About me

I am the daughter of Chinese immigrants who came to the U.S. following the Cultural Revolution, seeking education, stability, and a different future. Growing up in Texas with few people who shared my cultural background, I learned early what it was like to feel different, to adapt, and to search for belonging. My family’s immigration story shaped me in lasting ways. Like many families navigating displacement and survival, emotional distance and self-reliance became ways of coping. Over time, I came to understand both the resilience these strategies reflected and the emotional costs they could carry.

As a teenager, I was drawn to avant-garde art, literature, and philosophy because they gave language to questions I already had: Who gets to define what is normal? Which rules are worth following? What parts of ourselves do we set aside in order to belong? At the same time, I followed a practical path shaped by my parents’ hopes for security, studying business and engineering. I moved to San Francisco and spent several years in startups, both as a founding team member and as an early employee. I helped build companies from the ground up through Series C, gaining firsthand experience with the creativity, pressure, ambition, and uncertainty of high-growth environments. That chapter taught me a great deal, while also leading me to question what kind of life felt truly meaningful and aligned.

Through meditation, personal therapy, and deeper attention to the body, I began to reconnect with emotions I had long learned to manage from a distance. My involvement in radical politics and racial justice movements further shaped my understanding of healing, challenging me to examine both my own experiences of marginalization and the privileges I carry. I became increasingly interested in how power, culture, family, and social expectations shape our sense of self, our relationships, and our ideas of what is valuable.

Over time, I have come to believe that fulfillment is found through a fuller relationship with ourselves and with others. My work is grounded in this belief: that healing often involves honoring the strategies that helped us survive, while gently making room for more connection, aliveness, and choice. The way I listen to you is shaped by my experiences as a woman of color, a child of immigrants, and someone navigating multiple cultures. In addition to being a therapist, I am also an artist, activist, parent, and lifelong learner.

Pausing for self-reflection is an ethical practice that helps us reduce harm to ourselves, other people, and our planet.

Beyond self-care and the ability to (really) listen, the practice of doing nothing has something broader to offer us: an antidote to the rhetoric of growth. In the context of health and ecology, things that grow unchecked are often considered parasitic or cancerous. Yet we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and regenerative. ​Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.”

- JENNY ODELL

Education and Training

My work is informed by psychoanalysis, neurobiology, critical theory, family systems, and trauma-centered modalities. I engage in ongoing consultation, training, teaching, advocacy, and my own personal psychotherapy.

License 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #133654.

Education
​I hold an MA in Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies with a concentration in Community Mental Health, which had an emphasis on social justice, systems thinking, and liberation psychology. 

​Clinical Work Experience
I started a private practice in San Francisco in 2023. Previously, I worked with adults, families, and children at The Marina Counseling Center, Homeless Children's Network, ​The Clinic Without Walls, and Seeds of Awareness. I also worked as an Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant at preschools and a domestic violence shelter in SF. 
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Current Affiliations

• Board Member, ​Community Forward SF, a supportive housing and mental health services organization in San Francisco
• DEI Steering Committee, Learning & Reconciliation Committee, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis

Publications

• Lin-Arlow, J. (2021) For Those Who Remain: Gentrification, Cultural Displacement, and Sense of Home. Fort Da 27:29-40, winner of the annual writing award from the Northern California Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP)

General Training​​

• Reading group with Dr. Thomas Ogden, MD (2026 - present)
• Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program with San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (2023 - 2026)
• EMDR (2023 - 2024)
• NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) Informed Professional (2021)
• Early Career Case Conference with Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (2020 - 2021)
• Foundations of Psychodynamic Clinical Work in Community Mental Health with Coalition for Clinical Social Work (2021)
• Rape Crisis Counseling with Bay Area Women Against Rape (2017)
• Domestic Violence Counseling with Asian Women’s Shelter (2017)

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Couples and Family Training

• The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy (2025-2026)
• Treating Couples, Surmounting Challenges with Harvard Medical School (2024)
• Post-Graduate Training in Couples and Family Therapy with Ackerman Institute for the Family (2021 - 2023)
• Child-Parent Psychotherapy informed practice with UCSF Child Trauma Research Program (2021)
• Early Childhood Mental Heath Consultation Initiative Training with Instituto Familiar De La Raza (2020 - 2021)