Individual Therapy
A Psychoanalytic, exploratory and depth-oriented Approach
Specialization in Asian Cultural Family Issues
I have extensive experience working with Asian American adult children of immigrants who are suffering from the impact of painful conflicts within their family of origin that lead to separation, emotional distance, deep resentment or estrangement. From my years of longterm work with individuals and couples, I have developed a familiarity with many different Asian cultural backgrounds (including Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Singaporean, Japanese, Filipino, Hmong, Indian, and mixed, adopted, and multiracial heritages).
In therapy we speak about the role of cultural expectations and beliefs, the effect of language barriers in communication, immigrant parental stressors and pressures, intergenerational impact of displacement, war and trauma, gender roles, sibling order roles, silence and shame around sexuality, money and wealth, silence and avoidance of addressing taboo topics like mental illness in the family.
You may experience chronic feelings of guilt, anger, shame, and imposter syndrome, despite the fact you appear responsible and put together. You may find it challenging if not impossible to bridge Western and Asian cultural values.
If you relate to the above and you are NOT Asian American, by all means you are welcome to my practice.
Additional Specialties
Mourning, anxiety, persistent sadness, worry or guilt
Infertility, perinatal wellbeing, birth experiences, parenthood
Navigating transgender identity and the spectrum of gender dysphoric experiences for individuals and their families.
Career and Work- burn out, dissatisfaction, imposter syndrome
Complicated feelings about being parent related to childhood upbringing
Dating, love, romance, codependent relationships
Self doubt, perfectionism, self-esteem
Decision paralysis, avoidance and procrastination
Working through early childhood traumatic events and memories
Disordered eating and addictive tendencies
How Therapy Works
Therapy pays attention to the most hidden and unknown parts of the self.
As I listen to you, I am taking in your particular way of speaking about things and noting what words and ideas have particular significance for you. Likewise, you will start to hear yourself and be interested in your speech. I am curious about the meaning of your difficulties and where they might have originated. I listen for the unconscious mental processes that silently dictate your thinking and behavior.
Together, we explore the thoughts, beliefs, fantasies, dreams, relationship patterns and socio-cultural contexts that influence your everyday life. Your childhood, family history and painful past experiences are all taken into account as a part of who you are as a subjective being in the world, rather than your diagnosis or observable symptoms.
You might think the past is in the past, it can’t be changed so why dwell on it? I believe that on the contrary, the past is always changing because we are always changing how we interpret it, how we respond to it, and the meanings we assign certain events in our lives. Freeing yourself from the past means revisiting it for questioning and revisioning. This opens up our futures to become new and undefined.
Therapy offers a space for you to speak freely, directly, and openly about whatever comes to mind.
In today’s modern, fast-paced world, having a place free from distraction, where you can focus your attention and notice the finer details of your thoughts and feelings is an immeasurable value in itself. As subjects of an increasingly fragmented, fractured, and polarized society, we tend to silence and censor unacceptable or irrational thoughts, wishes, and anything else that would bring about painful feelings like shame, guilt, and rage. One of the goals of therapy is to expand what is okay to say out loud, and to tolerate the parts of us we don’t like.
As you speak, you can unravel the various “knots” in your mind that created the conditions that keep you feeling stuck. These knots are made up of repeated dilemmas, impasses, and conflicts that get communicated through inexplicable pain, disorganized thoughts, and impulses out of your control. As we put these difficult-to-name experiences into words, we can greatly reduce the power these experiences have over our lives.
Dream Work
Dreams are symbolically meaningful for self-exploration and have been since ancient times. In therapy, I encourage sharing dreams as creative material to work with in session, as they provide many new directions to go in. Keeping a dream journal during therapy enhances therapeutic work. For those who don’t usually pay attention to their dreams, you may find them to be an interesting way to observe what goes on in your unconscious life and make connections with your waking life. For many people who struggle with talking about their feelings, dreams offer an easier way to access and convey an emotional truth. The dream can be one from a long time ago, a recurring dream, or simply your most recent dream that you can remember or wrote down.
Change happens when we take full responsibility for how we want to live.
Ultimately, therapy aims at internal change. You do not leave therapy the same way you came in. Although suffering is part of the human condition, it is certainly possible to relate to it differently. Among other things, you may find that the way you dealt with problems in the past is no longer serving you now, and that a fundamental shift is necessary in your life in order to develop and grow. Therapy can help you identify the crucial decisions that will shape your path moving forward into the future. It can give you the freedom-as well as the responsibility- to invent your own solutions. This is not an easy process, as it requires us to shake things up; to let go of the very things that once made us feel safe and comfortable.
Change can’t happen without taking a risk. There are no guarantees in life. Yet staying stuck in the same place is extremely costly. Therapy invites you to face your fears and step into the unknown, for this is an opportunity to create something new.
My approach is a better fit for people who favor in-depth, nuanced therapeutic work that goes beyond quick fixes or coping strategies. It is a more gradual and unfolding process that may take a longer time than you expect, but it is certainly not meant to go on without an end in sight.
Therapeutic Values Statement
1. Therapy is a place where anything can be said without fear of judgment. You can come as you are, no filter.
3. The aims of psychotherapy extend beyond symptom reduction, aiming for lasting change, enjoyment and meaningful fulfillment in life.
4. Therapy is an ethical practice that supports discovering your authentic and singular truth and assuming full responsibility over your life. I reject techniques and methods that are coercive, uncritical, dogmatic or ideological in any way.