“I view healing as a state of being and practice. As we shift our focus from “fixing” and move towards healing, we open ourselves to continued learning and growth.”
- Values connecting and building relationships with clients
- Dedicated to co-creating a supportive, comfortable space that honors personal needs and processes
- Provides affirming care that welcomes all aspects of a client’s identity, culture, and lived experience
- Integrates Existential, Narrative, ACT, strengths-based, trauma-informed, and mind-body-spirit concepts
- Passionate about exploring and understanding the human experience
Esther Kim
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Master's Graduate Clinical Intern
Esther approaches therapy as an empathic collaborator and fellow human as one navigates life. Building client relationships is central to her work, which involves mutual trust, compassionate feedback, and at times, sharing a laugh. She values connectedness as a healing tool, whether to oneself, others, or the community, and strives to support clients in this process. Esther also believes in affirming care that honors the intersecting aspects of a person’s identity, culture, and lived experience.
Esther integrates Existential, Narrative, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) through a strengths-based, trauma-informed lens. How people inherit, develop, and attach meaning to their lives can sometimes be helpful or hurtful. Constructive meaning-making is encouraged through reflection, examination, and emphasis on resiliency. While therapy often focuses on inner experience, space must also be held for environmental, social, and systemic factors. These explorations can be challenging, but Esther embraces such work, understanding there is insight in the shadows, light, and everything in between. Additionally, she believes in the interconnection of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies––all of which impact wellbeing and send messages through sensations, thoughts, feelings, and signals. Esther supports tuning into them with mind-body-spirit models geared toward alignment and clarity. Although these approaches inform Esther’s practice, she prioritizes client identity and worldview through collaborative exploration of concepts and solutions that are relevant and validating for each individual.
Healing looks and feels different for everyone. Healing can also change at various stages and is not always linear. Esther welcomes these variances, adapting to clients as they discover what feels best for them. Esther’s passions include identity development, intergenerational or ancestral trauma, existential issues, life transitions, and the many experiences that come with being human. In working together, she hopes clients will gain the insight, tools, and empowerment to guide their journey.
Esther’s interests include drawing, meditation, tarot, and befriending cats. She also has an art background and enjoys incorporating creative/expressive work with clients.
