Virtual therapy and executive coaching for Asian American professionals in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles. Navigating imposter syndrome, self-worth, attachment issues, and the psychological demands of high achievement.
This page is dedicated to first-generation college students and professionals who grew up in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles Chinatowns.
To those who grew up in unstable, emotionally unsafe households.
To those now facing their deepest fears and the beliefs that once kept them safe, and choosing to heal.
I'm a second generation Chinese American who grew up in the Bay Area in an immigrant household, and for a long time I was the kid trying to keep the peace in a home that felt unpredictable.
My parents ran a restaurant. They worked long hours and carried unprocessed trauma from the Cultural Revolution that shaped everything, how they handled conflict, how anxious they felt about money, how they showed up as parents under constant pressure. Survival was the only mode they knew.
I adapted the way a lot of kids in that situation do. I stayed quiet. I learned to read the room before I read anything else. I made myself easy to manage because that felt safer than needing anything.
My parents loved me and sacrificed more than I understood at the time. But emotional attunement wasn't something they had to give me, because no one had given it to them either.
By my mid-twenties I had a life that looked successful from the outside and felt hollow from the inside. I was anxious constantly and couldn't figure out why hitting my goals wasn't fixing it.
Therapy is what finally explained it. Working with someone who understood intergenerational trauma and immigrant family dynamics showed me exactly where I'd gotten stuck, and how early those patterns had formed.
That's the work I do now, mostly with people whose stories rhyme with mine. Most of my clients already understand their patterns intellectually. What's harder to shift is the part that only moves through a real, consistent relationship, which is where the therapy actually happens. My doctoral research looked at shame and self-esteem in Chinese American families, and it's stayed close to how I think about this work ever since.
My aim is to build the kind of space that helped me: no performing, no managing the room, just room to actually feel what you feel and understand why.
In December 2024 I traveled to Shenzhen with my parents, my brother, and several relatives to visit my paternal grandparents' memorial. Standing there facing the water, something clicked that I hadn't let myself see clearly before: how much my parents had aged, how much they'd given up without ever really talking about it, and how many immigrant families carry that exact weight completely alone.
I wrote about what that trip surfaced for me and how it shows up in the work I do.
Areas where I provide specialized, evidence-based therapeutic support
Often, the most difficult part of succeeding at a high level is managing your own psychology. When you're mentally taxed, your insecurities like fear of failure and limiting beliefs are easily triggered. I work with professionals who are managing imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and burnout, and explore the thoughts and assumptions driving your decisions.
Attachment therapy is an area I'm passionate about. I work with adults who find themselves overthinking in dating, stuck in familiar patterns, or shaped by early emotional dynamics. We work to understand and transform these patterns rather than just managing symptoms.
I grew up with parents who could shift from warm to volatile without warning, so I understand the specific exhaustion of scanning a room before you let yourself relax in it. If your childhood involved a parent who was critical, inconsistent, or just hard to reach emotionally, that leaves marks that don't show up until adulthood. Together we work through what that history did to you, name the neglect for what it was, and build the boundaries and relational habits it never taught you.
I work with neurodivergent adults, including high-achieving professionals with ADHD or high-functioning ASD, as well as those navigating a relationship with a neurodivergent parent or partner. Exploring how neurodivergence intersected with family dynamics to shape your confidence, sense of self, and relational patterns.
Growing up between two cultures shaped who I am. I work with clients navigating family expectations, intergenerational trauma, and the weight of balancing multiple worlds.
Most of what shapes how we see ourselves and relate to others formed over years in childhood, not weeks. Real change works the same way. In session, the relationship between us becomes the actual mechanism for shifting those patterns, not just a place to talk about them. That means short-term work rarely gets past insight into real behavior change. A year in is often just the starting point, and many of my clients stay in treatment for several years because that's genuinely how long it takes for new patterns to become as automatic as the old ones.
There's more on this on my full FAQ page, including the research behind long-term psychodynamic work and why I recommend a weekly cadence.
I provide secure, confidential telehealth therapy and executive coaching throughout California, serving Asian American professionals across the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and beyond.
I work with high-achieving professionals throughout Silicon Valley, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles who are committed to depth-oriented therapy and understand that real structural psychological change requires time, sustained effort, and the right therapeutic relationship.
Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) • Asian Mental Health Collective • Psychology Today Verified