About Aika 

My mother is a Japanese immigrant and my father is a white American. I grew up in Japan and moved to America when I was 9 years old. Between living in Asia and America, I experienced the realities of belonging to a minority group in both countries. My experiences being bi-racial and bi-cultural led me to become passionate towards working with minority groups.

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I come from a family of teachers, so I automatically assumed I should pursue teaching as my career trajectory. When I became a preschool teacher, I realized that I loved to get to know each student through one-on-one interactions, more than managing a classroom full of students with no time for intimate conversations. Around the same time, I started to remember my experiences seeing a therapist in college for anxiety and panic attacks. Through my experience as a client and being fully attended and listened to, I become passionate to provide the same experience to others. I still remember how I felt in my therapist’s comforting, non-judgmental presence and how healing it was to be seen and heard!  

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Because of my background in teaching, I initially pursued working with children and parents in several non-profit mental health agency. When I switched my career path to work in a private practice, I started to see more couples and adult individuals. I realized that I loved working with relationships of all types! Through working with adult individuals and couples, I started to realize how much trauma and adverse childhood experiences affect relationships into adulthood. The more I worked with adults and couples, the more I got inspired to get trained in trauma-informed, attachment-informed approaches to better support my clients process their past experiences that is preventing them from building relationships in preferred, mindful ways.