Hi, I’m Sam.
I offer queer-affirming therapy that helps you break out of shame, guilt, and self-punishment and allows you to start living a secure, fully-embodied life.
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Why “Practical Compassion?”
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Practical compassion is an antidote to the shame, guilt, and self-punishment that often stows away in our hearts even after we leave our conservative, religious home towns.
No matter what we do, we only have so much energy and so much time in the day. This limits how much we can focus on. Therefore, our brains have to filter our experience to only the most salient aspects of our lives.
Unfortunately, this filter is often not something we got to choose or that we are even aware of. It was trained into us by our families, communities, religion, and society. For many of us, in an effort to protect ourselves and “be realistic,” we end up over focusing on the negative and discounting the hopeful. We end up only seeing half of life, and it’s the most depressing and overwhelming half. By only catering to the this negative half of life, we actually end up leaving out a huge part of reality.
In addition, we may have grown up with an assumption that compassion means caring for others even when it is unsustainable and takes too much from you. Or that being compassionate with your self just means being lazy, indulgent, and spoiled.
Practical compassion is a combination of Buddhism, mindfulness, and modern, evidence-based therapy interventions. It’s about learning to focus on what is helpful to you, rather than just on what is “accurate.”
It’s not about laziness or spoiling yourself, or only seeing the bright side. It’s about choosing with a whole heart what you are going to take into your mind to make the decisions that will create a valuable life for you and the people you love.
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What is it like to work with me?
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A personal value of mine is to show up authentically as myself and act like a real human being.
I won’t sit across from you passively and hide what I’m thinking. I will be a passionate and dedicated companion with you on the journey of unfolding your self.
This work can be intense and deep, so relief is necessary. We may be crying one minute, and then laughing our asses off the next. I bring a dark sense of humor to my work and my clients tend to serve it right back.
Learn more about the therapy I offer.
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My Bio
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Professional
I am a licensed clinical psychologist with a PsyD from The Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, which is an American Psychological Association (APA) accredited school.
Throughout my schooling, I gained clinical experience at multiple sites including the public school system, queer-specialized mental health clinics, and group private practice. For my internship, I worked and trained at UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services.
Life
I grew up gay in Northern Utah. I was somehow not raised Mormon or conservative (shocking, right?) but managed to pick up underlying shame, guilt, and self-punishment from the culture without even believing in the religion.
I studied acting and musical theatre in undergrad which gave me a deep appreciation for imagining and embodying the emotions, motivations, and relationships of other people.
I was diagnosed and treated for leukemia in my early 20s. I made a full recovery, but it completely changed my relationship to life, mortality, grief, disability, my body, aging, and ambition. I started my personal journey with therapy during this time and was introduced to Buddhism and mindfulness. I also started to understand how minority stress impacted me and contributed to my underlying beliefs about shame and guilt I had picked up while growing up.
My own experience as a client helped me integrate mindfulness, self-compassion, and evidence-based therapy modalities into the work I do today, and showed me that this shit actually works.
I’ve lived in Northern Utah, New York City, Los Angeles, and now call San Francisco home.