Pauline Kim

Welcome in! I’m Pauline (they/them). There are so many pathways through this life and I want to honor all that has brought you here. Perhaps you’ve been feeling stuck and burned out. Perhaps you’ve been told you need to take care of yourself, but self-care feels like another task or something at which we can either win at or fail. Perhaps you’ve been feeling withdrawn due to depression or trapped by anxiety or OCD. Perhaps you’ve been dealing with an adult or later-in-life diagnosis of autism or ADHD and don’t know how to restructure moving forward. Perhaps you feel like your identities and ways of being have been threatened and traumatized by systems that cannot hold the breadth of our complexity. As a therapist, I work with folks who seek healing, change, relief, transformation – and knowing we can’t go alone. 

In a world rife with oppressive systems, I invite you in to prioritize your wellness, to take a rest, to heal, and to find new ways to be and move. I utilize an anti-oppressive and social justice-oriented lens in an abolitionist framework where we center curiosity and the spirit of uncovering who you are and how you breathe. I am a strengths-based, trauma-informed, and relational therapist who sees you as the expert in our work together. I use decolonized non-violent communication, somatics, and draw from theories and approaches that understand who we are in context to our environments past and present. My work has been radically shaped by disability justice and liberatory social work and I believe fiercely in the wisdom that our bodies hold, both in the ancestral and now. 

Therapy is a way for me to tend to our communities and where healing is needed. I walk in this journey ready to collaborate with you, learn from each other, and to enjoy where we go on this wild and beautiful ride. What does it mean for us to heal? What do you need? What would it mean to be able to unmask? Where could we go? 

I come to this work with a deep love and connection with community building, particularly in identity-based groups and QTBIPOC community. I offer gender-affirming care and celebrate asexual identities in working with 2SLGBTQIA+ folks. 

I identify as an AuDHD queer & trans/non-binary 2nd generation Korean American. In each of these identities, my lived experience has brought me to places where I can witness, play, and treasure the intersections of who we are and how our light is refracted into the world around us.  

I am a student of life and therapy is one among the various ways I learn more about who we are and what we can do together. You can also find me hanging out with my two fluffy cats, playing games with friends, perusing used bookstores, watching television, delighting in nerdiness/geekiness, and dreaming of a future where creativity and joy are first and foremost.