Yoshimi Araki, MS, LMHC

She earned her Master of Science degree in Counseling Psychology, with an emphasis on mental health counseling, from the Chaminade University of Honolulu, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She completed her post graduate training and worked as a mental health counselor at the Counseling and Student Development Center at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. 

She has experience working with diverse populations providing individual counseling, couples counseling, career counseling, group counseling and crisis counseling in both English and Japanese. Yoshimi specializes in working with multicultural, immigrant and LGBTQI+ communities. She is knowledgeable in Psychodynamic therapy and Cognitive behavioral therapy. She is trained as a generalist and provides a personalized integrative counseling approach to fit the needs of the individual client. She hopes to provide clients with a safe space to explore and grow through psychotherapy. 

Key Concepts:

• Psychodynamic Therapy: a type of talk therapy similar to psychoanalytic therapy during which a client is invited to speak about whatever they feel they would like to. Psychodynamic therapy places a focus on how the individual interacts with their external environment
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): a type of psychotherapy (talk therapy) that has a solution-oriented approach and aims to help process patient struggles from both a cognitive and behavioral perspective. The goal of CBT is to address negative thoughts (cognitive) or behaviors (behavioral) that are causing distress and focus on encouraging practical steps toward solving the problem at hand while tackling the anxiety that it may be causing. The basis of CBT rests on the idea that thoughts and feelings are what influence behaviors.