I am honored to be a support to those facing difficulties and challenges in life. I am a compassionate listener with a wide range of clinical skills and expertise. I am culturally-sensitive, trauma-informed, anti-racist, weight-inclusive, kink-aware, poly friendly and queer. My goal is to create a safe space for you and to guide you in exploring your internal world and the root issues to your concerns.
Eating Disorders
Anum Rathor
Anum is a first-generation South Asian American. As a first-generation American, she sees the value in breaking down the stigma surrounding seeking help and the importance of eliminating the negative connotations or assumptions that are attached to therapy. She wishes to be a voice for those that have not found theirs yet. She speaks Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi fluently and is currently learning Arabic. She enjoys working with adolescents, adults, and couples. Anum believes therapy is about creating a safe space for the patient to open up about what they want to address with no judgment. She is driven to make sure her patients feel comfortable, respected, and validated. Through the use of various evidence-based practices, Anum enjoys working with patients to cater to their emotional needs through the use of. She has experience working with people who have experienced trauma, anxiety, and depression as well as with people who engage in substance use and risk behaviors. She feels lucky to have worked with individuals from various sexual orientations, religious, and cultural backgrounds. She wishes for her patients to graduate from therapy feeling liberated and empowered to take on the world and to be able to process their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a healthy way.
Geovana Marquez
Geovana is a child of immigrants (First-generation Chicana) and understands the experience of adjusting to both the family’s culture and American culture. She is a feminist who advocates for mental health, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ issues that need to be heard. Her therapeutic work experience includes working with young adults with various mental health concerns. Geovana hopes that sessions are a safe space for her patients to share and grow. She hopes to add value into the lives of her patients by instilling confidence in knowing they have grown within their time together.
Darcy Dittrich
My Approach
I endeavor to bring warmth, awareness, and connection to my sessions. I co-create a unique healing experience with clients, often using humor and creativity to encourage mindfulness, self-compassion, and change. I believe firmly that healing is non-linear, and absolutely that it is possible. My colleagues have described me as “compassionate, deep-feeling, inquisitive and intuitive.” My clients have described me as “warm, accepting, and caring.”
I tend to work from a blend of humanistic, relational, and psychodynamic lenses, which means I work to help clients gain clearer insight into their lives, identities, and relationships while holding that each person is a unique, valuable being. We’ll look at patterns that have shown up again and again in your life by gaining a deeper understanding of your emotions, thoughts, early-life experiences and beliefs. Once we can see these patterns clearly is when we can begin to approach the change you’d like to see. We’ll also focus on your relationships, values, and autonomy. I borrow techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Narrative Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based Self Compassion, and Motivational Interviewing. You may or may not be familiar with these theories and terms, and ultimately you probably don’t need to be! Once we establish your goals, we’ll develop a treatment plan with what’s best for you.
I pursue antiracism, feminism, Harm Reduction, Health at Every Size (HAES), LGBTQ+ allyship and disability justice. I am trauma-informed. I encourage the discussion of intersectional identity. If you’re not sure what that means, let’s talk about it!
About Me
I earned my Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from The Wright Institute in Berkeley. I completed my Clinical Internship at SF AIDS Foundation’s Stonewall Project, a counseling program dedicated to providing Harm Reduction-based substance use and mental health treatment to gay, bi and trans men who have sex with men (MSM) who are interested in addressing their drug or alcohol use. I have specific clinical experience working with anxiety, depression, substance and alcohol use, sex and sexuality, career coaching, identity, trauma, and relationships. I have a deep understanding of multicultural relationships, work stress, life transitions, blended families, performing arts, chronic pain, and intuitive eating.
Prior to beginning a career in counseling, I worked at tech startups and Fortune 500 corporations for a decade. This helped me develop a strong sense of professionalism, and also exposed me to the pressures of our modern working world. I’ve witnessed the impacts of stress, burnout, and discrimination. Supporting my colleagues in their struggles deepened my interest in pursuing a career helping others with healing and growth.
I grew up in the Northeast, and have also lived in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, plus a brief time in Rome. I love exploring and learning about new cultures, but California has been my home since 2010. My favorite things to do include: walking, hiking, dancing, yoga, listening to music, painting, singing at the top of my lungs, cooking, baking bread, meditating and taking naps.
Joyful Movement Workshop
Do you want to take the pressure off of exercising and enjoy moving your body? If you answered YES, this 6 week VIRTUAL workshop is for you! Learn how to nurture and accept your body during gentle movement, become aware of physical cues and important principles to change your relationship with exercise/movement. Shift focus from judgment to noticing how your body responds and what thoughts/emotions impact your relationship with your body during movement. Facilitated by Jamie Marchetti, LGPC and Certified Personal Trainer
++Tuesdays 12-1pm EST
Mindful Eating Workshop
Want satisfaction from your eating experience? This 6 week workshop is for individuals who want to reduce guilt and judgment of their eating habits and begin to develop a pleasant eating experience. Bring a snack/meal and virtually join Jamie Marchetti, LGPC and Registered Dietitian for 6 weekly sessions. You will learn how to: Improve Nutrient Absorption; Identify Body Cues; Cope With Emotions Without Food and So Much More!
++This is a virtual event occurring Thursdays 12-1pm EST
Elizabeth Ehrenberg
I received my Masters in Clinical Social Work from Smith College School for Social Work. To further my training, I completed an additional year-long clinical fellowship at The University of California San Francisco’s Alliance Health Project where I provided brief dynamic psychotherapy to LGBTQQIA folks and individuals living with HIV. From 2013 to 2015, I served as a staff clinician in the Adult Psychiatry Department at Kaiser Permanente in South San Francisco. In this role, I provided psychosocial assessment and therapy to adults struggling with depression, anxiety, and interpersonal issues. At Kaiser I also served as the Eating Disorder Specialist, providing individual and group therapy to clients struggling with eating disorders and body image issues. I have extensive experience facilitating group therapy, including process groups, support groups, dialectical behavioral therapy groups and binge eating disorder groups.
Additionally, I have worked in various community mental health and non-profit settings, providing case management and counseling to racially and socio-economically diverse populations. I completed my Bachelor’s degree at Vassar College where I majored in Political Science and Women’s Studies with a focus on feminist political theory, queer theory, and critical race theory.
Wendy Taylor
Trauma, like most things, exists on a spectrum. The key to overcoming it is to identify where you are on that spectrum and identify your individual challenges to happiness. That’s where I come in.
In my time as an integrative hospital therapist, I learned just how essential a holistic response is to facilitating proper healing. My practice takes into account the specific details of your personhood, and will progress at the pace that works best for you – one step, one breath at a time.
In therapy, my hope is to help turn judgement into curiosity, and to convert one’s inner critic into one’s most nurturing confidant. Together we can develop strategies to face anxiety and depression with self-assurance.
Take the first step. Call or email to schedule a consultation.
Lyndsey Nelson
Lyndsey specializes in working with youth at school and in private sessions. She uses a strength-based modality, as well as play therapy and cognitive behavioral techniques and interventions. Lyndsey works with teens and children to increase their emotional regulation and social skills to cope with feelings of anxiety, balance the pressure to achieve at school, effectively communicate with their parents and thrive emotionally. Before founding Life Light Counseling, she had the pleasure of working with Beacon Wellness Team as a therapist to gifted teens and children, as well as many years providing counseling within our Public and Private Schools, Campbell Union School District and The Harker School. She received her Masters degree in Clinical Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
When not in the office she enjoys time with her son and family. She loves the beach, museums, travel and dance.
Lyndsey is a licensed marriage and family therapist #113189.
Kat Zwick
Ride the wave…
Ride the wave is an expression that reminds us that sorrow, pain, happiness, triggers, relapses, slips, high highs, low lows, and everything in-between need not be waves that consume us, overtake us, define us, or drown us; rather we can gently and skillfully navigate these waves, from the surface, as if on a psychological or spiritual surfboard, with the help of others, our Wise Mind, our Higher Power, or Self, or Source keeping us afloat.
Land Acknowledgment
Our offices in Santa Cruz sit on the unceded territory of the Awaswas, one of the eight divisions of the Ohlone people. Their descendants are known today as the Amah-Mutsun Tribal Band. You can learn more about their conservation efforts that continue to this day and consider a donation HERE. Our offices in Oakland sit on the unceded territory of the Bay Miwok, also of the Ohlone people. Some of their descendants are members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.
We honor the history that precedes us, we are grateful for the opportunity to work and live here and offer healing and relationship to clients and each other, on these indigenous peoples’ traditional homelands.
Please join us in taking a moment of silence to pay respect to all Ohlone people past and present.