A lifelong search for meaning — and a deep desire to ease suffering.

I didn’t become a psychologist because I always knew I wanted to help.
I became one because I couldn’t stop wondering why the world is the way it is.

I was twelve when I first sensed that something about the world didn’t feel right.
That year, I read my first philosophy book and it awakened a deep sense of wonder — and an even deeper discomfort. I asked questions those around me didn’t seem to be asking. Why is there war? Why do people suffer? Why does no one seem to care?

School couldn’t answer those questions. Neither could most adults. So I kept searching.

I studied psychology to understand what makes us human, what causes pain, and what might ease it. First in theory, then in practice. But the more I learned, the more helpless I felt. The world’s suffering still didn’t make sense and I still didn’t know how to help.

That changed when I began working in a youth hospital. There, I saw suffering up close, raw, unfair, and heartbreaking. I met adolescents who had already endured more pain than most do in a lifetime. It nearly broke me. And in many cases, I couldn’t help. That powerlessness was crushing.

It wasn’t until I encountered DBT and had the chance to create a program for institutionalised adolescents, that things shifted. I saw real impact. Real change. And not just in teens. The same tools helped adults battling addiction, many of whom told me: “If only someone had taught me this when I was younger…”

I later discovered ACT, and something clicked again. Its focus on willingness, on turning toward discomfort rather than avoiding it, mirrored my own journey. And it gave me a language for something I’d felt since I was twelve: that pain doesn’t always need fixing. It needs space. It needs meaning.

That’s why I do this work.

Not because I have all the answers — but because I believe we all deserve support in facing what hurts, and finding what matters.