Ella Zhu (she/her)

I don't believe having a personality disorder necessarily means a poor prognosis. I treat each client as a unique individual, and we approach every challenge as a human condition. While there may not be a quick cure for your struggles, therapy can lead to significant improvements in your life by reducing the intensity of the difficulties you face.

I primarily approach children with child-led play therapy. I received my play therapy training from the Juvenile Protective Association, and I have found this method to be highly effective. Children often process the world through play, which can help them express internal struggles that they might not be able to put into words. As we play together, the child and I will also collaboratively discover what it means for them to have a meaningful relationship and healthy communication.

Many of us struggle with vulnerability. We might give too much or too little, or accept too much or too little. This often becomes a pattern in how we relate to others. Together, we can better understand why you relate to others the way you do and begin to shift the way you form attachments.

This means we will explore in depth why you feel the way you feel, do the things you do, and feel stuck. We will examine how you understand your relationship to yourself and the world at large, and where you learned to relate to yourself or others in a specific manner. We will then work to resolve the internal conflicts that cause you to feel stuck.

I'm a firm believer that trauma therapy should not be traumatizing. Instead, we will cultivate gentleness and empathy for ourselves, and approach the traumatic experiences at a pace that is tolerable. A tragedy becomes trauma when we are overwhelmed or overstimulated, unable to process the event both cognitively and emotionally. To get unstuck, we will (gently) go back in time, discover why these thoughts and feelings were intolerable, and (slowly, very slowly) reclaim them.

So much of what we do is motivated by our relationships with ourselves and others. Relational therapy is not just therapy for your relationships; we will also utilize our therapeutic relationship—which is a real relationship between two real human beings—as the practice ground where we collaboratively discover how to relate to others in a healthy and meaningful way.