Most people look at my résumé – Princeton, University of Chicago, 45 countries – and see a success story with an interesting lifestyle.
I look at it and see a series of decisions I made when I could no longer pretend the version of myself I’d built was enough.
I’m a clinician. I work with people navigating the space between who they were trained to be and who they actually are.
They are high-performing individuals who have built lives around competence, control, and adaptation—but who now want a clearer relationship to identity, feeling, and purpose.
I know that space well.
And it’s not from a textbook.
The Origin: Learning To Adapt
My journey started with my grandfather.
He was a polyglot Navy translator who knew six languages but never got to travel the world. Instead, he introduced me to books about Sanmao (三毛)—a wandering figure who survived not through stability, but through movement, observation, and adaptability.
I came to the United States from China when I was nine years old.
As a 1.5-generation Asian American, I grew up between cultures—each with different expectations, values, and definitions of success.
I learned early how to become the “right” version of myself:
the good student,
the high achiever,
the one who made things make sense.
This is where identity often begins—not as self-expression, but as adaptation.
You learn what works.
You learn what is rewarded.
You learn how to belong.
But even then, I lived in the in-between—carrying a quiet awareness that nothing fully belonged to me.
Nor was I someone who fully belonged.
Rupture - When Performance Stops Working
Change doesn’t happen when things are perfect.
It happens when what once worked stops making sense.
For me, that happened when the structures I had built—how I understood myself, how I related to others, how I made decisions—no longer felt true to the person I had become.
At 27, a personal loss exposed something I could no longer ignore:
I was functioning, but I was not anchored.
So I left.
I spent five months traveling across Asia—living in a different country each month, including Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.
For the first time, I experienced space:
space to reflect,
space to question,
space to exist outside of the roles I had learned to perform.
But when I returned to the United States, the old system reactivated quickly:
Expectations. Shame.
The pull toward a life that looked stable—but no longer felt true.
And I went back to my previous role.
Within 48 hours, I knew I couldn’t stay.
Not because the job was wrong – but because I could no longer ignore the disconnect between what I was doing and what I knew internally.
So I left.
That rupture clarified something essential:
A life can be highly functional—and still not be aligned.
Reflection: System Perspective and Clarity
The years since haven’t been a journey of redemption.
They’ve been an education.
Living and working across 45+ countries, I kept seeing the same thing regardless of culture, language, or context: people who had built lives that were functional, credentialed, and externally coherent – and privately exhausting.
The structures they’d built to succeed had become the structures keeping them stuck.
I kept coming back to one question:
Who are you when you stop performing?
Not as a philosophical exercise. It is a practical one.
Because if you can’t answer that – if there’s no stable sense of self underneath the competence and the composure – then every major decision becomes harder than it needs to be.
Every relationship carries more weight than it should.
Every transition feels like a threat.
That’s not a character flaw. It’s a structural problem.
And structure can be examined.
Specialized Framework
Layered Identity Architecture (LIA)
People don’t just have an identity.
They build one – layer by layer, in response to what was expected, rewarded, and required.
Those layers make success possible. But over time, they can also create distance: from what you feel, what you want, and how you actually make decisions.
The work is not to remove them. It’s to understand them clearly enough to choose what stays.
Repair: My Mission
My work today sits at the intersection of clinical psychology, identity development, and performance.
I help people understand the architecture they’ve built—and how it shapes how they think, decide, and relate.
The goal is not to remove structure.
It’s to move from:
automatic adaptation → intentional living
performative identity → integrated identity
external alignment → internal clarity
My Clients
I work with people who are, in many ways, “lonely at the top.”
You are capable, thoughtful, and often highly successful. You’ve learned how to:
navigate complexity
solve problems
stay composed under pressure
But over time, those same strengths can become constraints.
Many of my clients operate within a tightly reinforced identity system:
A control layer that organizes and stabilizes
A coherence layer that explains and rationalizes
A persona layer that presents and performs
Together, these layers create a system that works – but doesn’t always feel true.
You may notice:
decision paralysis
emotional blunting
overthinking without resolution
a sense that your life fits—but doesn’t belong
The work is not about becoming someone new.
It’s about seeing clearly enough to stop performing a version of yourself that no longer fits.
My Approach
Most approaches focus on surface-level change: performance, productivity, or short-term relief.
My work focuses on the underlying system:
how your mind organizes experience
how you create meaning and explanation
how identity is constructed and maintained
We examine how emotional signals are translated into structure, narrative, and identity—and where that process may be limiting clarity.
This work is both structured and exploratory.
We:
deconstruct inherited scripts
examine real-time patterns
increase emotional awareness
reconnect decision-making to internal signal
The goal is not just insight.
It’s clearer thinking, more grounded decisions, and a stronger sense of internal direction.
My Role
I understand the complexity of building a life that looks right- but doesn’t feel right.
I know what it means to care deeply about your family and culture while also feeling constrained by them.
I have experienced firsthand how easy it is to stay inside a system that works – even when it no longer fits.
My role is not to give you a path.
It’s to help you understand yourself clearly enough to create one that is actually yours.
Education and Training
– Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), practicing teletherapy in 8 U.S. states (AK, CA, CT, D.C., FL, IL, NJ, VT)
– BA in Psychology and Neuroscience, Princeton University
– MA in Social Work, University of Chicago
– Post-graduate fellowship in Advanced Psychodynamic Practice and Consultation, University of Chicago
– Specialties: High-Performer Burnout, Identity Transitions, Relationship Rupture, Intergenerational Dynamics, AAPI Mental Health
How To Work With Me
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