Hello! My name is Mariko (she/her). It takes bravery to seek counseling, but having experienced the transformation myself, I hope to make counseling more accessible and a normal part of life for anyone. 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. Even when things seem to be going smoothly, you might still have thoughts or questions you’d like to explore with someone. At other times, you may wish to share challenging and complicated life experiences and situations that you want another person to help you process and hold space for. 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, and 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 am trained in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic theories. I work from Lacanian psychoanalysis and liberation psychology. I believe no “one” counseling modality and framework can hold all people’s uniqueness and complexities and so I work with multi-frameworks. My primary area of interest has centered on human flourishing within various and different cultural contexts, particularly for people with marginalized identities.
I have moved between US and Japan growing up and so I know the importance of having a safe & confidential space to work on various identity developments. 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. Also, as a person of color, we sometimes have to live with ongoing trauma experiences that accumulate. 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 and a unique and significant narrative.
Credentials
Education
- Masters of Arts in Counseling Psychology