Parts-Oriented Somatic Therapy in California

Sebastopol in-person • California Teletherapy

Non-prescriptive parts-work (SE-informed, gestalt + phenomenology grounded) for chronic misattunement, high-masking autistic/AuDHD burnout, trauma activation, dissociation/shutdown, anxiety/panic, and chronic bracing.


Private pay ($200) • Optum in-network only • Superbills available
Email: Liberation@somatictherapynorthbay.com

If you’ve felt chronically mis-seen—by people, systems, and prior therapy

Many people who find me are outwardly capable and inwardly exhausted. They’ve learned to function—sometimes brilliantly—while feeling chronically misattuned to, translated incorrectly, or flattened by labels.

Often, what gets called “symptoms” are intelligent adaptations to lived reality: high-masking for safety, bracing to get through, shutting down when intimacy feels risky, or splitting off needs that weren’t welcome in your family, culture, workplace, or community. For many people, these adaptations formed in the context of childhood relational misattunement, chronic unpredictability, or cultural/identity-based harm—not because something is inherently wrong with them.

If you are queer/trans, neurodivergent, chronically marginalized, or carrying diaspora and ancestral story—even if you appear competent on the outside—parts-work can help you stop translating yourself long enough to feel real again.

What I mean by “parts-work” (without a prescriptive model)

I approach parts-work through a developmental & structural oppression lens. The strategies we’re relating to—bracing, masking, over-functioning, shutdown, dissociation—often formed early as intelligent ways of surviving and meeting needs within specific cultural, familial, and emotional environments.

In parts-oriented therapy, we relate to the reality that different aspects of us come forward in different moments—especially under stress, intimacy, conflict, trauma activation, sensory overload, identity threat, or power dynamics.

Rather than assigning fixed roles or categories, we track what shows up in real time:

  • sensation and bracing patterns

  • impulses and micro-movements

  • emotions, images, memories, inner “voices,” and body states

  • shifts in breath, posture, orientation, and boundary

  • protectiveness, urgency, pleasing, shutdown, dissociation, shame, vigilance, or anger

These aspects aren’t problems to eliminate. They often formed in response to what you had to navigate: family systems, culture, racism, transmisogyny, homophobia, disability oppression, class pressure, migration, medical harm, or chronic misattunement. Parts-work helps us build contact with these protective strategies without shame, so you can regain choice and coherence.

Parts live in context: identity, culture, power, and belonging

Parts are not only personal. They’re shaped by the world.

You may have aspects of you that learned to:

  • mask or “seem fine” to stay safe as an autistic/AuDHD person

  • scan for danger in environments shaped by racism, misogyny, transmisogyny, xenophobia, or religious harm

  • over-function to survive class pressure, academic/tech culture, or family expectations

  • freeze, fawn, or disappear when power is present (authority, institutions, healthcare, bosses, gatekeepers)

  • split between “who I am” and “who I have to be” to belong or avoid punishment

In this work, we don’t treat these adaptations as personal failures. We honor them as strategies that made sense—and we also support you in updating them when they no longer serve your life.

Who this work is for

Parts-oriented therapy is often a strong fit for adults who:

  • feel “multiple” internally (conflicting needs, inner fragmentation, competing pulls)

  • are high-masking autistic/AuDHD and living with burnout/shutdown or sensory overwhelm

  • experience dissociation, freeze/collapse, numbness, or “disappearing” to cope

  • cycle through anxiety/panic and “I can’t turn off” hypervigilance

  • carry chronic bracing, tension, pain, or somatic symptoms that don’t shift through insight alone

  • are queer/trans and want therapy that is explicitly affirming and politically literate

  • carry diaspora, intergenerational harm, ancestral grief, or cultural pressure, and want this held with dignity—not pathologized

  • feel like an alien even when externally successful—capable on the outside, alone on the inside

What we do together

My approach is Somatic Experiencing–informed, depth-oriented, specialized, relational, and experiential. We work slowly and precisely, tracking present-moment experience so your system can reorganize out of survival strategies that once helped you—and may now be costing you.

In practice, parts-work may look like:

  • noticing a protective response arrive (tightening, urgency, blankness, pleasing, anger, numbness)

  • slowing down enough to sense what it is protecting

  • building consent and contact: “Can we be with this, just 2%?”

  • clarifying boundaries and choice (instead of forcing exposure or insight)

  • tracking how identity stress and power dynamics shape activation and collapse

  • differentiating “then” from “now” so the present becomes more inhabitable

  • supporting your system to complete small loops of activation/deactivation so it can settle

Quick definition: “protective strategies”

Protective strategies are nervous-system responses that helped you survive overwhelm, danger, misattunement, oppression, neglect, sensory overload, or relational threat. They can look like shutdown, perfectionism, people-pleasing, high control, dissociation, hypervigilance, irritability, or emotional numbing, often serving as survival strategies devel. They make sense—even when they’re painful.

What sessions are like

Sessions are collaborative and paced. I’ll name what I’m noticing, offer psychoeducation when it helps, and invite experiments you can feel—not just understand. We track what’s happening in the room so your system learns safety and agency through experience, not willpower.

If you’re used to performing wellness, we’ll make room for what’s true.

A note about pace + consent

Parts-work goes at the speed of safety. You won’t be pushed to “go there,” relive trauma, or override your signals. We work with titration—small, metabolizable steps—so your system can stay online.

Optional: symbolic + expressive tools (sandtray / miniatures / image / movement)

Sometimes words are not the safest or most direct doorway. When it supports you, we can use symbolic and expressive tools—like sandtray miniatures, image, and movement—to externalize inner dynamics without forcing labels.

This can be especially helpful for:

  • dissociation / shutdown

  • shame spirals and self-attack

  • identity stress and chronic misattunement

  • trauma activation that lives in sensation more than story

  • inner conflict (“part of me wants this, part of me doesn’t”)

  • ancestral grief, diaspora pressure, and cultural expectation that lives in the body

What may change over time

Clients often come to feel:

  • less bracing and more steadiness

  • more clarity about needs and limits (with less backlash, collapse, or overexplaining)

  • less inner conflict; more internal cooperation and self-trust

  • more choice in relationships and less trauma-driven looping

  • a body that feels more like home

  • more aliveness—grounded rather than forced

My lens

I’m Setareh Azar Jinn (she/her), LMFT #104844 and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) (licensed/credentialed under my legal name, Nima Saalabi).

My grounding is existential-phenomenological and gestalt: we start with lived experience—body, meaning, choice, and contact—rather than imposing a prescriptive map. My work is rooted in healing justice and disability justice, with a particular commitment to QTBIPOC liberation. We do nervous-system healing without treating your identity, neurotype, body, or survival strategies as the problem.

You don’t need to translate your politics or your lived experience here. We can hold both: nervous system science and the reality of power, oppression, family systems, culture, ancestry, and survival.

Logistics + fees

Location: in-person therapy in Sebastopol (Sonoma County)
Teletherapy: throughout California (many clients in SF Bay Area & Silicon Valley)
Rhythm: I only work with clients who are willing to commit to weekly therapy.
Fee: $200/session
Insurance: primarily private pay; credentialed only with Optum. Superbills available for possible out-of-network reimbursement when applicable (clients verify benefits).

Book a free 15-minute consult

On the consult we’ll clarify what you’re seeking, logistics/fees, fit, and next steps.

Email: Liberation@somatictherapynorthbay.com
Phone: 707 732 4525