The Team

We prioritize understanding the beliefs, backgrounds, and values of our clients — this includes their culture, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexuality, abilities, language, communication styles, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Each therapist makes it a part of their duty to learn from every individual client from their own personal experiences, as well as outside training and education. Overall, as clinicians, we understand that we will never be fully competent about the evolving and dynamic nature of a patient’s experiences, but we are here to learn in each moment what is needed and how we can support you, human-to-human.

We hold regard for our clients’ trauma and its impact on their behavior, mental health, and ability to engage in treatment. We approach all clients on the assumption that they may have a trauma history and take steps to avoid inadvertently triggering or re-traumatizing the client in treatment. This type of care involves recognizing that trauma has significant effects on people and is often under-recognized and under-reported. We respond in ways that emphasize safety, collaboration, and empowerment by providing education to clients about their trauma symptoms while helping them to feel protected in the process.

We bravely and earnestly confront the multi-generational impact that colonization has on all of us. Nido providers acknowledge the intersection of privileged and oppressed parts of ourselves and admit to the ways our profession has caused a great deal of harm. We take tenacious efforts to end individualistic and pathologizing Eurocentric methods of wellness and put special emphasis on including those who have been purposely excluded and historically forgotten, and instead prioritize interdependent, collectivist approaches for change. In treatment, our therapists strive to uncover and tend to the real roots of the symptoms and suffering that are caused by having to survive systemic and cultural neglect and violence.

We invest in ourselves through our own self-reflection in order to provide thoughtful, human-first care by dedicating time and energy to often feel uncomfortable and acknowledge our own woundings and areas of need within ourselves. Beyond our personal explorations, all of our therapists participate in weekly community learning and 1-3 hours per week of psychoanalytic group supervision/consultation. We take serious efforts to deepen our understanding of ourselves, remain humble, and stay in continuous growth. Whether it is through our own personal therapy, mentorships, or spiritual practices, we find it important to experience what many of our clients do on the receiving end of care and learning.

Along with acknowledging the capitalist, imperialist, cis-hetero patriarchal catastrophes our society inflicts, we use an integrated psychodynamic approach. In a holistic way, we work with and beside our clients, supporting community and group support, nourishment, creativity, somatic bodywork, education, and beyond. Psychodynamic and attachment-based therapy invites clients to journey into the depths of their inner world, where the past lingers and shapes the present.

Together, we explore the bonds that shape our clients and discover unconscious patterns, defenses, and hidden emotions, acknowledging the ways they both protect and limit them. Through this process, we illuminate what lies beneath, fostering healing, self-awareness, and the freedom to connect more authentically to the self and with others. This type of healing takes an investment of time, energy, unlearning, and new discovery. The process is not for the faint of heart, but it's nonetheless worthwhile. With courage and support, there is self-understanding and healing on the other side.