Hello, it’s great to meet you, I included this section because I firmly believe that if a client wants to know a bit about me, they ought to be able to. After all, if you are about to trust me with your story it’s only fair you have some access to mine. For starters, a fun fact about me is I also have a degree in art history and as such, I would like to quote Michelangelo Buonarroti who perfectly captures how I see therapy. He said "The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material."  It's an amazing vision for mental health! It isn’t about sculpting you into something beautiful, it’s about seeing the amazing authentic self already there and working together to bring them out.

As for my own mental health journey, I'm a family man whose wife, daughter, and son are everything to me, but recalling when I was stuck in this rubble myself, it's hard to imagine how seemingly different I was, or at least how different I presented. I grew up in a very small town in California and was raised by my mom and my stepdad. My mom divorced my biological father when I was only 3 years old due to his addiction, primarily methamphetamines, breaking down the relationship. We grew up without much money and my mom struggled with PTSD from the relationship as well as severe agoraphobia and my stepdad was legally blind making us a disability and welfare household with little riches but a lot of close family time. My father would come for visits but was often unpredictable and aloof. I remember being very young when I first started asking questions to myself about how people become the way they are and how does someone go about changing? That said, I didn’t think I’d be a therapist. I was far from the best student and was homeschooled for all of K-12 struggling with ADHD and dyslexia.

For the longest time, I actually wanted to go into the creative arts. I'm a huge nerd and had considered being either a graphic novel artist or a game designer, but ultimately, I instead discovered my passion for therapy through a strange happenstance of butterfly effects. Originally, I didn’t even believe therapy actually worked, I thought it was all just people taking your money to tell you what you wanted to hear. My therapy journey didn’t start until a random friend suggested it when I was struggling with direction in my life and I decided “Might as well look.” It’s shocking how much a decision can change your life. I began to research psychology and fell in love with the concept and discovered therapy combines my passion for creativity with my desire to help others and through my journey I've learned so much about how my own mind works.

Going into college I discovered I had crippling social anxiety and in grad school realized my chronic fatigue was from narcolepsy. But I felt I finally had a purpose and the more I learned about myself the more things that slowed me down suddenly began to make sense. I was finally able to learn how to be the me I wanted to be, not through changing myself, but by finally understanding myself. I've now dedicated my life to helping others accept and understand themselves as well. I primarily focus on trauma and relationships with the strong value that I'm not supposed to rewrite and "fix" your personality, therapy is just to help you connect with yourself on a deeper level to become the version of you that you always wanted to be and always were beneath the stone.