Professions: Psychotherapist, Marriage & Family Therapist, Life Coach
Languages: English
Telephone: 510-872-2336 x0
Many of the folks I work with grew up in families of origin where they experienced an environment of high stress, high conflict, and difficult relationships. A common experience is that of feeling demeaned, misunderstood, invisible, and alone. Exposure to these themes in childhood adds a significant layer of complication to adult relationships, whether partnership, friendship, or work relationship, and may include themes like recurring exposure to emotional neglect and mistreatment, insecure attachment, difficulty trusting, difficulty setting limits and boundaries, codependency, people-pleasing, lopsided, one-way relationships, resentment, burnout, depression, anxiety, and estrangement. Some therapeutic themes we address include attachment trauma, complex trauma/complex post-traumatic stress (C-PTSD), history of physical and emotional neglect, history of physical and emotional abuse, being parented by an emotionally immature parent (perhaps with a narcissistic or borderline personality style), narcissistic abuse (characterized by entitlement, disregard for boundaries, manipulative and controlling behavior, gaslighting, lying, constant criticism, blaming and shaming, sabotaging, lack of empathy, lack of accountability, playing the victim), history of being scapegoated. Goals for therapy may include increased familiarity with your feelings, increased ability to lean into, get curious about, and work with the more uncomfortable feelings, identifying and honoring your needs, practicing self-care, improved self-esteem and self-confidence (shedding shame), finding your voice, improved communication, increased self-expression, assertiveness and self-advocacy, improved boundary-setting, improved conflict management, as well as increased contentedness, curiosity, joy, spontaneity, and play!