ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A multidisciplinary clinician in training, working at the intersection of neuroscience, physical rehabilitation, and mental health.

My work in healthcare has been shaped by early and sustained exposure to complex clinical environments.

I began my career in intensive care settings at a young age, where I learned not only the technical demands of high-acuity care, but also its emotional and psychological weight. Providing continuous care while navigating loss, urgency, and responsibility revealed both the strength and the limits of traditional medical models.

Over time, I became increasingly attentive to moments where care stalled not because of lack of expertise, but because psychological and cognitive dimensions remained unaddressed. Patients who resisted treatment, misinterpreted care, or experienced clinical intervention as threatening raised a central question for me: how does the brain process vulnerability, trust, and being cared for?

This question led me to pursue formal education in neuroscience and cognitive processes alongside my clinical work. Understanding perception, emotional regulation, and cognitive appraisal directly reshaped how I approached care influencing communication, pacing, and clinical decision-making with greater precision and sensitivity.

As my perspective expanded, I observed similar gaps within physical rehabilitation contexts. Movement-based therapies often failed not due to physical limitation, but because emotional engagement and lived experience were excluded from treatment design. This observation motivated my training in physical therapy and rehabilitation, with the intention of integrating physical treatment and psychological awareness rather than separating them into parallel systems.

Following my relocation to California, I continued working within multidisciplinary clinical environments, supporting advanced treatment modalities and collaborating across specialties. Working with high-performance populations, including professional dancers, further reinforced the importance of care models that account for both physical excellence and psychological demand.

At this stage of my career, I am intentionally developing a mental health–focused clinical path grounded in nursing, informed by neuroscience, physical rehabilitation, and long-term patient observation. My aim is to contribute to healthcare through integrated, patient-centered care that prioritizes understanding, meaning-making, and participation alongside clinical intervention.

Heldjournal exists as a space where this approach can be articulated a place to name psychological states clearly and accurately, without simplification or urgency to resolve them.