Nancy Pham (She/her)

My Approach to Helping

I am a family nurse practitioner trained at Yale University with specialty training in psychiatry from UC Davis and a background in public health from UC Berkeley. I use she/her pronouns. While working in primary care, I started noticing that most of my patient's concerns were rooted in trauma and manifesting secondarily as physical ailments. My patients were living in chronically fearful and unpleasant states and I didn't know how to get support them as their anxiety, depression, and fears controlled their day-to-day behaviors. Most refused to go to psychiatry, and unwilling to give up on my patients, I pursued training in psychiatric care. Medications held my patients afloat, but most were unable to swim to shore. I recognized it was imperative to for them to feel safe and seen in order to start exploring their inner most needs and I continued broadening my toolkit with IFS therapies, third wave CBT, and eastern/indigenous wisdom.

My Personal Beliefs and Interests

Guiding Principles: We do the best we can under the conditions we are given. Often the conditions we find ourselves in are extremely stressful, and this significantly affects our experience in the world. Under extreme stress, we often do things we would not normally do. These behaviors may seem irrational, but when seen in the larger context, they are understandable and reasonable. Mental health symptoms are often a message to us, which if understood and learned from, have the potential to liberate us from our suffering. Many of our greatest skills and internal resources (resiliency skills), we may not even be aware of yet. Through various practices we can learn dive into the depths of our own psyche to unearth some of these extraordinary gifts. If you're interested in working with me, please pick a time for a consultation call on my website. Thanks!