Hello! My name is Mariko (she/her). It takes bravery to seek counseling, and I appreciate your visit to this site. It would be an honor to walk alongside your endeavor if our paths intersect.
I take a collaborative approach to building a roadmap for therapy and I will be asking about your hopes and desires regularly. You are welcomed to bring different and complex parts of your selves to each session. We will explore together how language, culture, and social structures influence your desires and who you are today. Therapy work often takes us to the edge of what can be put into words, or of what can be spoken. The moments where you encounter something that can’t quite be put into words but nevertheless insists and desires to be acknowledged. These are crucial moments, I am there to listen and to be in that moment with you, as well as offer necessary tools and support in this endeavor as you continue to live out your narrative.
I draw from several modalities of treatment. These include: psychodynamic, Lacanian psychoanalysis, liberation psychology, Internal family systems theory, Bateman and Fonagy Mentalization based treatment. I believe no “one” counseling modality and framework can hold all people’s uniqueness and complexities and so I do work with multi-frameworks.
To share about my social context, my father’s ancestors were Samurai and soldiers who lost their lives in wars and left a legacy of honor, loyalty, and sacrifice. My mother’s side of the family owned a public bath 銭湯, which was a communal place where locals socialized daily and shared with us the legacy of generosity, love, and care. Due to my father’s business, from my early childhood, our family constantly moved and oscillated between Japan and the U.S. Trying to navigate different cultural values and rules, the concept of liminality best describes my lived experiences as I found myself in between transitional spaces, juggling conflicting norms, values, and the unknown. Having intersectional identities and experiencing impacts of marginalization and racialization comes with pain and suffering and at the same time I also see it as a birthplace of creativity.
Credentials
Education
- Masters of Arts in Counseling Psychology