PHILOSOPHY

I've been a medical mystery for most of my life — a pattern of symptoms specialists could describe but rarely explain, and treatments that helped without ever adding up to an actual diagnosis. Getting real care meant becoming my own case manager: tracking symptoms, chasing referrals, and learning enough about my own physiology to push back when a provider's confidence outpaced their curiosity. Along the way, I also learned what it feels like to be taken advantage of by wellness practitioners selling certainty they didn't have — protocols that cost real money and delivered nothing. In 2018, mold exposure in my apartment triggered Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) — though it would be years before anyone put a name to it. What followed was an escalating cascade of migraines and neurological symptoms that my neurologist downplayed rather than investigated. I spent the next several years researching my own case, assembling my own care team, and advocating my way into a workable, if informal, recovery. Then in 2024, COVID undid a lot of that progress: long COVID reactivated the same underlying dysfunction, worse and more complicated than before. I still don't have a unifying diagnosis. What I have is a care team and a set of protocols that keep me stable and functioning. My understanding of exploitation in wellness spaces isn't only clinical — it's academic and personal. I hold a Master's in Organizational Psychology with a research focus on coercive control, work that began after years spent in a high-control spiritual community where physical illness was treated as a moral failing rather than a medical reality. That gave me an early, uncomfortable education in how "healing" language can be used to shame, isolate, and extract money from people who are already vulnerable. As the wellness industry has grown — and as the pandemic accelerated both its reach and its misinformation — I've watched the same dynamics play out at scale: patients steered away from treatment they needed, others developing real psychological harm from restrictive protocols, families missing milestones over "cleanses," people taking out loans to pay providers with no license of any kind. None of that means integrative and complementary medicine is the problem. I believe ethical CAM providers exist, and that plenty of unproven modalities — energy work included — can genuinely help when used honestly, by the right practitioner. What patients need are the tools to tell the difference between a provider who's transparent about uncertainty and one who's exploiting it. That's what Parallax Circle is for: integrative providers vetted with the same rigor as conventional ones, so people can make informed choices instead of desperate ones. I bring 16 years of full-time clinical practice as a Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, faculty experience at AIMC Berkeley, and training in integrative medical hypnotherapy. But Parallax Circle isn't built on credentials alone. It's built on having sat on every side of this: the provider trying to make sense of a complex case, the patient trying to get someone to listen, and the survivor of a system that used "healing" as a means of control.

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