YOUR INTERIOR

An Irvine therapist and designer helps people figure out themselves as they figure out their space

Yokota’s sister encouraged her to start an Instagram account focused on her passion for interior design. Collaborations with HGTV and Real Simple followed and, ultimately, she went on to found a design and construction company with her husband, who is also a therapist.

“As a therapist, I learned to help people identify and recognize and feel safe in their internal world,” says Yokota. As a designer, she looks at how people are impacted by their spaces, whether that’s through choosing soothing colors for the bedroom or adding a second sink in the bathroom to ease the morning rush out of the house.

“I think going beyond the narrative of the external surface of functionality and aesthetics and focusing on the relationships that live in that space and how to that makes us feel is super-important,” she says.

Yokota recently published the book “Home Therapy: Interior Design for Increasing Happiness, Boosting Confidence, and Creating Calm: An Interior Design Book,” which fuses her background in counseling couples and families with her passion for interiors while exploring solutions for common home dilemmas.

Take managing screen time at home. That’s an issue Yokota saw in her work as a therapist, particularly with families who had teenagers. “I struggle with it a lot, too,” says Yokota, adding that she has to make an effort to leave her phone in another room when she goes to bed in order to avoid night scrolling. “If I want to be the best individual, mom, partner, designer, then it’s easy to leave the phone by my nightstand,” she explains, “and, if at 2 in the morning, I wake up, which I often do, it’s easy to scroll.”

In “Home Therapy,” Yokota mentions a plan that she used as a therapist that can be incorporated in home organization as well. Pick a “neutral” space in the home and create a device hub where everyone needs to plug in their phones and tablets at a designated time.

“That takes away the power struggle for yourself and for your kids,” she explains. “It’s not mom and dad versus the kids. This is our house rule.

Here’s a neutral area for it and this is how you earn your time for the next day. It worked really well for the families who stuck with that.”

Throughout the book, Yokota looks at ways that home design, decor and organization can promote mental well-being and healthy relationships.

To figure out what those issues are, Yokota includes a QR code early in the book that will direct you to an intake form. The questions cover a lot of ground — from your diet to previous homes you’ve lived in to issues with your current space — and the answers are meant to better understand the “core desire” for you and the “core design” for your home.

“Our homes connect to some of the deepest parts of ourselves, but we can’t reach that part of ourselves if we’re disorganized or we’re constantly fighting,” says Yokota. “It’s really starting with the external, but first you have to identify your internal struggles to know what your external solution would be.”

“Home Therapy” offers guidance beyond organization and the visual elements of design. Yokota also covers ground like home acoustics and scent.

“At home, our five senses should be heightened and not go into automatic pilot,” says Yokota.

All of this, she says, is to help keep ourselves alert and present in our daily lives. “When we stay present at home, then we can be productive. Then our communication skills thrive. Everything is a positive,” she says.

Now that people have largely gone back to their prepandemic busy schedules, she adds, they might also be returning to habits like throwing jackets and bags on the floor by the door before heading to the couch to watch TV or scroll on the phone. All of which makes staying present more important than ever.

“That’s not utilizing your environment to the max,” she says. “What I like to do is take a pause, get in touch with your body, like through aromatherapy or music therapy or dance therapy, really getting in touch with your body so that you can stay present and say, what’s my intention in this space? Or what’s my intention with my relationship in this space?”