About Athena:

Hi, I’m Athena. You don’t have to have everything figured out before coming to therapy.

Maybe you’ve gotten used to carrying difficult things on your own. You might be feeling overwhelmed, disconnected from yourself, caught in patterns that make sense given what you’ve been through, or unsure how to move forward without losing the parts of yourself that helped you survive. I believe therapy should be a place where you can bring the complicated, contradictory, and messy parts of your experience without fear of judgment. You don’t need to make yourself smaller, easier, or less human to deserve support.

My approach to therapy is collaborative, trauma-informed, strengths-based, and grounded in harm reduction. I’m especially passionate about working with teens and adults navigating trauma, experiences of gender-based violence, self-harm, identity, disability or chronic illness, and major life transitions. Rather than approaching coping strategies with shame or asking simply, “How do we make this stop?”, I’m interested in understanding what those strategies have done for you, what needs they may be meeting, and how we can work together toward greater safety, choice, and self-understanding. I believe you are the expert on your own life, and our work should make room for both the ways you have survived and the life you want to build.

I’m currently pursuing my Master of Social Work at UCLA with a focus in Community Mental Health. My previous work has included supporting survivors of domestic violence and working alongside disabled people in community-based services. These experiences have strengthened my commitment to survivor-centered, culturally responsive, and disability-affirming care. I’m also particularly interested in the intersection of trauma, self-harm, and harm reduction, including how we can support people without reducing them to diagnoses, symptoms, or behaviors that need to be “fixed.”

Therapy should be something we do together, not something that is done to you. My hope is to create a relationship where you feel safe enough to be honest, curious enough to understand yourself more deeply, and supported as you decide what healing looks like for you. If any part of this resonates with you, our Care Coordinator team can help you get started.

Supervised by Brigitte Ly, LCSW, # 77077