An open place for therapeutic inquiry, education and group process
Whether you found me through Sunstone Counseling, Effective Altruism or are just interested in exploring more of yourself through the lens of humanity and existential risk, and looking for therapy-esque content, welcome!
Hi I’m Gina! I’m a therapist at Sunstone Counseling and also a coach and educator for EAs - particularly for those working in the field of AI.
A bit about my background:
In 2009, I started as a research assistant then project manager studying psychopathy in offender populations at the HERL (Human Emotional Research Lab) with Dr June Tangney exploring Moral Emotions and Recidivism. Prior to working with Dr Tangney I spent time at the Wilson Social Psychology Lab studying Affective Forecasting, Causal and CounterFactual Thinking as well as the Virginia Affective Neuroscience (VAN) lab studying Emotional Regulation, Aging & Prefrontal EEG Asymmetry.
By 2011, I was also volunteering as a meditation leader at the Northern Virginia Mental Hospital and as a pastoral care volunteer at INOVA supporting end of life transitions for patients and families. And by 2012, I was certified and working as an EMT alongside a small job teaching about and selling medicinal teas!
I graduated with a Masters in Counseling and Human Development from GW in 2016 and started my road to licensure in 2017 where I was lucky to find an incredible supervisor named Katie Clark at Sunstone Counseling. I worked as a teaching assistance for graduate students in counseling between 2017-2020, having worked as an instructor for SAT classes at some point in my career and finding a joy in teaching learning and test-taking strategies.
In 2020, I experienced the EA community for the first time and since then have been running groups and individual coaching sessions for the community in Washington, DC and Austin, TX. With the help of my co-therapists Damon Sasi and Ewelina Tur as well as Danica Wilbanks, we launched the Mental Health Navigator tool in 2021 to help EAs better access mental health support.
I currently work primarily as a virtual therapist and now spend half of my life in Spain - where I feel most at home! Traveling (particularly to see and climb mountains) is a great part of my self-care: some favorites include Mt. Rainier, Mt Batur and Mont Blanc with special mention going out to the Rocky and Smoky Mountains.
Some other interests include long distance running, sculpting, taking long drives and exploring obscure literature. A few books I read and have continued to impact me deeply from their first encounter in my early adolescent years are “I am a Strange Loop” Douglas Hofstadter “Love and Will” by Rollo May “The Black Pearl” by Henry Bayman, “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron and “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” by Robert Moore.
I’m currently working on a protocol to help therapists working with humans in the field of AI to effectively bootstrap self-care and in particular self-compassion. You can find me as a host on Interintellect running a Self-Compassion series here: https://interintellect.com/series/conversations-on-self-compassion/
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Gina Hafez, LPC, GCDF
“We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.
Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.
Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.
It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.
It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.
For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.
Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.
It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.
Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.
We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.
Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.
It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.
We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.”
