Dr. Heliana Ramirez

I am an anti-racist and LGBTQ-Affirming trauma therapist who has worked with veterans, military personnel, and civilians for 20+ years. I am honored to work with clients on their self-defined goals to achieve more peaceful and satisfying lives, especially as related to healing mental injuries from discrimination and abuse.

My areas of expertise include workplace trauma, racial trauma, institutional betrayal, suicide prevention, family scapegoat abuse, workplace mobbing, and self-acceptance in a hostile world.

As a Queer, Xicana of Mexican, Indigenous, Irish, and Czech ancestry who was raised by a gay parent, I know from lived experience, the importance of culturally-responsive care that recognizes the harm of systemic and interpersonal oppression and stigma. I delight in working with people from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences including neurodiversity, various religious and spiritual communities, and people living with visible and invisible disabilities.

As a care provider for a person living with long COVID, I understand the challenges and importance of COVID-cautious lifestyles for people who have compromised immune systems or who want to avoid long COVID.

With a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, an MSW from Washington University in St. Louis, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, my practice is rooted in research, celebration of clients' cultural traditions, and awareness that mistreatment, disadvantage, and cruelty cause people to suffer.

I actively work to identify and eradicate my own biases through anti-racist somatic practice and train other clinicians in decolonizing mental health care, psychological safety, and anti-racist suicide prevention.

I use evidence-based practices of Written Exposure Therapy, Motivational Therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy, and Prolonged Exposure Therapy.

My approach to therapy is based in anti-stigma and neuroscience. When we learn how our nervous systems respond to trauma and how our brain structure and function are changed by chronic stress, we realize that we are not defective but rather, we have been injured by injustice.

Learning how our bodies are designed to heal through neuroplasticity where the brain grows new neural pathways, developing abilities to regulate our nervous systems, and learning how to release feel good hormones while interrupting stress hormone flooding, we can develop hope and increased peace.

My practice focuses on safety and developing nervous system regulation skills so that trauma work pendulates between reorganizing traumatic memories as past events so they no longer haunt the present, and pausing before the client becomes overwhelmed to engage in activities that help the person feel calm, connected, and in control.

Based in Feminisms, Queer Theory, and Critical Race Theory, my therapeutic approach recognizes that some coping and self-defense strategies developed in our cultures, families, and communities to survive oppression, migration, and injustice, become harmful in other contexts. Thus, substance use, suicidal ideation, and compulsive use of social media and sex, are seen as attempts to help people feel better and are not judged or pathologized.

Increased self-esteem, hope, self-compassion, ability to tolerate intense emotions, improved boundaries and self-defense against toxic people and systems are common experiences noted by my clients. I am often told that my therapy sessions help people feel seen, understood, and accepted exactly as they are without needing to hide parts of themselves. I strive to help clients forgive themselves for self-harming behavior, celebrate their survival, and build for themselves a life with greater ease, less suffering, and increased connection to self and others who can love and respect them.