You deserve a life that truly fits you.
Hi! I'm Gwyn. I’m a psychotherapist, healer, teacher, and intuitive. I build bridges between people and spirit (however you'd like to define that).
Other salient identities: queer, nonbinary trans (pronouns: they/them/theirs), POC, Asian American, mixed race/hapa, child of an immigrant, introvert, gluten lover, overly ambitious library patron.
What I Do
I love helping people create a life that honors their values. Between the demands of adulthood, capitalism, and living in the Bay Area, it can feel impossible to both change the world and pay the rent. And so our youthful dreams of revolution get sidelined. But if you’re here, I’m guessing setting aside those dreams just hasn’t felt right. Your life might feel frustrating, full of crap you don’t want to deal with, and really just Too Hard—and for what?
It’s tempting to think that if we just keep plugging away at what we’re doing, working ourselves to death at something that doesn’t light us up, we’ll eventually hit our stride, be rewarded, and get to Have It All (money, chicks, the Dalai Lama’s admiration). And yet . . . it just isn’t happening. You may be starting to lose hope—but I know you’re not quite ready to give up, or you wouldn’t be here.
It is possible to live a life that honors our highest values and also feels sustainable—with plenty of room for pleasure, joy, and deep connection.
Let’s Get Creative
I think of the therapy process as a bit like freewriting (the practice of writing freely without thinking, analyzing, or pausing, as a way of foiling the inner critic that causes writer’s block).
Our inner critic is notoriously bad at recognizing creative genius. So when we let it run the show, we end up tossing out a thousand brilliant ideas before they even get a chance to make it onto the page.
The same goes for our everyday thoughts. The gold gets thrown out before we even see it.
Therapy is a place to let yourself say whatever bizarre, tangential, disturbing, brilliant thought (or feeling, memory, dream, or intuition) pops into your mind, so we can see what parts of yourself you’ve been silencing.
Because we need all of it! The world needs all of you.
Once we get all the puzzle pieces on the table, we can start to construct a picture of what wholeness looks like for you.
Let’s get your whole self here. Then the work can begin.
My Core Values
Empowerment
My work is founded on feminist, anti-oppression principles. We've had our power taken away from us for too long, in big and small ways, from all kinds of people, institutions, and forces that seem far bigger than us. My goal as your therapist is to help you to take back the power that rightfully belongs to you and reclaim your capacity for growth, for change, and for Fucking Shit Up. Ultimately I want you to feel stronger and more confident, based on an honest, compassionate sense of your own strengths and limits.
Connection
Deep connection—with ourselves and others—makes us feel alive, open, and courageous. Without it we wither; with it we’re stronger, clearer, and wiser. It’s what allows us to use our personal power with integrity and love.
Feeling understood, seen, and appreciated by another person makes a million things possible. And sadly, few of us have had many experiences of being loved for who we are (not what other people think we should be).
This is one of the things I love most about being a therapist: offering people the chance to be truly seen, and getting to witness their full, vibrant, fascinating, messy, imperfect selves. From this place, we can move toward healthy, fulfilling relationships with those we care about.
Kindness
Too often, self-improvement turns into yet another project to beat ourselves silly with. It becomes one more platform for that nasty inner voice that says, "You're not enough." In our work together, learning to be kind to yourself will be a crucial early step toward creating room for real change.
Slowing Down
Slowing down is often the first and hardest thing to do in therapy. It can sound like a terrible idea when we already feel like we’ll never be able to “catch up.” But paradoxically, slowing down is what makes the world slow down around us so that we can finally breathe, orient ourselves, and make clear-headed choices about where to go next.
Meaning
I believe our primary existential task, individually and collectively, is to create meaning in the world: to construct a narrative that fits with our experience and our values. This is the human project, and it's a doozy. It's so easy to just accept the meanings other people and institutions have handed us since we were born. But I’m guessing many of those narratives don't fit you very well (they certainly haven’t fit me). In fact, they might be choking the life out of you, slowly but surely. So let's help you create a sense of meaning and purpose that works for you: that will help you not just survive in this world, but make it your own.