Compassionate, Culturally Sensitive Therapy for Adult Children of Immigrants in Oakland & Online in San Francisco Bay Area ~ California

As a queer, trans, mixed race therapist who practices cultural humility, I offer a compassionate, inclusive space for you to openly process your upbringing and navigate cultural expectations in your family—without blaming or shaming your family for the ways they have learned to survive.

Mental health institutions have deeply misunderstood and harmed people of color and immigrant families. I’m not here to repeat that.

I believe that immigrant families have unique, culturally resilient (if imperfect) ways of engaging with one another. I also honor that our immigrant parents often didn’t get the emotional nurturing that they needed. I don’t hold it against them that they passed on imperfect ways of connecting and coping. I respect them for trying their best with the resources they had.

In our work together, I listen to your story with an open heart, curious mind, and a deep capacity for complexity. I support you in creating a loving, compassionate understanding in yourself that allows you to embrace cultural gifts while feeling more authentically connected to the possibilities of moving away from what’s expected of you.

Yes! With LGBTQ+, trans, nonbinary, genderfluid and questioning adult children of immigrants, we may explore family and cultural expectations of gender, sexuality, and “traditional” relationship structures and trajectories.

Maybe you’re openly queer in most spaces in your life but not with your family.

Maybe your family supports expansive gender identities and practices in theory but wants you to present differently when with extended family members because what will people say?

Maybe your queerness doesn’t cause much tension with caregivers but the fact that you have three partners does. 

At my Lake Merritt office in Oakland and online in California, my work with LGBTQ+ adult children of immigrants is often about exploring uncertainty. I provide a relational, inviting, and engaging space to explore where your identities and values may or may not align with those of your family. We work together to navigate the expansive, often uncomfortable journey of negotiating closeness and separation within close family systems.

As an integrative therapist in Oakland, I use a combination of IFS therapy, somatic therapy, and at times, EMDR therapy. I practice from a relational psychodynamic approach, allowing us to use the therapy relationship to explore early childhood patterns of relating to one another. This gives me a sense of how you might have achieved safety and security within your early relationships, and offers me insight into how you relate and respond to the people in your life now.

I especially enjoy using IFS therapy when working with adult children of immigrants because IFS therapy holds the belief that we carry both cultural burdens and ancestral gifts.

Cultural burdens are the implicit and explicit messages we internalize about the “correct” way to be. They are the lessons we learned to follow within our family and cultural systems in order to achieve success and acceptance, as well as avoid rejection and disappointment.

Ancestral gifts are the lessons that allow us to stay close to our roots and resiliency in ways that authentically feel good for us.

IFS therapy facilitates a more liberating, purposeful way of relating to our culture, wherein we get to intentionally decide which ancestral gifts to keep and which pressures to release.

Some of us instinctively flinch at the thought of our families finding out that we are considering going to therapy. We anticipate that they’ll tell us that it’s a waste of money, or that only “crazy” people go to therapy. We may also have been taught that we don’t talk about family to anyone outside of the family, and worry that going to therapy would be a betrayal of this implicit agreement.

Going to therapy isn’t about betraying, humiliating, or turning your back on your family. It’s about finally having the chance to tell your story without censorship or fear of disappointing others. You’re allowed to talk about the pain, hurt, confusion, anger, and sadness that come from well-intentioned but harmful patterns of coping and behaving in your family system.

As an inclusive, culturally sensitive therapist who specializes in working with adult children of immigrants, I’m not here to advise you to disconnect from your family, unless there are important, non-negotiable reasons why this is the safest option for you.

Therapy is about understanding yourself and your patterns better so that you can meet yourself with greater compassion, make decisions with clarity, and change behaviors that no longer work for you. From a place of thoughtful reflection, self-respect, and love, you get to feel into choice and possibility; to create fulfilling relationships with yourself, your family, and your culture.

I understand that boundaries can feel unfamiliar in family systems with immigrant parents and caregivers. I find it can be helpful to consider boundaries as a practice of returning to the authentic connection with yourself.

Boundaries are where we ask: What do I think? What do I feel? What am I comfortable with? What am I willing to do? What do I want to do or not do? What do I like and dislike?

For some adult children of immigrants, these questions can bring about anxiety because we might be used to ignoring how we feel.

Boundaries exist in immigrant and mixed immigrant/citizen households already; they’re just not always verbalized clearly. Boundaries are self-respecting limits that allow us to be honest with ourselves about our inner worlds. They’re not to be used as punishment or control.

Whether we’re meeting at my Lake Merritt office in Oakland or online, I can help you clarify your thoughts, feelings, and wants, engage with the discomfort of setting limits with family, and communicate boundaries respectfully and kindly—all in ways that make sense for you and your family.