Spirituality can be such a core component of being human and of one’s social experience (e.g., family environment, community, cultural aspects/rituals). I work with those who identify as Spiritual, non-religious, Spiritual but not Religious, Agnostic, Baha'i, Catholic, Christian, Exvangelical, Latter-Day Saint, Muslim, and Interfaith/Multifaith. I respect all religions and am comfortable taking your lead on integrating religious practices/interventions. However, I also work with those who suffer from religious abuse or come from high-control groups.

Religious Deconstruction

Religious deconstruction can mean different things to different people and refers to a state when people are questioning their religious background/history/upbringing. These can be people who are in all phases– whether those who are initially starting to question their religious beliefs or those who have already moved past the questioning and have decided that what they knew or were taught in their religion doesn’t hold true for them anymore.

There can be such a mix of emotions that come up for individuals: sadness, happiness, grief, confusion, anxiety, fear, anger, freedom, loneliness, nostalgia, and so on. Not only can it be scary (albeit, healthy and good) for one to lose their beliefs—the things they thought they knew, the safety religion creates, and the way of looking at or being in the world—there can be social repercussions, such as family members or partners being disappointed, dissatisfied, or distancing themselves. People might have lost their religious communities or social groups. There could also be the loss of daily/weekly rhythms.

I hold space for those who are working through deconstruction. We can also explore if there are ways to still integrate religion/spirituality into your life in a congruent way, ways to reconstruct, or how to live more easily in the state of the unknown and deconstruction.

Spiritual/Religious Abuse/Trauma

Religious trauma refers to the ways religion, religious institutions, religious beliefs, and/or religious leaders can harm individuals. There is a wide range of possibilities that could occur: from causing one to doubt oneself, to emotional abuse, physical abuse, financial abuse, manipulation, control, and so on. Sometimes it can also be over a long period of time.

In therapy, I hope to explore and process what religious abuse/trauma means to you, how you define it, its effects on you, and the losses that have occurred. As you might feel very ambivalent about your experiences and what happened to you, I hope to hold the complexities and what are (seemingly) contradictions to create room for all parts of yourself and the mix of emotions.

One population/identity that I believe the Christian Church historically and tends to harm the most are those who identify as LGBTQIA+/Queer. Oftentimes, one is told and taught to believe that they cannot be both Queer and Christian.

I have experience and specialize in working with individuals who want to identify as both or who want to identify as Queer and are dealing with the messaging they received from the church. We can slow this process down in order to find how you can live most congruently to yourself, while taking your community/people into account as well (if that is important to you).

These intersecting identities can become even more complex when there are additional historically marginalized identities or you are a part of a non-affirming environment (such as coming from a more conservative/collectivistic culture, requiring financial support from people who are not affirming, being in the military, and so on).

I want to make it clear that I am affirming and do no condone/practice/support conversion therapy.

I stand as an ally and advocate for members of all marginalized communities.

While there are many definitions of a TCK/TCA/TCI, people raised in a culture that is different from their parents' culture and/or passport country commonly understand this. My personal experience, research, and others’ anecdotes show that TCKs/TCAs/TCIs have very unique needs because of the different spaces we’ve grown up in. For example, we might have a fluid sense of our cultural and ethnic identities, or we might feel dissonance with our passport and home country. We might experience unresolved grief from having to leave the places and people we call home, or we might experience both culture shock and then reverse culture shock when we move back to our passport country. We also might have the urge and itch to pack up and leave to a new country every few years, we might have a difficult time putting down our roots, and we might experience a lot of social exclusion and feel misunderstood because we don’t fit in with the people in any space (locals, extended family, friends).

I love to work with people who identify as Third Culture, multicultural, and biracial individuals, expatriates/immigrants, international students, and so on. I hope to enter this complex (seemingly) “mess” of intersecting identities with you so that we can sit in it together and sift through it to help you make sense of what feels most congruent to you and how you want to navigate the world. Everything might stay complicated and messy, but my ultimate hope is that you would have an increased awareness of what comes up for you and feel less alone in the process—because being a TCK/TCA/TCI can be incredibly lonely and isolating. Sure, we may have some unique issues or some chaotic tendencies, but I believe that this term and identity that we have should be celebrated and shouldn’t be used to label, box us in, or pathologize us.