Action-Oriented Therapy for Latino Mental Health & Male Wellbeing

The patterns stop with you. A practical, culture-informed space for driven men, professionals, and first-gen providers to decompress chronic stress, clear mental friction, and navigate the realities of partnership and fatherhood.

$150 per 50-minute session | In-Network with Aetna, Anthem, & Blue Shield of CA

Community Access: Limited sliding-scale/scholarship spots are reserved for clients facing financial hardship. Please inquire during your consult.

Format: Secure Online Video Therapy (Telehealth) throughout California

Where Things Get Stuck: Common Challenges

When you are operating under intense pressure as a first- or second-generation professional, trying to build a career while balancing deep family expectations, it is easy for your system to get overloaded. What looks like laziness, distraction, or anger from the outside is usually just a sign that your mind and body are running on empty from trying to carry it all.

If you recognize yourself in these loops, you are in the right place:

1. Stress, Overthinking & Silent Pressure (Anxiety & Trauma)

  • An intense drive to over-work to honor your family's sacrifices. As a first- or second-generation man, you can feel unable to prioritize your own peace, self-esteem, or rest without feeling like you are betraying the efforts of those who came before you, leaving you feeling isolated in the space between cultural worlds.

  • Built for the deep thinkers and first-gen providers who replay conversations, overanalyze professional interactions, and try to use pure logic to outsmart their anxiety. This loop often leaves you feeling socially fatigued, disconnected, and stuck with imposter syndrome.

  • Chronic restlessness rooted in intergenerational stress. This leaves you with a body and mind that feel like they can never safely turn off, leading to sleep issues or chronic insomnia because you were conditioned to be the emotional anchor, protector, or crisis manager for everyone else.

2. Task Stalls & Avoidant Behaviors (ADHD & Focus)

  • Managing "The Executive Load." This happens when you know exactly what you need to do to succeed in high-stakes professional environments, but you feel physically unable to open the laptop or start the project. It creates severe mental friction, forcing you to work frantic hours late at night just to catch up.

  • Utilizing digital screens, infinite scrolling, or gaming as an involuntary escape mechanism to temporarily numb out from intense mental exhaustion, heavy workloads, and major life transitions.

  • Realizing that your scrolling, numbing out, or mild substance use (like alcohol or cannabis) aren't just bad habits. They are actually avoidant behaviors used to mask deeper stress, focus blocks, or mounting family conflict.

3. Partnership, Fatherhood & Paternal Postpartum Stress

  • Getting stuck in rigid, defensive cycles when things get tense at home. When you feel misunderstood or pressured, physical tension builds up and causes you to either shut down completely through stonewalling or lash out in frustration, instead of operating as a collaborative team.

  • Navigating the hidden anxiety, pressure, and acute overwhelm that happens during a partner's pregnancy or throughout the postpartum transition into fatherhood. I help the "Modern Papa" manage the unique strain of trying to figure out how to be a dad when you don't want to follow the rigid family blueprints you grew up with.

  • Experiencing systemic burnout that doesn't look like traditional sadness, but instead presents as low frustration tolerance, chronic irritability, codependency loops, or total emotional withdrawal from your partner and kids.

My Approach: An Interconnected, Systemic Lens

In many traditional spaces, focus issues are mislabeled as laziness, and emotional struggles are hidden behind an armor of absolute strength.

I operate as a systems thinker. My past career in IT first introduced me to mapping complex structures, and today I use that mindset to look at your challenges like an ecosystem. To me, your cultural background, your focus, your mood, and how you show up for your family are completely interconnected. I don’t look at your stress, focus blocks, or communication style in isolation. Instead, we look at how your history, your workload, and your daily routines all impact one another.

My approach is action-oriented, integrative, and focused on building true partnership. True strength isn't about maintaining an island of absolute control; it’s about learning how to drop the defensive armor so you can succeed alongside your partner, not at their expense. As a partner and a parent myself, I know the daily realities and heavy pressures of family responsibility.

Grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we focus on the active process of how you relate to your thoughts and stress right now. By combining structured, behavioral tools to tackle anxiety and overthinking with deep, body-centered trauma processing and paternal mental health frameworks, we help you unhook from old survival habits so you can show up for your people as a steady, accessible, and supportive teammate.

Our 3-Step Roadmap

We focus on practical, real-time changes rather than textbook theories.

  • Step 1: Open Up: We start by dropping the heavy self-blame, codependency loops, and the performance trap that is highly common among first- and second-generation achievers. We work to identify the underlying anxiety fueling your distractions, and we help you unhook from the rigid belief that your human worth is tied solely to how productive you are or how much you provide.

  • Step 2: Be Present: We learn to catch the physical tension and internal noise before it turns into an argument or an escape habit. Using body-centered awareness (Hakomi principles) and evidence-based strategies, you will learn how to calm your nervous system in real-time. For deep-seated social anxieties or rigid overthinking patterns, we incorporate active, step-by-step facing strategies (Exposure and Response Prevention / ERP) to help you break the cycle of avoidance.

  • Step 3: Do What Matters: We implement tailored, functional habits that actually work for an overwhelmed brain. Drawing from advanced behavioral science, paternal support frameworks, and proven relationship research (like the Gottman Method), we build practical skills to help you communicate what you need without guilt, set healthy boundaries, and become the emotionally accessible parent and equal partner you want to be. For deep-seated or stuck trauma, we incorporate EMDR to help your body finally feel safe.

Clinical Expertise & Specialties

Clinical & Insurance Focus Areas: For the purposes of insurance reimbursement (Aetna, Anthem, Blue Shield) and formal directory compliance, my practice formally treats and specializes in the following diagnostic areas:

  • Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) & Executive Dysfunction

  • Generalized & Social Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Overthinking, & Panic Patterns

  • Trauma, PTSD, and Intergenerational Stress (EMDR Trained)

  • Depression, Irritability, Male Gender Role Strain, & Severe Burnout

  • Acculturation Stress, Racial Identity, & Codependency Loops

  • Paternal Perinatal Mental Health, Fatherhood Transitions, & Partnership Dynamics (Gottman Levels 1 & 2)

Professional Alignments

My work is continually grounded in the latest research via active alignment with the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS), APA Division 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities), and Postpartum Support International (PSI / Paternal Mental Health).

Practice Boundaries

  • Individual Therapy Only: My services are strictly focused on individual adult psychotherapy helping you navigate your personal growth and patterns within relationships. I do not provide couples counseling or family therapy.

  • No Primary Addiction Rehabilitation: While we address avoidant behaviors and secondary coping habits (like video game or internet addiction), my practice does not provide primary substance use disorder rehabilitation.

Take the Next Step

This brief, low-pressure call allows us to discuss what you're experiencing, map out where you feel you are spinning your wheels, and confirm if my practice is the right fit for your goals.