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My story
I have a counseling degree from California State University of East Bay and I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT94911) with more than a decade of experience working with children, adolescents, and adults through a variety of treatment modalities around a vast number of issues.
On a more personal note, I am originally from Turkey, have two children, and also have an engineering degree. I am fluent in English and Turkish. I love reading, swimming, camping, traveling, hanging out with friends, attending concerts and seeing live plays and shows at local venues, going out for dates with my husband, reading or dozing off by the fire, cooking from scratch, doing streaming marathons of variety of TV shows, and snuggling with my dogs (two of my own and additional foster dogs regularly).
My bicultural background broadens my insight and respect for different values, belief systems, and diversity, which informs my strength-based approach to therapy and social justice work.
I was born and grew up in a big city, equivalent to the SF Bay Area in many aspects with its relatively liberal views and respect for diversity as well as rights of people and animals, on the West Coast of Turkey. The mild climate and lively cultural and social life of my Mediterranean hometown are always in my heart, and I try to visit my family, lifelong friends, and the places of my nostalgic memories as much as I can. I studied to be an engineer and worked as an environmental engineer for a few years. I got married very young, made my share of mistakes, divorced after five years of marriage, cried, laughed, and mostly learned about myself at my therapist’s couch for a long while, discovered my own unresolved family of origin issues that contributed to my unconscious and limiting decisions in life, and made a courageous decision to do a redo in many areas of my life.
I moved to California as an engineer and attended community college classes in the evenings, first to improve my English and then to improve my understanding of human beings, starting with myself by taking psychology, child and human development, multicultural issues, diversity considerations, communication, and relationship classes. As the newer version of me, much closer to my authentic self, married to my now husband for 20 years, I gave birth to two wonderful human beings with their unique challenges keeping me on my toes as a parent, stayed with them as a stay-at-mom for five years, started and graduated from grad school as a therapist, added new friends to my chosen family and started showing up in my own life as me, with all my imperfections and vulnerabilities, as well as my strengths and gifts. Like everyone else, I am on my journey of life’s ups and downs, continuing to grow at my own pace and trying to rest and play as needed, basically practicing what I preach as much as possible.
Living in Turkey for 27 years, I learned to put others before me, value family, and respect older people. That is my Collectivistic Side.
Living in the Bay Area for more than two decades now, I learned to pay attention to my own needs and put myself over others as needed, how to be independent and be true to my values while respecting children, their needs, and wisdom more than ever. That is my Individualistic Side.
And guess what? I love and embrace both of these sides now because neither one is better than the other, and they both come with their unique pros and cons, which can drastically change based on the circumstances, the phase, and the season of my life, and that’s ok! They’re my Ying & Yang.
In the meanwhile, through my personal experiences, educational studies, and from my clients, I learned these key concepts:
We repeat our patterns unconsciously, contributing to our today and future WAY more than we give ourselves credit for. Although we face the systemic barriers of the world, it also doesn’t mean we are mere victims of our circumstances. As Victor Frankl wisely came up with this answer to his search for meaning of life, while he was a prisoner in concentration camps, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
These patterns tend to be all about recreating similar scenarios to our past hurts and wounds, in a way, trying to “make it right this time around.”
These patterns, due to our unresolved issues, tend to be unconscious decisions.
Life transitions are critical because those are usually the doorways to healing. We get triggered during life transitions. We feel depressed, anxious, in a way “off,” not content, not feeling belong, not ok, reactive, usually disproportionately to stressors and people around us...the list goes on. As a result, hopefully, we seek help from a therapist.
Again, this is a unique opportunity to grow, heal our old wounds, make intentional decisions, start acting on them instead of reacting in unproductive and usually harmful ways, improve our life quality, self and co-regulation skills, and make changes to become our most authentic selves.
Perhaps most importantly, this is how we break some generational cycles and be more intentional about what we are gifting our offspring with, instead of just passing on the very same patterns of behavior we complain about ourselves and our caregivers.
I am looking forward to supporting you and being a witness to your journey!