Therapy:

For creating a home within yourself.

My story as a therapist started long before I entered this career.

As the child of Lebanese immigrants in America, I was raised with unique stories of migration, grief, and resilience. For many years, this first-generation identity led me to feel like an outsider — someone who belonged “everywhere and nowhere”, as I navigated environments where I didn’t feel like I fit in. I was often “too American” for my Middle Eastern community, and “too ethnic” for the academic and professional spaces I inhabited, so I learned to adapt to whoever was in front of me. And the more I worked “performing” in each environment, the more I sought validation and worth in external things - my achievements, my relationships, my career, my salary.

Upon becoming a therapist, I realized that what I had actually been searching for, was a home within myself. In a physical sense, this was something I had wanted from a young age, as the child of divorced parents who was constantly going back and forth between cities, and someone who moved frequently in my 20s out of restlessness, rarely holding on to anything for too long. In a psychological sense, I didn’t want to wait for yet another milestone to feel comfortable in my skin; I didn’t want to put my peace in the hands of things beyond my control; I wanted to trust myself. I wanted to feel grounded. I want to replace self-criticism with self-compassion. I wanted to feel more connected to all parts of my personality, not just the pleasant ones, or the dominant ones. I wanted to feel integrated, instead of chasing after some elusive idea of what “happiness” was.

This evolution started before I became a therapist, but my training in the field strengthened it. In my graduate program at the University of San Diego, I wrote one paper after another on my family history, my identity, and my experiences in the world. Through my nonprofit field placement as a student therapist, I learned from passionate narrative therapists who fueled my radical compassion, insatiable curiosity, and healthy skepticism of the “powers that be”. And finally, as an Associate therapist, I worked at a narrative therapy group practice, a residential treatment center for trauma, and a psychoanalytic clinic. In each setting, I gained just as much knowledge about myself, as I did about the human experience, and how to work effectively with clients, whatever their needs were.

As a licensed therapist, I’m proud and privileged to be doing this work. My approach, influenced by my life path, is rooted in narrative therapy, IFS (Internal Family Systems), and somatic therapy. By blending these styles together, I offer an experience in therapy that is holistic, not just intellectual and done “from the neck up”. I honor each client’s lived experience, the wisdom of their body, and their potential to build a lasting, healing home within themselves.

My credentials in the Therapy field include:

  • Licensure from the State of California, which requires a) successful completion of an accredited Master’s Degree in therapy; b) successful completion of a state-administered Law & Ethics exam; c) 3,000 manually-tracked, hours of clinical experience approved by the Board of Behavioral Sciences; and d) successful completion of a state-administered Clinical Marriage & Family Therapy exam.

  • Level 1 Certification in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) Trauma Therapy, from the EMDR Institute

  • “IFS (Internal Family Systems) Foundations” training, in progress, taught by the IFS Institute

Therapy fees:

  • Complimentary: 20-minute phone consult for new clients

  • $150 per 50-minute therapy session for individuals

  • $200 per 50-minute therapy session for couples

  • Additional experiences & fees available upon request (workshops, intensives, extended sessions, etc.)