Working with MacKenzie

About You

MacKenzie works with adults and families from a variety of backgrounds, including:

About Us

You'll work collaboratively with MacKenzie to craft a treatment plan that makes sense for your goals, budget, and timeline. MacKenzie can work with you on many facets of your life, such as:

How MacKenzie Works

MacKenzie is an eclectic, strengths-based psychotherapist. She draws from a wide variety of theoretical orientations and intervention styles to help you find what works best for you.

Psychodynamic
Explore how your past experiences create and shape your present ones

Creative and Expressive
Pull a tarot card or create a collage to tap into your intuition

Skills-based
Learn tools from evidence-based practices like nonviolent communicaiton, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy

Enneagram
Learn about 9 types of personality and see how they play out in your life

EMDR and BLS
Process negative experiences with EMDR, the flash technique, and bilateral stimulation

Biofeedback
Use HeartMath technology to learn about what's happening in your body in the moment

COVID-Conscious Therapy

As the weeks, months, and years pass, maintaining COVID protections has become increasingly isolating or demoralizing. As the world pushes to treat COVID as something in the past, MacKenzie has seen relational stresses, loneliness, and despair increase in her clients and communities. MacKenzie has experience in supporting clients in navigating the relational and personal aspects of the pandemic.

While not all of MacKenzie's clients are COVID-conscious, many who are have expressed curiosity about MacKenzie's own protections. MacKenzie has health conditions that place her at risk of COVID complications, necessitating higher than average protections over the past several years.

MacKenzie's office is set up for those who need to be COVID-conscious, which means there is a high degree of air circulation/cleaning and masking is requested for in-person sessions. She can NAAT (Nucleic Acid Amplification Test) before sessions or provide N95s upon request. Her office has HEPA air filtration and ventilation to keep the CO2 levels in the space below 750ppm. For clients who find masking interferes with their experience of therapy, often due to a need for more facial real estate for reading emotional cues, MacKenzie offers phone and video therapy, as well as outdoor walk-and-talk sessions (weather permitting).

Outside of work, MacKenzie uses a mix of masking, air cleaning, communal testing with NAATs, wastewater tracking, nasal sprays like Enovid/virX, CPC mouthwashes, lifestyle modifications (hanging out with people with similar protections in place, no indoor dining, etc.) and outdoor gathering for "swiss cheese" protections.

Commitment to Inclusive Therapy

In all aspects of her life, including your work together, MacKenzie commits to communicating without reinforcing systems of oppression. 

MacKenzie will accept and support you regardless of what you say or do. She won't judge you for consensual expressions of your identity or sexuality. She won't judge you for your mistakes. MacKenzie believes being accepted as you are creates a safe enough space from which to move toward growth. MacKenzie is attuned to the dynamics of oppression, privilege, and systemic power structures, understanding their intricate intersections in our lives. She is committed to work that weakens these systems of domination and fosters empowerment as you heal and grow.

About MacKenzie

MacKenzie is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She teaches in MA-level counseling psychology programs full time. As a member of core faculty at The Wright Institute, MacKenzie especially loves teaching courses on psychopharmacology, biological bases of behavior, and diagnosis. She is also an adjunct professor at Dominican University of California, University of San Francisco, Saint Mary's College of California and Sentio University.

MacKenzie also serves as CEO and President of Metaphor Therapy, where she sees a small number of clients clients online and in her Alameda office, and provides training, consultation, and supervision with an incredible clinical team.

MacKenzie has participated in mental health care for depression since childhood. She is a queer white cisgender woman with invisible disabilities.

Outside of work, MacKenzie enjoys artistic pursuits in a variety of media, board and video games, and puzzles ranging from nonograms to word ladders. She plays flag football and collects tarot decks.

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Affiliations

COVID-Conscious Therapist(Logo by Vered Shashoua, LCSW)
Member, Bay Area Open Minds
Kink Aware Professional
Poly Friendly Professional
San Francisco Sex Information-Endorsed Sex Educator
Member, California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists
Member, Association of Family Therapists of Northern California
Core Faculty, The Wright Institute
Senior Deliberate Practice Trainer, Sentio Counseling Center
Adjunct Faculty, Dominican University of California
Adjunct Faculty, University of San Francisco
Adjunct Faculty, Saint Mary's College of California