Position Title
Doctoral Intern
- Counseling Services
Professional Interests
Liberation psychology; multicultural and feminist theories; intergenerational trauma; substance use; individuals with multiple marginalized identities; children of immigrants; grief; graduate student mental health concerns; writers' and artists' mental health concerns; prevention and outreach
About Me
I am a Counseling Psychology Doctoral Candidate getting my PhD from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Currently, I am a Doctoral Intern here at UCD Student Health and Counseling Services in the Outreach emphasis area. I have approximately 4 years of experience working in university mental health providing individual, group, and outreach to college students with a wide variety of sociocultural backgrounds. I am a first generation college student who originally is from the Bay Area. I did my undergrad at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am the child of two Punjabi immigrants. I enjoy reading speculative fiction and young adult fiction, trying new foods, and spending too much time looking at memes and Tiktoks.
How I Work With Students
I take a relational approach where I seek to establish a genuine, caring, and trustworthy connection so that students may show up as their full selves in the space. I recognize we do not live our lives in vacuums and are informed by our sociocultural contexts, experiences of privilege and marginalization, familial histories, and narratives we tell ourselves. I seek to co-construct spaces where we can collaboratively explore your emotions, identities, thoughts, and lived experiences. I honor autonomy within the process of therapy and view myself as a traveler alongside you on this journey of healing so that you can feel empowered to make the changes you would like to make when you are ready. I integrate liberation psychology, multicultural, feminist, narrative therapy, client-centered, and emotion-focused approaches when working with individuals.