Holistic Therapy for Hereditary Cancer Risk in Granada Hills, Northridge & online across CA
Make peace with your body and hold hope for the future.
This wasn’t the script you had for your life.
Maybe you’re…
Feeling pretty healthy, but your sister just got diagnosed with breast cancer, and now you’re exploring genetic counseling.
Trying to get pregnant and now you need to consider if you need preimplantation genetic testing. You’re wondering what questions to ask to decide.
Just got diagnosed as a “pre-vivor”. How do you balance risk management with planning for an unknown future? Do you choose prophylactic surgeries for peace of mind or do you wait and risk?
In your survivorship era–you got over cancer, but now you find yourself getting scanxiety every 6 months and losing sleep about recurrence.
How it’s showing up in your life now…
You’re frozen and can’t decide what you need. It’s taking up all your mental space and you can’t focus on work, let alone have space for joy.
It’s keeping you from being present with your partner or friends.You feel all the pressure to make decisions now, and your
mind races through all the options and settles nowhere.
You feel shame about not having a partner yet to conceive with, or not prioritizing freezing your eggs when you were younger.You wish fertility and family planning weren’t such an issue, but it’s real.
Post cancer, you feel pressured to return to normal.Your friends and family stopped checking in on you. The demands of work don’t stop. You’re going through the motions and surviving, but you don’t feel, well, alive. What does life look like now?
Helping you come to terms with your new reality.
Imagine…
After starting therapy:
Waking up in the morning and having mental space for the day, instead of being caught in ruminations about your upcoming scan.
Looking at your schedule for the next week and trusting that you can be present for whatever shows up–appointments, scans, and all
Coming to terms with your ability to conceive, whatever happens next.
Making decisions from a whole, grounded place—secure in your identity, your worth, and your narrative.
“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now." -Rainer Maria Rilke
Therapy with me looks like:
In our first session, you step into my office and notice how your body immediately starts to breathe a little deeper and slow down.You may even start to notice uncomfortable sensations (perhaps a moment of quiet or rambling), and hurry to cover it up, or move past it.
I will encourage you to be present with those sensations, and guide you in attuning to what you might need, and apply practical skills to help you self-regulate.
A couple months into our sessions, you may notice feeling more able to quiet the mental noise.
You’ll notice when you compulsively ruminate and catastrophize, and shift to acknowledging and validating deeper needs. You’ll find yourself naturally making decisions to proactively care for your well-being.
(how to know you’ve reached the other side)
As we go deeper, we may dig into your past and find uncomfortable truths about your family or dreams you’d like to avoid.
We will face it all together.You may find yourself triggered and feeling all the feelings now, after squishing it down for years.
Your anger is not to be feared–it is an invitation to be with all parts of yourself, to hear the truths you’d like to ignore.
We will use Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) to reprocess those painful moments so they no longer hold the same emotional charge, and you feel more resilient and liberated to step into a fresh future.
I will sit shiva with you as you grieve the future you anticipated, and celebrate with you as you imagine a new story worth inhabiting.
Therapy for hereditary cancer risk can help you…
Accept your
body as it is
Grieve the loss of the future you expected, and embrace the life before you
Hold hope with tenderness and fierceness
Get real about
what matters
Orient towards your body as a source of goodness
FAQ
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You choose when and what to share. Often, with health issues, there can be trauma with the healthcare system, medical procedures, and feeling powerless. In therapy, you will always be a whole person, and the diagnoses are always secondary. I validate the real effects your diagnoses have on you, and we work to craft a way forward that holds all of your stuff, while privileging your voice.
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Not quite. While I hold space for whatever emotions surface, my primary modality is EMDR, so I will always be exploring core beliefs, bodily sensations, and drawing connections between current triggers and past traumas. I start each session with a check-in, facilitate a grounding exercise, we establish the agenda together, explore your inner terrains, and wrap up with a takeaway.
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With my own lived experience of hereditary cancer risk (personal, social, and familial), I know what it’s like to navigate the complex emotional terrains that accompany this diagnosis. I get that it’s a weird liminal status of health–you may not be sick yet, but you’re often anticipating when it will hit. I’ve supported clients with cancer or other chronic illness, and have regular peer consultations on integrative health.
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You can expect a time that’s completely carved out for whatever emotions, beliefs, thoughts and sensations occupy you. I will be deeply present with you. You will feel space to share whatever part of your story feels right to you, and we will identify some goals that align with you. You may feel yourself unclench and unfurl as you relax and welcome all parts of yourself.
