Bridging the seen and the unseen. Listening for the unspoken.
Credentials
MA, Integral Counseling Psychology
California Institute of Integral Studies
California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #114969
Certifications:
Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy,
Hakomi Institute
Jungian Oriented Psychotherapy,
C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco
EMDR Level 1, EMDRIA
Directions to my San Francisco therapy office
A San Francisco psychotherapist, I work with sensitive, creative, and gifted individuals from a psychodynamic, somatic, and relational perspective.
Therapy with me centers around depth, interiority, relationships, creativity, meaning, and transformation.
In session, I listen with my whole body, attuning to subtle shifts, sensations, and pauses that signal something meaningful — a deeper awareness that opens the way to clarity and healing.
Before I became a psychotherapist, I was a student of philosophy, wandering the halls of existentialism and phenomenology, captivated by fundamental questions of being, truth, and language.
Met with the realization that some of the most basic questions about existence and what it means to be human could not be answered with any certainty, I graduated with what can only be described as a degree in epistemological humility.
I turned to art where looking became a way of knowing that stayed with the question as it unravelled. The longer I looked, the more I learned to see. Questions of perception became creative practice.
During my time in the art world, my inquiry into seeing became a descent beneath the visible.
Life and what — if anything — it meant, stopped being theoretical.
Bridging the Psychological and the Soulful
My academic background reflects the evolution of a lifelong inquiry into seeing and understanding from multiple vantage points.
Philosophy taught me how to ask the fundamental questions of human existence — and then tested my certainty.
Who am I? What is true? How do we know?
Existentialism and phenomenology located these questions within a philosophical lineage that explores the nature and experience of being. That tradition became the ground from which I have encountered each successive discipline, forming one continuous inquiry into seeing, knowing, and understanding.
Art taught me that perception is relative, meaning is constructed, and that looking closely can change both the observer and what is observed. The longer I looked, the more I learned to see.
Photography translated phenomenology, or how the world appears from within a particular way of being, into creative practice.
The discipline of sustained attention is the foundation of my work as a psychotherapist.
Psychotherapy brought philosophical inquiry and creative vision into relationship in an embodied environment where experiences are continually emerging.
Relational psychodynamic therapy offered a psychological framework for engaging with questions of identity, perception, memory, and meaning, allowing them to become opportunities for healing and transformation.
Each of these disciplines has informed the analytical depth and creative insight I bring to my practice of psychotherapy.
Together, they became one way of seeing.
I am a San Francisco psychotherapist with over a decade of clinical experience supporting individuals, couples and families in private practice settings, outpatient clinics, and leading residential treatment centers in the Bay Area, including Alta Mira Recovery Programs, New Perspectives Center for Counseling, Haight Ashbury Psychological Services, Ohlhoff Recovery Programs, and others focused on trauma therapy, addiction recovery, and mental health treatment.
Working extensively with substance use disorders and addiction recovery early in my career gave me a foundational understanding of the complex interplay between trauma and addiction, recovery and transformation, allowing me to support clients in finding freedom and deeper connection in their lives.
A lifelong learner, I have been privileged to study with thought leaders in the fields of trauma and relationships, including Bessel van der Kolk and Esther Perel through intensive in-person workshops at Oxford University and an immersive retreat in the jungles of Costa Rica.
I am certified in Jungian-Oriented Psychotherapy by The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, and in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy by the Hakomi Institute of California.
These experiences have enabled me to cultivate a therapeutic approach grounded in contemporary research, expertise and best practices for psychotherapy so you can feel safe to freely explore your inner world.
Therapy for analytical depth and embodied insight.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, an insight oriented approach that supports greater self-awareness and understanding of unconscious patterns, is at the heart of my work.
A safe and reflective space for understanding your inner world, psychodynamic therapy explores the connections between your present experiences and past dynamics, offering clarity into recurring patterns of behavior and attachment.
Integrating past experiences with present awareness facilitates long-term change and greater emotional freedom. This approach is particularly powerful for those with analytical minds seeking to create fulfilling relationships and meaningful personal growth.
I frequently integrate elements of somatic psychotherapy into my practice, focusing on the connection between mind and body as a resource for healing trauma and coping with emotional overwhelm.
By tuning into sensations, movements, and emotions that arise in the body, we can access direct, pre-cognitive pathways to healing that precede conscious memory of a traumatic event.
Somatic therapy is particularly effective for processing feelings that are hard to make sense of, and reconnecting with your physical body in a safe and empowering way.
Offering tools for stress management and self-regulation, somatic therapy helps you feel grounded, balanced, and aligned in your everyday life.
A San Francisco trauma therapist with deep roots in Marin County and clients throughout the Bay Area, I specialize in therapy for empaths, artists, and thinkers navigating identity, meaning and purpose, relationship challenges, trauma, and addiction.
My best-fit clients often wonder if they are too sensitive, too intelligent, or too intense, haunted by the question: “Am I too much or not enough?”
I offer therapy for those rebuilding after collapse.
Not from theory — from memory.
Before I was a therapist, I was an artist.
I earned an MFA in photography, worked in Chelsea galleries, at the International Center of Photography, and assisted artists whose names appeared in Artforum and museum catalogs.
On the outside, I was an emerging artist in NYC with a curated life.
Inside, a precipitous fall into addiction that distorted my sense of time, self, and place.
There were relapses and recoveries — and finally, an offer disguised as an ultimatum: the promise that I would get my dreams back.
That’s how I got to San Francisco.
I spent 35 days at a residential treatment center in Marin County — unraveling, reckoning, remembering.
I consider my experience in rehab the true beginning of my training to become a therapist.
While I was in treatment, my family cleared out my NYC apartment. I never went back.
Instead, I stayed — and changed everything.
Early sobriety is like early childhood development — relearning how to exist, relate, and cope without substances.
I felt like a freshly peeled nectarine — raw, tender, exposed. I was rebuilding not just a life, but a nervous system, one breath at a time.
After treatment, I was referred to a Columbia-trained psychoanalyst — a former New Yorker practicing in Mill Valley.
One day in session, Dr. Deri looked at me and said:
“You have seer’s eyes. This is your work.”
That sentence changed everything.
I went back to school and began studying the psyche with the sense that my life depended on it.
That was 14 years and a lifetime ago.
I became the person I needed. Now I offer that presence to others.
Vulnerability isn’t a liability in my work. It’s my credential.
Clients work with me not because I escaped the storm, but because I survived it.
My own journey led me from philosophy to art to psychology in a lifelong search for meaning.
Today, I am a psychotherapist who works with empaths, artists, and thinkers navigating:
My approach is psychodynamic, somatic, and trauma-informed.
I also bring something less clinical, but just as essential:
I offer presence.
A nervous system that returns to balance.
A heart tempered by fire.
A body that knows how to stay.
This work is not about fixing.
It’s about remembering who you are.
Whether you’re recovering from trauma, navigating a crisis in your relationship, or quietly unraveling in a world that doesn’t hold you — there is room here for all of it.
You are not broken. You are becoming.
After a decade providing trauma therapy in Marin County, I opened a San Francisco location in 2025, where I continue working with clients across the Bay Area.
Therapy that cultivates growth amid disruption; meaning amid complexity.
Lighting the path through uncertainty and seeing potential where others see crisis.
A private practice therapist, I offer a safe, non-judgmental space for individuals, couples, and families seeking confidential, bespoke care.
Whether you are navigating the aftermath of trauma, repairing your relationships, seeking empathic support, or reimagining the meaning of your creative work, you are welcome here with me.
I offer in person therapy in the San Francisco and online therapy throughout California.
