Services
- Individual
About My Clients
My therapeutic alliance tends to be strongest with individuals dealing with anxieties and depressions related to interpersonal/relational challenges, transgenerational/historical trauma, complex chronic health conditions, urban psychosocial stressors, psychospiritual adversities in aging and adulthood, nonconforming gender identity and expression, sexuality, first generation American acculturation challenges, race, culture, existential crises, insecure attachment, and chronic loneliness.
My Background and Approach
I provide therapy that is in-depth, insight-oriented, and relationship-centered. This addresses immediate disruptive symptoms along with their underlying drives and roots. As appropriate, we might reflect and reminisce about the past to re-examine unreconciled memories and hidden wounds with hopes to harvest wisdom. Other times, it may be better to problem-solve stressors in the environment or make sense of current struggles and hardships. We can also strategize solutions and plan for the future! I have experience in psychodynamic psychotherapy, reminiscence and narrative therapy, problem-solving and task-centered approaches, solutions-focused therapy, systems theory, existential and humanistic psychology, and cognitive and behavioral interventions. While I can practice a variety of different modalities and models, my underlying philosophical and relational stance seems to be deeply influenced, shaped, and aligned with Jungian, Psychodynamic, and Existential lenses.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
My social work journey has been transformative and healing--setting the foundation for my therapy practice. I was initially interested in medical and public health social work because of deep-seated fears about death and disease that stemmed from family. This led me to pursue specialized training in Geriatric Social Work and Gerontology at UCLA which provided me with psychosocial skills to empower families as we navigate fragmented US health systems, while also promoting resilience in response to adversities across the life course. Throughout my training, I also became particularly drawn to social work’s commitment to social justice which illuminated suffering and disparities that have been insidiously hidden in structural inequities. This awakened a deeper sensitivity, exploration, and care towards untended silent wounds and “legacies of loss” carried by marginalized folx, beginning with my own as a queer and closeted first-generation Asian American, descending from boat people.