Services
About My Clients
Are you a creative professional who feels impostor syndrome? Do you experience perfectionism that blocks free and joyful expression? Have you known the feeling of performance anxiety on the stage, whether physically with a pounding heart, or perhaps mentally with fears of messing up? Creative work is a way of life, which also comes with unique challenges. I focus on assisting artists in finding joy, strength, and inspiration to continue in creative work most joyfully and authentically.
My Background and Approach
I offer trauma-informed, person-centered care, which focuses on strengths. In supporting the professional and lifestyle demands of creative work, this includes preserving and nurturing the creative mind. There are also difficulties to navigate, including experiences of grandiosity, mania, irritability, depression, self-deprecation, writer's block, burnout, boredom with a day job, or economic hardship. I utilize strategies from CBT, DBT and Buddhist psychology to support wellbeing, and I facilitate creative exercises to access the inner child, release frustrations, and set new goals. I'm an alumna of the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. Before working in mental health, I trained as a classical violist in conservatory; I earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University Bloomington in 2007. My musician's background provides me with lived experience to closely understand the artistic lifestyle, mindset, and life course.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
I'm a mixed-race person of Nepali and European descent. My mixed identity compels me to have intellectual awareness of both Dharmic and Abrahamic religious teachings, and the influence that religion has on government policies, history, communities, family structures, human behavior, and abstract thinking. I identify as a musician who comes from a musician family. My relatives were pianists and wind players who gigged in NYC between the 1910s and 1980s, they were members of the Musicians Union. They played in Vaudeville bands, swing-era big bands, and hotel lounges. I am a neurodiverse person who lives in recovery from a severe SMI diagnosis. Over the course of 2 decades, I've navigated through a broken US medical system to access the medical care and treatment I need to live healthily. This lived experience has given me immense strength and compassion in working as a therapist.