About Holly

Back­ground

I am a Licensed Mar­riage and Fam­i­ly Ther­a­pist and Licensed Pro­fes­sion­al Clin­i­cal Coun­selor who has worked in the field since 2002. I received my under­grad­u­ate Bach­e­lor of Arts in Psy­chol­o­gy from UCLA and my Mas­ters of Arts in Coun­sel­ing Psy­chol­o­gy from San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty. I have have had my pri­vate prac­tice in Los Gatos since 2006.

I am a Cer­ti­fied Sex Ther­a­pist through the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Sex­u­al­i­ty Edu­ca­tors, Coun­selors and Ther­a­pists (AASECT). I am an adjunct lec­tur­er at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty in the Coun­sel­ing Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment, where I cur­rent­ly teach two grad­u­ate-lev­el cours­es on Sex­u­al­i­ty, and have taught oth­er sub­jects as well. Over the past twen­ty years I have taught hun­dreds of grad­u­ate stu­dents. 

I use she/her pronouns.

Approach to Therapy

I have a warm, down-to-earth, gen­uine approach to build­ing rela­tion­ships with those who come to see me.  I enjoy this work and find it tremen­dous­ly ful­fill­ing.  I am con­tin­u­al­ly impressed with the courage and effort it takes to choose to come to ther­a­py and look at one­self in new ways.  This aware­ness inspires me to grow and chal­lenge myself as well. 

I use pri­mar­i­ly exis­ten­tial and human­is­tic approach­es to ther­a­py.  This means that I focus on cre­at­ing a safe and non-judg­men­tal rela­tion­ship between us, and explore the com­plex­i­ties of life… what mean­ing we make of things, the choic­es we make and the con­se­quences, our respon­si­bil­i­ty to our­selves for all of this.  I weave in themes of self-com­pas­sion often, believ­ing strong­ly in its heal­ing qual­i­ties.  I will tai­lor my approach to each client, using tools from oth­er the­o­ries when I believe it’s best for the client to do so.

Spe­cial­ties

I work with indi­vid­u­als, cou­ples and fam­i­lies with a wide range of con­cerns, such as rela­tion­ship dif­fi­cul­ties, sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der, grief and loss, mood dis­or­ders and oth­er men­tal health con­cerns. My par­tic­u­lar spe­cial­ties include sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der, bipo­lar dis­or­der, and ther­a­py for ther­a­pists. Please see the web­site for more infor­ma­tion about Ser­vices and Specialties.

Please email me to find out more, or text my office at 408–550-5101.