Hello. My name is Paloma Andazola-Reza.
I am a cis-queer Xicana/Mestiza (she/her pronouns) who lives with invisible disability. My own journey of healing and seeking a place of wholeness at all my intersections has brought me to this work. I do this work in honor of knowing what it takes to find grace and empowerment in the process of healing, in honor of messiness and complexity, and in honor of living at the center of our unique, creative, and expressive beings. I do this work with the understanding that this journey is not linear, it often does not have a clear and definitive place to land, and requires us to unlearn and relearn how to honor ourselves as whole, fierce, resilient, connected, and interdependent. I do this work in honor of my ancestors and communities who have found healing in so many brilliant and important ways. I do this work in honor of the generations that follow us.
I am a licensed clinical social worker (associate) who works as a psychotherapist integrating expressive arts, cognitive, narrative, psychodynamic, culturally responsive, and somatic healing approaches. I specialize in healing complex trauma, grief and loss, complicated grief, traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and burnout, experiences of disability and neurodiversity, chronic illness and pain, LGBTQQIA2+ responsive and gender and sexuality affirmative, multiethnic/bi-racial, cross-cultural, and intersectional identity experiences, and transforming the impacts of oppression, racism, historical and intergenerational trauma, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, fatphobia, body policing, and navigating all the other stressors and transitions that life presents us. I work with adults and youth (ages 16+).
I am a politicized healer. As a politicized healer, I am committed to the healing liberation of individuals, communities, and transformative systemic change. I support deep, personal transformation with the understanding that there are historical, political, economic, and oppressive contexts and structures under which we live and do healing work. I believe in healing as resistance to oppression, as cultural and community resilience, and as liberatory work.
As a queer, womxn of color, third world feminista, with an invisible disability, I know how important it is to do healing work at the intersections of our experiences and being. As a politicized healer, I believe healing and wellness takes place within a deeper context than just the individual. I believe that in order to have responsive, integrative, and accessible healing, we as psychotherapists, must understand to the greatest extent possible, the complexity and context in which life experiences, trauma, struggles, conflicts, and healing takes place.
I recognize and honor experiences are diverse within each of our unique embodied, social, cultural, racial, economic, ability and access locations.
As a therapist, I believe I have an ethical obligation to ground my work in healing practices that are culturally responsive and integrative, anti-racist and race conscious, anti-oppressive, decolonizing, de-pathologizing, and honor collective healing approaches, are LGBTQQIA2+ responsive and affirmative, assert and work for disability justice and access, support embodied liberation for all bodies, gender identities, ways of communicating, presenting, expressing, and being in the world.
I honor the complexity of you, your stories and life experiences, at the intersection of all your identities, as the resilience and power that is you. I will hold a collaborative and compassionate space where your safety, dignity, wholeness, belonging, greatest gifts, sources of strength, inherent courage, and deeper wisdom get to exist at once to allow for more generative, embodied, empowered, and holistic healing to take place.
I will honor what you bring into your healing journey, in all your complexity, as it becomes known through our work together. I maintain a deeply critical reflective practice in order to offer support in the most transparent, authentic, ethical, and knowledgeable way. To do this, the foundations to my approaches are to honor and put into practice the following values:
Politicized healing & healing as liberation
Anti-oppression and social justice
Anti-racism, race consciousness, & intersectionality
Disability Justice
LGBTQQAI2+ responsive and gender affirmative care
Culturally responsive and integrative healing
Decolonializing [i]llness for [we]llness
Community honoring, interdependency, and relational healing
Fierce embodiment, Body Trust ® & fat liberation
Credentials
I am a Licensed Social Work Associate Independent Clinical (LSWAIC), license #60593287, Exp. 9/09/2020 and currently working under the clinical supervision of Vicki Nino-Osby, LICSW #LW00005055.
Education
I obtained my Masters in Social Work (MSW) with a focus on Community Centered Integrative Practice and Multicultural Mental Health from the University of Washington in 2014.
I have a BA in Ethnic Studies and BA in History from the University of Oregon, 2008
Certificates
- Expressive Arts Therapy, June 2019.
- Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, May 2019.
- Psychodynamic Clinical Theory and Practice Certification, May 2017.
- Professional Mediation Certificate, University of Oregon, School of Law, 2006.
Professional Memberships
- International Association of Trauma Professionals, member since 2019
- Somatic Experiencing, member since 2019
- International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, member since 2018
- National Association of Social Workers, member since 2013
- Washington State Society for Clinical Social Work, member since 2017
- Clinical Social Work Association, member since 2015
- Social Welfare Action Alliance, member since 2015