Psychotherapy with Adolescents, & Adults

My name is Shahin (pronounced Shaw-heen). I am a Licensed Professional Counseling-Intern and I hold my Masters’ in Applied Psychological Science from Pacific University with a Bachelor of Nursing Science from San Francisco State University. The combination of my counseling training and six years of healthcare experience as a registered nurse has given me the opportunity to build relationships with people in vulnerable circumstances while embodying an attitude of warmth, curiosity and humor in my work. I have a passion for doing deep work with people. I believe that all people have innate resilience and that true transformative growth can occur for people through thoughtful, intentional counseling.

I believe in an approach to therapy that attends to all aspects of the human experience that might arise in the mind, body and spirit while inhabiting an attitude of unconditional positive regard for my patients. My goal is to help my patients explore their full range of emotions in order to better understand themselves and work towards removing any roadblocks such as those contributing to feelings of depression and anxiety. In addition to this, I enjoy bringing a sense of awareness to how the systems we belong to have impacted us.

As a survivor of trauma, I’ve learned to appreciate the complex ways in which it can affect us. I believe in supporting people to cultivate the courage to habituate to their fears. In service of this, I employ careful evidence-based treatment to attend to both distressing thoughts and bodily sensations.

I have an affinity for working with people living between multiple cultures, struggling with sex and relationships, gender roles, identity issues, and the struggle to create meaning in our everyday lives.

The goal is to create a safe container that will allow for vulnerability and tension to arise freely, without the fear of judgment or harm. I believe that once we feel safe we can begin to understand ourselves, including the context that informs who we are, as the first step towards challenging the false belief that we are “damaged” or “broken.”