Hello! I am Lotus (they/them), a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor Level 3 (CADCIII). I have extensive experience working with individuals impacted by substance use, oppression, complex trauma, and generally, individuals who trying to experience themselves authentically while interacting with the world. I am deeply committed to providing a safe, nonjudgmental space where you can explore your identity, your relationships, and how to show up in your life fully and authentically. I have developed my therapeutic skills through years of practice in community, residential, and hospital settings, where I specialize in working with chaotic substance use with a harm reduction focus, complex trauma, and LGBTQIA* populations. 

The way I approach therapy is with a combination of trauma-informed, social justice and harm reduction-oriented care, largely with a relational model (meaning the therapeutic relationship is highly important to healing). I use a mix of evidence-based modalities including Internal Family Systems Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and mindfulness techniques. I am a harm reductionist at my core, and that shows up in all the work I do. I know that meeting people where they are and walking with someone on their path towards wherever they are going is the way forward.

I feel deeply connected to the nuances and complexities of healing as a person who feels the deep discomfort and pain of living in a time of capitalism, facism, moral injury, racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, ableism, fat phobia, xenophobia, and all of the isms, phobias, and shame that make being yourself sometimes feel like a losing battle. Whether you come to therapy wanting to find yourself, explore your relationships with substances (or find ways to enjoy them in a more centered way), connect with joy, address depression, anxiety, complex trauma, disordered eating, living in a body, finding radical pleasure, cultivate deeper interpersonal connections and community, understand your kinks, expand into open or polyamorous relationships, whatever it is. Or maybe you don’t know. Whatever brings you here, I want to be here with you.

Additionally, I offers psilocybin-assisted therapy, when appropriate, based upon careful consideration of each client’s unique situations (and important to note these approaches are not covered by insurance). I also offers integration and preparation for the use of psychedelics for healing (and harm reduction guidance around the use of these substances for people finding other ways to access psychedelic healing).

I also bring Charlie, my Aussie, to in-person sessions and he is being trained to provide support in the therapy room. He can sometimes be distracting as he is still young, but he is learning to show up for my clients and is a sweet and cuddly form of co-regulation!

Identities that I ascribe to: queer, nonbinary, poly, kinky, mostly white/white passing (grandmother from Indonesia), neurodivergent, raised by a single mother, grew up between poverty and middle class, am a current single parent of two children, survivor of domestic violence, a person who used to use drugs (some would say addicted, I would say dealing with trauma), experienced with houselessness, plant and animal lover, always a student, a pleasure activist and harm reductionist, a person who highly values humor and laughter as healing, and a millennial grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s who still holds all the nostalgia of the X-Files, Buffy, Alanis Morrissette, 90’s alt rock, Tank Girl, CatDog, and this list could go on. I believe that I enter the therapy room as a full person, with power dynamics and all, and that as a person with identities that require nuanced understanding, you deserve to know the identities that I am bringing into the room.