(415) 688-4608

My professional background is somewhat unusual: I became a psychologist after 25 years in the business world (California license PSY27566).  My personal and professional background allows me to appreciate first-hand many of the challenges my clients face. My family emigrated to the U.S. from England when I was a teen, and I “commuted” across the Atlantic to boarding school in the UK and completed my senior year in high school in Palo Alto. I have worked in Silicon Valley as a hardware engineer and marketing executive and held C-Level positions in the nonprofit sector and academic administration. During my career, I spent two years in France as a “trailing partner”, and set up a consulting practice there. I am able to conduct therapy in French.

I enjoy working with professional, gifted, creative, and international clients.  I understand the experience of the intensity of high-paced professional careers, dual career couples, and international relocation and cultural adjustment.  I can relate directly to the deep and stressful demands of leadership roles, anxiety about meeting performance objectives, difficulties with teamwork or relating to colleagues, balancing relationship or family responsibilities, and feeling dissatisfied or trapped in work and wondering how to find more meaning in life.

I also specialize in treating tech and internet addiction, including addictions to gaming, social media, and cybersex. I have robust skills for assisting clients dealing with anxiety, depression, and trauma.  I provide therapy to those in the midst of life transitions, whether these be self-initiated or caused by external events.  As a therapist in the student counseling center at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, I developed expertise in working with young adults.  Other specializations include gender identity and sexuality, working on blocks to creativity for artists of all stripes, and creating and maintaining a great social life and relationships.

I have been fortunate to work with very diverse clients, and have taken great pleasure in serving people from a wide range of nationalities and ethnicities, sexual orientation, gender, age, professional and vocational backgrounds, spiritual and religious beliefs, and socioeconomic backgrounds.  Respectfully acknowledging and honoring your unique background is very important to me.

Education

PhD, Clinical Psychology, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

MA, International Economics, UC Santa Cruz

MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business

MS, Electrical Engineering, UC Berkeley

BSc (1st Cl Hons), Electrical Engineering, University College London, UK

Publications

Beech, H. (2015). Songwriting and transformation: The subjective experience of sharing self through song. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 34 (1-2), pp. 187-201.

Beech, H. (2014). Songwriting as a transformative practice: A heuristic inquiry into the songwriter’s experience of creating, recording, and performing original popular songs (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3631413).

Professional Affiliations

California Psychological Association
San Francisco Psychological Association
Society for the Emotional Needs of the Gifted
N. California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology
San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis