Psychotherapist

I am a therapist based in Olympia, WA. I work primarily with young adults and adults. I see clients either in-person at my office or online using Zoom. One of my guiding principles is that symptoms such as anger, anxiety, and depression are often expressions of much deeper wounds, fears, conflicts, and angst. The task of therapy, therefore, is to figure out what these symptoms are trying to say, not simply to make them go away.

Teacher

Before becoming a therapist, I taught high school English and ESL for nearly 10 years in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Olympia area. I burned out in 2016 after realizing that I cared far, far more about my students as people than about their views on Macbeth. With this realization in mind, I decided to pursue a new career in counseling.

Person

I was born and raised in San Francisco, CA. I grew up in a blended family system, which is the fancy way of saying my parents got divorced, my dad was an alcoholic, my uncle wasn’t actually my uncle, and my cousins aren’t actually my cousins. I am Filipino and Jewish and also the first in my family to graduate from college. In 2013, I moved to Washington with my wife, who is from Olympia. When I’m not working, I watch movies, read, and pretend to be famous while playing the guitar.