My main focus in individual counseling and coaching for adolescents and young adults is to provide guidance and tools that lead them to find an emotionally healthy adulthood. Adolescents include pre-teens and teens. Issues may include academic or behavioral problems, struggles with sibling relationships or peers pressure, conflicts with family of origin, difficulties in blended families, and clash with school/authority.

I work with adolescents and young adults to transition from a dependent child to their parents or guardians into an independent adult. These young clients face many obstacles and confusions in this crucial juncture in their lives. Very often, they get angry and depressed while being challenged by troubles. Their negative emotional responses often lead to low self-esteem, self-doubt, or even self-harm in some. Many of them feel unwanted, worthless, or broken.

During my counseling, I help these struggling youths find internal strengths to face themselves, and attain resources available to gain independence. My guidance steers them to realistic solutions for their daily lives and provides them with sufficient support to weather these emotional storms. I also facilitate and help them maintain healthy boundaries with their respective families. At times, parents and other family members may be asked to participate in therapies to help these adolescents or young adults learn to become more engaged with their families.

As the therapist, I see my job as the bridge between juvenile turmoil and tranquil adulthood. I strive to be an understanding, nonjudgmental listener who values adolescent’s opinions and offers support while he or she works towards finding the direction in life that is meaningful to them. This includes developing or improving their ability to:

• Manage emotions and moods
• Control impulses and at-risk behaviors
• Engage in positive relationship with peers and adults
• Achieve academic success in school
• Feel positive about him- or herself, and the future
• Participate in constructive and rewarding activities
• Become a positive member of their family and community
• Just enjoy being an adolescent again

My goal is to help the adolescents or young adults with their respective families get through this often difficult period of life. As trust between the therapist and any client, especially a doubtful adolescent, is vital, I respect and protect the client’s rights to confidentiality. Young client’s parents are privy to session information only on a need-to-know and right-to-know basis. Guidelines will be addressed prior to the beginning of therapy in a written form of Informed Consent.

Are you feeling lost in transition and trying to make sense of life? Do your past emotional wounds affect how you react to people and difficult situations? In individual adult counseling, you are free to explore the issues that may be holding you back at work, or secretly hurting your personal life. I want to help you weed out the unnecessary noises in life and focus on your purposes. Life has a way to take us to somewhere unexpected and requires us to adjust in order to achieve a new balance. Attending college, starting a new job, moving to a different country, beginning a romantic relationship or marriage, welcoming a new born, adopting a child, adjusting to an empty nest, or facing retirement are all part of a normal course of life. The initial excitement from these milestones fade in due time and may become stressful and traumatic that leaves an unwanted scar behind. Many of us start questioning ourselves and react defensively in a panic.

Individual counseling will help you make such transitions successful and reclaim your authentic self. As your therapist, I offer you empathic one-on-one attention and unconditional positive regards through mindfulness-based counseling and embodied yoga movements to help you reconnect your mind, body and spirit. Sometimes we just need to get into our bodies and listen to the answer that is already in our mind. Whether you are aware of it, your “best self” is going to know how to handle any issues you are facing. To achieve your full potential on internal reflection requires a long-term process and firm commitment to self-healing. Nonetheless, you will still benefit from my integrative approach in the short-run by learning new coping skills. Whether you want to find a quick fix or eternal harmony, I tailor my therapies to meet your particular needs. I strongly encourage you to embark on this exciting self-search journey, and I will be your best companion.

In addition, I work effectively with people experiencing cross-cultural issues by drawing on my own experience as an ethnic citizen in the United States. I assist clients with acculturation issues among first-generation immigrants, inter-generation family conflicts and intercultural relationship issues. Utilizing my bicultural and feminist perspectives, I can better understand your stories with a unique ethnic background. If you are ready to take on the journey to look inwards and to push through the chrysalis for a better you, I am just a phone call away.

Besides English, I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese and proficient in Taiwanese. There will be no loss in translation for any Mandarin-speaking and Taiwanese-speaking clients.

The families we are born into are the foundation of our first experiences of the world and give our first sense of belonging in a group. In our current diverse society, we encounter many new types of familial associations besides the traditional blood family which is solely based on biological connection. The ‘group’ we now call a family may be a blended one, a single-parent one, one headed by grandparents, one connected by adoption, or one formed by a same-sex partnership. In my Family Counseling, each family member could use such opportunity to navigate his or her emotionality and to engage in effective communication for all involved.

While each family member struggles to voice his or her opinions or advance his or her own interests, it is appropriate and necessary to bring the entire family together to talk about the issues that are the perpetual causes for argument. Family Counseling allows all voices to be heard in a safe environment, with a trained therapist, where the dialogue can be guided in a productive rather than a destructive direction.

All our familial or generational issues have been developed by our family’s past, shaped by the present tasks it is trying to master, and affected by the future to which it aspires. We interact and react in response to one another according to our set family history. When you are in Family Counseling with me, I help the families validate, empower, and strengthen family ties while encourage, support, and provide guidance for the development of individual identity. Family counseling could help your family learn to:

• Treat one another with honesty and learn to respect each other’s difference
• Recognize that each family member has strengths that can be used to solve problems together
• Consider others’ if not all family members’ options before decision making
• Resolve anxiety and conflicts without bottling up to prevent further escalation
• Help the family develop a process of collaboration to enable compromise and get solutions
• Most of all, to foster a more flexible and resilient family

Family Counseling (System-based Family Therapy) is a proven successful modality in treating many different types of families in many different situations. If you family has hit a stress point, maybe it is time to reach out for help.