Vega Counseling LLC

Approaches and areas of focus: I work primarily with BIPOC adults who have experienced intergenerational, systemic, cultural and interpersonal trauma. My areas of focus include traumatic stress (including C-PTSD); how we adapt to or are shaped to our environments; dynamics of oppression, race, and culture; spiritual practices; relationships; sex and sexuality; and grief. I enjoy work that fosters reconnection with the body, pleasure, joy, the ancestral, and our unique gifts and contributions in the world. The approaches I work from are relational and strengths-based. A lot of my experience has been about witnessing and holding space around our stories, as well as building practices that facilitate shifts in our patterns and narratives. I am increasingly moving toward therapeutic work that centers somatics and the knowing and wounds carried in our bodies as well as how to support healing around sex and sexuality. Also foundational to my approach is critical examination of the ways that colonial and oppressive systems and over-culture land in our bodies and our psyches. I draw from Indigenous Tools for Living (Shirley Turcotte), Chicano/a/x-Affirmative Therapy (Institute of Chicanx Psychology), parts work (including Internal Family Systems), EMDR, somatics (Strozzi Institute, generative somatics), Compassionate Bereavement Care, Body Trust, and the works and wisdom of many teachers within and beyond fields of social work and psychology - including Prentis Hemphill, Dr. Shelly Harrell, Natalie Y. Gutiérrez (LMFT), Iya Ìfé Michelle (LCSW, CHLC), Dr. Shawna Murray Browne, Amy Hyun Swart (LMFT, RYT), Daniel Foor, Dr. Amber McZeal, and Dr. Sophia Aguirre. In particular I uplift and extend gratitude to my teachers and practice community in Indigenous Tools for Living (including Isabel Adon, Beatrice Hyacinthe, and Bonnie Fairbanks), Chicanx Affirming Therapy (Dr. Manuel X. Zamarripa), as well as in Embodied Transformation via Strozzi Institute (including Erika Lyla, Tesfaye Tekelu, Viveka Chen, and Farai Williams). Personal and professional background: I identify as a Latina mixed-race cisgender woman. I was raised in separate and distant households among river and farm country in the pacific northwest (lands of the Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Snoqualmie, Muckleshoot, Duwamish). My patrilineal roots are Afro-Boricua of northern urban coastal Puerto Rico (Bayamón, Santurce, Trujillo Alto). My matrilineal roots are of white European colonial settlers across the northeast, midwest and northwestern interior (Spokane, South Dakota). There is much about life that energizes me: earth honoring practice, clay, rivers, music, dancing, basketball, birds, big ideas, spiritual and ancestral work, growing food and cooking. Much of my time outside of this work is devoted to letting my kids lead me around and spending time with beloved friends. My approaches in therapy are rooted in experience with liberatory community-based movement work. I continue to try to learn how to authentically dedicate my practice as a therapist to a collective vision of emotional, spiritual, and physical liberation. My graduate education was completed with the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work and my undergraduate degree with the University of Washington Department of Geography in Seattle. Prior to becoming a therapist, my professional experience included school-based work with refugee families, shelter-based work with women and children fleeing high lethality-risk domestic abuse, hospital-based work with children who have experienced sexual violence and physical abuse, and public policy work related to housing, homelessness, and community spaces. Please get in touch with any questions or schedule an initial consultation call if you feel that I could be a good fit for you.