Qualifications

• Internal Family Systems Institute (Level 1) Therapist Training 

• Doctor of Occupational Therapy, Mental Health Specialty

• Master’s in Healthcare Administration

• Bachelor’s in Public Health & Spanish/Latin-American Studies

• Advanced Yoga Instructor- 500 hours @ Rishikesh YogKulam

• Reiki Master

• Meditation Instructor 

• Completed Trauma-Informed Care Training by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk

• Experience as Adjunct Professor: Psychosocial Occupational Therapy

Story

Despite working in clinical mental health settings for 14 years, I did most of my deep inner healing within holistic containers outside of the medical model. More specifically, I found someone offering IFS in a coaching container outside of healthcare. Insurance, diagnosis and lengthy questionnaires were off the table and we could dive right into my system through the IFS model. I found the process so helpful that it inspired me to create a similar container to offer IFS outside of the healthcare system to others. In about a year, I went from hating and trying to remove parts of me to loving them with compassion and understanding their motivations. Now, when triggered, I am grateful for it because I see that trigger as a trailhead towards deeper healing and personal growth.

Forever, I would always jump to the worst case scenario and there was immense fear in every level of my system. I made a decision that I no longer wanted to feel this way, so I embarked on a journey to try everything I could to reduce it. I spent time in shamanic retreats in Ecuador and completed Yoga teacher training in India. While doing my Reiki Masters Program, I heard about IFS and read everything I could about it. I began to see an IFS practitioner and began to understand the parts in me causing suffering and the pain they were protecting me from. IFS seemed to fill in the gaps of the other modalities. When I meditated on my own, I would start to dialogue with the parts of me causing suffering in myself and others; as IFS can be considered more the compassion side of the dharma.

I began to get to know my catastrophizing part and understand its motivations. It was protecting me from pain I had buried for a long time; and was inherited from my ancestors. Unlike many approaches that exist to separate humans from pain, IFS is used to understand our pain with compassion and build a compassionate relationship with it.

Healing happens in the presence of a compassionate witness, and now I can compassionately witness the parts of myself that get worried, angry, or ashamed. IFS helps us learn how to cultivate curiosity and compassion for our patterns that cause suffering. You are a worthy, lovable person and not a bag of issues. My clinical background has given me skills in deep inquiry and understanding emotional patterns. IFS helps us realize that there is nothing deeply wrong with us; we all have deep pain that needs addressing before we can actually reduce patterns that cause suffering. 

  To heal the beast, we first have to make it beautiful. My catastrophic anxiety has a name now, Gabriel and I show him appreciation and we work together to help me unburden the painful memories he’s trying to protect me from. Instead of trying to exile him, I have learned to love and appreciate him. Because of this, he has softened a lot and trusted me with the pain he was protecting. I can work directly with that pain now and have unburdened a lot of negative self beliefs and have been able to fill the void with more positive, realistic self beliefs. I am also a member of the LGBTQ+ community and am married to a man. Although I do not believe practitioners must match identity factors; many clients find matching identities to be helpful so figured I share. IFS has actually helped me see that humans need belonging and when there’s conflict in the external world amongst multiple groups we belong to; that can cause a lot of cognitive dissonance especially in the developing mind.