Garen Karnikian

Garen Karnikian (he/him) is a queer first generation Armenian-American and a third year student in the Integral Counseling Psychology master's program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Before starting his practicum at Queer LifeSpace, he volunteered as a crisis counselor at the San Francisco Suicide Prevention, and has experience working with suicidality, grief & loss, loneliness and substance use.

Garen takes an integrative approach, combining Western psychotherapy with Buddhist-based mindfulness practices. He believes that symptoms (including anxiety, depression, substance

use, poor concentration, etc) are adaptive responses to difficult, often traumatizing circumstances. At one point in our lives, these responses were highly intelligent, yet we now recognize the pain they cause us. He works relationally, hoping to forge a strong, collaborative and secure relationship with his clients, using a trauma-informed somatic lens.

Garen's queerness in the context of a conservative, insular Middle Eastern culture provides him with a unique lens of the outsider and the insider, simultaneously. He believes that living in divergent cultures can help us foster compassion for parts of ourselves that are rejected and invalidated by our communities and societies. His research focuses on intergenerational trauma and the importance of ancestral grief work. Garen works with all clients, specializing in immigrants, refugees, first generation folks and those living with disabilities, visible or invisible.