Affirmative Heart provides telehealth sessions via video or telephone.
I strive to provide affirming support to all of who you are while helping you challenge limiting beliefs and patterns that may have you feeling like you are stuck. I do this by creating a therapeutic space where your full self can show up in ways you may have been unable to in other types of spaces due to fear of judgement or the necessity of assimilation/masking/people-pleasing for survival.
I am a politicized healer, meaning that I look at the issues you bring in to therapy as either adaptations for survival, the result of oppression and trauma, or internalized social norms given our current social/political context. My approach to wellness is to help people decolonize the way they exist in the world and become aware of what ways imperialism and other forms of supremacy have influenced them. I am doing this work on myself as well and acknowledge the importance of humility and acceptance of imperfection in this type of work.
I may see the things you might label “problems” about yourself as messengers about your true needs or desires that might be suppressed, avoided, or otherwise unmet. While you may have ingrained reactions and perceptions of the world for many legitimate reasons, I strive to help you find ways to be free with and connected to your authentic desires and needs in ways that feel safe for you within the realities of making your life work through the (often marginalizing) institutions you may face. It is very difficult to do this work of liberation while still being inside the systems that keep us un-free, but we can aim to do what we can to grow and evolve bit by bit–breaking one restraint at a time.
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”
~ Frida Kahlo ~
