Anju Okamura (she/her)

At my other practice, Anise Health, I work with clients from the Asian and Asian American community, and we specifically specialize in giving culturally-responsive care. I have been working with clients who are first-generation immigrants, children of immigrants and refugees, and biracial clients and helping them understand their racial identity more, in addition to helping them understand their generational trauma and relationship with their parents.

I have experience working with queer-identifying clients who want to work on understanding their sexual and gender identities more, become comfortable with their identities, and work through queer relationships. I have also written referral letters for my TGNC clients who were seeking gender-affirming medical care.

Most of the clients who I have worked with have come into therapy with some level of anxiety in an area in their life that they were wanting to work through and learn to manage better. Through our sessions, we talk through these topics to better understand why the client is feeling anxious and learning the origin of their anxiety. I teach my clients DBT tools for them to utilize to lessen their anxiety on a daily basis.

I utilize CBT in most of my sessions to help my clients understand the origins of their unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. They may find that the origin was their past toxic relationship or their childhood where their parents neglected them. After finding the origin, we are able to then break down and fix these thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors to be healthier and adaptive.

I often use psychodynamic therapy in collaboration with CBT to help my clients understand the origins of their unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. Helping my clients bring their unconscious thought processes to the conscious is an important step in breaking down their maladaptive beliefs.

Since most of my clients are BIPOC, being culturally sensitive and utilizing culturally sensitive thearpy is important in helping my clients feel safe, heard, and build trust with me. A large part of my practice is explaining the processes of therapy to my clients as it is their first time becoming vulnerable with a mental healthcare provide and trusting them.