Irene Velasco, MFT

I am a multilingual Filipino-American therapist and official external provider for UCSF and UC Berkeley, dedicated to helping adult children of immigrants find language for what they have always felt.

You have spent your whole life being fluent — in languages, in cultures, in reading the room and knowing what everyone else needs. And yet there is something inside you that has never quite been translated. Something that gets lost between who your family raised you to be and who you actually are.

That is exactly the space I work in.

I am a multilingual Filipino-American Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with sixteen years of experience, and an official external provider for faculty and staff at UCSF and UC Berkeley. I specialize in helping adult children of immigrants navigate anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and intergenerational conflict — within a multicultural framework that honors your cultural context rather than measuring you against standards that were never designed with you in mind.

My approach is trauma-informed and grounded in CBT, psychodynamic therapy, and solution-focused work. But more than any technique, I bring the deep conviction that you deserve to be met exactly where you are — without judgment, without condition, and without having to explain yourself.

I come to this work from the inside. I am a Filipino immigrant who has lived the complexity of loving a family across a language gap — and spent years learning to recognize the love that was always there, even when it didn't have the words.

In April 2026, I presented "Empathy in Therapy: The Foundation of Cure" to psychologists and postdoctoral fellows at UCSF. My paper on multicultural empathy frameworks is currently under peer review at the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development.

I offer in-person therapy in Vallejo, CA and telehealth throughout California.