Putting my education to work
Upon graduating with my master’s degree, I worked as an intern for a handful of nonprofit organizations throughout Silicon Valley that catered to helping individuals overcome trauma, anxiety, and depression. Here is where I gained deep insight into how to work with individuals who had experienced trauma while also sharpening my skills in creating customized therapeutic approaches that drew from numerous modalities that I found created a high level of relief while preventing relapse for my clients. I developed and implemented interventions that addressed sexual trauma as well as conducted training for other clinicians to help them learn ways to effectively treat clients from a client-centered approach. I was often highly sought out by clients and maintained a consistent waiting list while working as a clinician in these environments.
After working for a couple of years in the nonprofit sector, I was asked to help a collection of charter schools create a mental health program that catered to low-income minority students. Here I helped establish a program that met the needs of students and their families while also providing support to upper management. I helped create and implement self-care strategies to help staff prevent burnout and also held trainings on working with individuals who have experienced trauma. I learned a great deal about mental health within the school systems and gained a deep understanding of the provision of Special Education and/or related services to how mental health impacts a child’s education. Though I greatly enjoyed creating and doing more administrative work, I realized my strong passion and calling for working face-to-face with clients.
Developing my specialties
While working at the school, I also began working for a group practice where I worked with adults and couples in a private practice setting. Here I continued my work with EFT and Gottman Method and also began diving into Existential Integrative (EI) work with my clients. I quickly found that clients would experience a great deal of change when utilizing an EI approach and decided to double down and seek further guidance in this approach.
While continuing my work with clients at the group practice and finishing up my duties at the schools, I began developing my skills as an EI therapist by receiving consultation and training from the top leaders in the field including Kirk Schneider and Orah Krug. These master therapists allowed me to experience a high level of growth in a short amount of time as I met with them on an individual basis and put in many hours of work around becoming a highly effective therapist. I also began to seek out training in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy as I came to the realization that are current psychiatric model seems to be a “quick fix” rather than creating lasting change.
When beginning my Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy research around LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA, I quickly realized the importance of needing to also understand the more traditional approaches of “plant medicine” and therefore began working with two shamans that had deep understandings of plant medicine and the benefits of them within a psychotherapy environment. These compounds include Ayahuasca (DMT), San Pedro (Mescaline), Mushrooms (Psilocybin), and Sapito (5 MeO-DMT). This is where I gained a deep understanding of psychedelics and their traditional uses. I studied eastern spirituality practices while completing my certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research from California Institue of Integral Studies to allow me to create a truly deep understanding of psychedelics and the impact they can have on consciousness expansion and mental health obstacles. I continue to further my studies and understanding of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy by continuing to work with shamans, receiving Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy training from accredited colleges, and experiencing the effects these tools have on individuals within retreat settings in areas like Peru.
