Today we’d like to introduce you to Sandy Pedram.
Hi Sandy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have always been philosophically intrigued by human relationships, behavior, and stories. These interests led me to study English Literature, Persian Literature, and Psychology at UCLA and, eventually, training as a family law attorney after completing my studies at Loyola Law school. Law school didn’t just train me in advocacy but inspired my creativity, manifesting the Writer in me. In my late twenties, I wrote a Memoir entitled Straightening a Curly Hair, exploring my own challenges with love and identity growing up between conflicting cultures. This memoir is currently in the process of being published. After my second daughter was born, I decided to go back to school and add a capstone to my education by getting a Masters in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine, to help me channel my intuitive strengths and aptitudes into serving others. My training as a Mediator through Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, as well as Mosten-Guthries’ Mediation Training Program, has deepened my interdisciplinary prowess.
Now, as a Psychotherapist specialized in Couples therapy, I fancy myself a relationship doctor (although, I’m not a literal doctor). Couples come to me in a state of distress and I triage. Either I help them: heal their relationship and improve their ability to manage conflict; clarify a path and direction for their relationship when they’re stuck by utilizing decision-counseling; or pivot to doing the emotional surgery necessary to dissolve the relationship in an empathic way as a lawyer-mediator. My diverse background, training, education, and cultural competency, allow me to shape-shift with flexibility in order to best meet my clients’ needs.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I grew up in a masculine household that was a microcosm of Iranian society’s male-oriented patriarchal culture. Preferential treatment of men is something implicit and unconscious in many Middle Easterner’s family dynamics. Yet, I was the first born of three which, ordinarily, carries with it some level of privilege and status. For me it resulted in the experience of many confusing contradictions, paradox my primordial upbringing.
Male and female were initially in conflict within me. Through my Iranian upbringing, I was exposed to certain ethics of achievement, power, and control, that were reinforced by the rugged individualism, materialism, and asceticism of predominant American culture. I believe all of this led me to devalue my femininity, empathic strengths, and intuitive nature. It’s taken me time to reconnect with and empower female aspects of myself I have otherwise exiled, in an effort to survive, be strong, and independent as a modern day woman.
Now in working with others, I model integration: helping my clients approximate ideals of balance in a dynamic, dialectical world. This work is enormously rewarding on a personal and philosophical level. I get to help people, first, become more whole (internally develop a fluid harmony of masculine and feminine attributes) within themselves and then bring their best selves to their relationships. I believe in building a more peaceful society and world through supporting one family at a time.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I work with Couples in every stage of relationship conflict, whether they are looking to reconcile, work through impasse and stuckness using Decision/Discernment Counseling, or for an empathic mediated divorce. I approach this work as a Attorney, Mediator, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, with background, training, and experience in Attachment Trauma, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, High Conflict Personalities, Systemic Dynamics, and Cross-Cultural Issues.
Using my training in Emotionally Focused Therapy and as a Mediator, I help my Couples shift the focus of relationship conflict away from one another toward building a foundation of safety, distress tolerance, flexibility-play-creativity, and resilience that allows them to harness the energy in conflict for personal and relational healing and transformation.
People often come in weary of their emotions, knowing fundamentally how powerful they are. I help clients befriend their emotions and harness their action potentials to affect positive change in their lives. Opposing emotions experienced together undo one another, allowing clients to move beyond unfinished business, unresolved conflicts, and past trauma to a place of greater consciousness and engagement in their present experience.
I’m especially adept at handling cultural issues with sensitivity and competence, having focused on the underserved and grown through the experience of integrating my own conflicting American, Iranian, Kurdish, and Jewish cultures. Although I approach treatment from an artistic and philosophical standpoint, I balance that with helping you problem-solve, weigh decisions, and develop essential life skills and functioning.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Going to visit my Mom’s friend, Wendy, who had long brown hair always neatly braided into two even pigtails, in their home in Wyoming: being greeted by the smell of her fresh baked blueberry pies; getting to pick and nibble on scallions from her garden; making snow angels with her son Ansel during Winters; and getting to pet their wolf-dog. My parents accidentally conceived me when they were in Colorado getting their graduate degrees, my father having been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. From Colorado, we moved to Wyoming, where we lived until I was eight years old, so that my father could accept a faculty position. My parents built their lives up from scratch here in the United States, having come to America just to study with the expectation that they would return to Iran to have and raise a family. Then, the Iranian revolution happened in 1979 and, as Jews in particular, returning to Iran was no longer an option.
Pricing:
- $225/hour
- Provide Superbills Upon Request
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.
sandypedram.com - Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/sandypedram/ - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/sandysayahpedram - LinkedIn: https://www.
linkedin.com/in/sandy-p- pedram-esq-lmft-9b89a014/
Image Credits
Perhaps these are not the most conventional photos, for example, of me in an office sitting in a chair or behind a desk. I included them anyway, in the spirit of fun. They are photos of my recent trip to Portugal, exploration being an integral theme in the work that I do with clients.
