ABOUT | YmkjedioquinoLMFT

About Ymkje ('Eem-cuh')

As you may have guessed from my name, I grew up in Holland. As a teenager, I joined my mother in a weekly class at the School for Philosophy in The Hague. I remember the very first session: The teacher guided us through a meditation session and then offered a talk on East-West philosophy and psychology. It was as if everything all of a sudden made sense. This pivotal moment sent me on a path toward where I find myself now. Eventually, I enrolled in Utrecht University to study Psychology. After graduating with an MS degree in Clinical and Health Psychology, I met my husband and moved to California, where I now live and work as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.

Since that very first class at the School for Philosophy, I have continued to practice mindfulness in different ways and through various practice traditions. I am currently a student of Zen Buddhism at the San Francisco Zen Center.

Besides working in private practice, I also provide integrative psychotherapy at the Institute for Health and Healing, an amazing clinic that offers myriad healing modalities from functional medicine to acupuncture. If you'd like to see me for individual therapy you can call the clinic to see if your insurance covers my services: 415-600-3503.

I also act as Chief Operating Officer for the Presence Care Project, a non-profit organization aimed at training clinicians to teach Mindfulness-based programs in the context of dementia care. You can learn more here: www.presencecareproject.com.

My specialties are:

Mood instability
Grief
Relationship issues
Living with a neurodegenerative disease (Alzheimer's, ALS,etc)
Caregiving related issues
Trauma
Stress resilience

I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a passion for helping people deepen their understanding of how their minds and bodies operate as they navigate their lives, and to support them as they work toward greater ease and a more profound sense of meaning and connectedness in their lives.

My work is deeply permeated by mindfulness practice, allowing what is actually happening to surface in a way that is safe, and even welcomed.

I have always had a deep interest in stress resilience, exploring the question: why do some people seem unaffected by challenges, while others become mentally and physically ill? Based on extensive studies in this area, and informed by the latest discoveries in stress research, interventions are science-based and often involve body-based, 'bottom-up' exercises.

It is unrealistic to think that you're supposed to become unaffected by challenges, that just doesn't happen. Your body-mind organism is programmed to respond to the external world in order to keep you safe and nourished. Due to painful life experiences, some people have become programmed to respond more intensely to relatively minor challenges, and to have this response extended to the point that it starts damaging the system (stress-related diseases), and permeating all areas of your life. My goal is to help you re-program your body-mind-heart system so it is able to return to balance more quickly after a disturbance.

I am fortunate to be a level 3 trained Gottman therapist and love helping couples find their way back to each other, reigniting the things that brought them together in the first place, and helping them build a strong, joyful, and loving relationship that fulfills both partners' needs and wishes.

I also work with trauma from a body-based perspective, allowing your body-mind system to reorganize and integrate what happened so you can move forward with your life in a way that feels more authentic and steady. You can learn more about the Somatic Experiencing methodology here.

Understanding that everyone speaks a different psychological language, I borrow from a myriad of psychotherapeutic traditions, including Mindfulness-Based interventions, Cognitive Behavioral therapy, Acceptance and Commitment therapy, Emotion Focused therapy, Gottman therapy, body-based therapies, Motivational Interviewing, etc. My approach is one where we collaborate, explore and grow in a way that is tailored to you.