Online Somatic Psychotherapy for Immigrant Daughters in California
Therapy for immigrant women and girls to change generational trauma and reclaim collective growth.
Meet your therapist:
Hi, I’m Elley. As a CA-licensed somatic psychotherapist, I’m here to help you create a safe refuge within yourself and with your loved ones. I’m a Filipina-American therapist with several years of experience supporting teens, adults, and families navigating complex life challenges and identity-shifting experiences. My work centers on addressing themes of cultural identity, belonging, and generational trauma.
Many of the individuals I work with describe a bone-deep exhaustion from the things they carry. Perhaps you feel caught between worlds and cultures, struggling to find your voice and footing. Together we make sense of chronic anxiety, depression, restlessness, numbness, emotional overwhelm, and feelings of disconnection within yourself and in your relationships.
If this speaks to you, then maybe you desire a quality of life with more freedom and lightness. Through therapy, I help you to gently untangle what feels confusing or heavy, so you can show up to your life with greater clarity, self-trust, and harmony. Together we’ll sort through inherited stories held in the body to keep what nourishes you and re-imagine what doesn’t.
Therapy with me is an invitation to slow down, so we can get creative.
Who I Support:
Immigrant Daughters
I specialize in supporting immigrant women and girls (teens or older) who are navigating identity confusion, generational trauma, and relationship issues.
Challenges for immigrant daughters can show up in a variety of ways, such as a combination of anxiety, depression, grief, guilt, shame, and post-traumatic stress.
Therapy can be a meaningful and even sacred place to reclaim your life back.
DNA Surprise: Late Discovery NPE’s
I also specialize in working with adults processing the significant impact of a DNA Discovery, including NPE’s, donor conception, and adoption. A person who finds out later in life that their parent(s) are not biologically related to them may refer to themselves as an NPE (Non-Paternity Event or Not Parent Expected).
A DNA Surprise can be a life-altering event. Therapy can be a safe enough place to explore profound feelings, grieve what could have been, and chart a path forward.
As a Late Discovery NPE myself, I bring lived experience and professional training when supporting members of this community.
Therapy Approach:
My style is relational, collaborative, and focused on developing a more empowering personal story that is felt in the body and reflected in your relationships. We’ll collect the wisdom of your values, strengths, and skills as key ingredients towards sustainable change. My goal is for you to walk away from each session feeling cared for, respected, and invited to see new perspectives (even when it challenges you).
I bring an intentional, integrative approach that mainly draws from Narrative Therapy, Somatic Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT). I am inspired by an assortment of other approaches and may offer different ideas to enrich our work as it feels relevant.
I also offer Brainspotting Therapy, a neurophysiological (aka brain-body) approach to help you creatively locate and resolve trauma, dissociation, and emotional pain. With care and dignity, we work with the deep brain and nervous system to find a greater sense of grounding in the here-and-now. This form of therapy can be incorporated into our usual sessions or used as the main modality.
