Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Yam.
Hi Anna, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I decided to study clinical psychology when I was a researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. I noticed that one of my favorite parts of the job was working with study participants and their families. In graduate school at the University of Florida, I studied neuropsychology, which involved using tests to diagnose neurodiverse conditions like ADHD, and brain changes like dementia. Though neuropsychology was familiar and interesting, I ultimately fell in love with psychotherapy, which is my main focus today. When I finished my post-graduate clinical training, I was very fortunate to be hired into a pain psychology role at the Center for Pelvic Pain in the Department of OBGYN at Kaiser San Francisco. In this amazing role, I worked collaboratively with pelvic pain physicians, nurses, pelvic floor physical therapists, and primary care OBGYN providers. In my private practice today I continued to focus on women’s health psychology, as well as relationships and a sprinkle of testing to keep me on my toes.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road to where I am today often didn’t feel smooth. University-based clinical psychology training was challenging, involving running full-scale research studies, completing coursework, and seeing patients all at the same time. This path also required challenging relocations for internship and residency, the same as for medical students. Leaving my pain psychology position at Kaiser in 2019 to return to San Diego was also challenging, as was starting my private practice having been away from the San Diego community for over 10 years. I have approached these challenges with a mindset of “what can I learn,” which has been helpful. Because I didn’t have local professional connections in 2019 when I started Bloom Psychology, I learned as much as I could about marketing and SEO as it applies to therapy private practice. Now therapy SEO is a small sub-focus of my work, which allows me to flex my mind and my skills in a different way than psychotherapy. Overall, the experiences I’ve had, including the tough ones, help me serve people better as a psychologist.
We’ve been impressed with Bloom Psychology, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Bloom Psychology is the name of my private practice. With a focus on women’s health and relationships, my main areas of specialization include prenatal and postpartum mental health, anxiety and OCD, female pelvic pain and pain management, geropsychology, and emotionally focused couples therapy. I also do adult ADHD testing in homage to my neuropsychology background. In some professional circles, I’m known for my work in female pelvic pain because that focus in pretty unusual and sets me apart from other mental health providers. This specialty is different from most sex therapists who learn about female pelvic pain conditions, but not about chronic pain management, and from pain psychologists who don’t often specialize in pelvic conditions in particular. Among patients, most word-of-mouth and positive feedback has been about couples therapy. I love helping people cozy into their most important relationships and hopefully that comes across in my couples therapy work. When it comes to the Bloom Psychology brand, I am most proud of it’s ability to blend together my many interests. People’s lives have many parts, they aren’t only affected by the main thing brings them into therapy. My brand is to look at the whole person, the whole picture, with thoughtfulness and with compassion.
What’s next?
In the near future, I’m expanding my San Diego professional community participation, including with the San Diego Psychological Association, SoCal OCD, and the San Diego EFT community. I’m doing more therapy SEO work, which has been a tremendous learning experience in the age of AI. That will be enough for the time being, but I always have something up my sleeve so I’m sure more is to come.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bloompsychologysd.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bloompsychologysd/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-yam/
