather than treating certain parts of you as problems to eliminate, we can become curious about what each part is trying to protect, what it has learned, and what becomes possible when those parts no longer have to carry everything alone.

Trauma-informed and body-aware

We can explore the ways experiences live not only in your memories and beliefs, but in your nervous system, relationships, boundaries, and ways of moving through the world. We don't have to force insight or disclosure before you're ready.

Transformative

I’m interested in more than helping you return to baseline. Sometimes the deeper work is discovering that the person you were trying so hard to become isn't actually who you want to be—and making space for who you are becoming instead.

Liberatory

Healing doesn't happen in a vacuum. Our identities, families, communities, cultures, relationships, and social contexts shape us. I make room for those realities rather than asking you to locate every difficulty solely inside yourself.

A woman with short brown hair, wearing glasses and a dark denim jacket, standing outdoors near a wall in warm sunlight.

Cream-colored roses with green leaves on a dark textured surface.

Frequently Asked Questions