Most of my clients are not falling apart externally.

They are high-functioning, responsible, emotionally intelligent people who others describe as responsible, and "together." Friends, family, and colleagues lean on them because they are "the strong one."

From the outside, this can look like success.

Inside, it's exhausting.

I hear my clients say:

Many people I work with would not describe themselves as "anxious" — they're not necessarily panicking or visibly overwhelmed.

Instead, anxiety has become organized into productivity, self-control, overthink, emotional monitoring, or high standards.

High-functioning anxiety usually has a back story

For many people, these patterns were developed within an environment where:

• Emotional needs were minimized or overlooked
• Achievement became tied to worth, safety, or belonging
• Being "easy," responsible, or high-performing was rewarded
• Vulnerability felt uncomfortable, unsafe, or unfamiliar
• There was pressure — spoken or unspoken — to hold yourself together

For some clients, cultural expectations, immigrant family dynamics, or early experiences of emotional inconsistency also play a big role.

What begins as adaptation eventually becomes exhaustion, leaving you disconnected from rest, spontaneity, emotional intimacy, or even yourself.

What therapy can help with

In our work together, we will include:

• Helping you move out of constant self-monitoring and into a more emotionally connected experience of yourself
• Understanding the deeper emotional experiences and needs underneath the overthinking, perfectionism, and chronic striving
• Learning how to recognize and trust your own emotional signals, needs, and boundaries
• Building the capacity to stay with emotions rather than immediately analyzing, minimizing, or managing them away
• Developing a greater sense of internal safety so you are less driven by fear, pressure or hypervigilance
• Strengthening your ability to feel connected to yourself and others without needing to perform, overfunction, or stay emotionally guarded
• Experiencing moments of relief, clarity, and self-compassion that do not rely on achievement or external validation

Many high-achieving adults wait until they are completely burned out before seeking therapy because they believe their struggles are "not serious enough," especially when they are functioning well on the outside.

But constantly holding tension inside of yourself is still difficult, even if you are good at hiding it.

Therapy can be a space where you no longer have to perform competence, manage everyone else's experience, or stay ten steps ahead emotionally.

You can learn to feel more grounded without losing the parts of yourself that are thoughtful, ambitious, and deeply caring.

Therapy in California for high achievers, overthinkers, and high-functioning anxiety

I provide in-person therapy in my Eagle Rock office in Northeast Los Angeles near Highland Park, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Atwater Village, Silverlake, and Glendale, and online therapy for adults and couples throughout California who struggle with overthinking, emotional disconnection, perfectionism, burnout, relationship stress, and high-functioning anxiety.

You've heard your partner or other loved ones misunderstand you — to seem unphased, withholding, and not caring enough.

What they do not see is that inside, you are experiencing A LOT.

Though you maintain a calm exterior, you are emotionally flooded and in desperate need for space. When you sense your partner wanting more from you, the pressure disconnects you from your feelings and you can only engage intellectually. You find yourself pulling away from closeness even though deep down, you also want it and need it. But needing people is uncomfortable and terribly risky.

For some people, emotional distance shows up quietly. You may shut down during difficult conversations. Struggle to articulate emotions in real time. Feel irritated or trapped when others request reassurance or more emotional engagement from you. You may care deeply about your relationships while simultaneously feeling pressure to withdraw from them.

Emotional avoidance as protection

Many avoidant adults grew up in environments where emotions were not consistently welcomed, responded to, or safe to express.

You may have learned that vulnerability creates disappointment, criticism, or overwhelm — so instead you handle things on your own. Prioritizing independence and staying emotionally low-maintenance feels much safer than acknowledging emotional needs that make you "too much" or needy.

Over time, distance can become automatic. Not because you do not want connection — but because closeness activates something vulnerable, uncertain, or difficult to trust.

For many people, these patterns developed intelligently. They helped you function, adapt, or protect yourself emotionally in earlier relationships. But what once protected connection begins limiting it.

Many emotionally avoidant adults are highly functional and successful professionally, intellectually insightful, or good at caring for others in practical ways. But emotionally, relationships may still feel difficult to fully settle into. Sometimes people describe this as feeling emotionally disconnected not only from others, but from themselves.

Therapy for people who struggle to stay emotionally connected

Many avoidant adults come to therapy worried that they are somehow incapable of intimacy or emotional closeness. That is usually not what I see.

More often, I see people who learned to move away from emotional vulnerability long before they had language for why. People who became highly self-reliant, thoughtful, capable, and emotionally contained because it felt safer than needing too much from others.

Therapy is not about forcing vulnerability or breaking down your defenses. It is about understanding the emotional logic underneath them.

Using an attachment-focused, emotionally focused, and AEDP-informed approach, we work slowly and collaboratively to help you feel safer with emotional closeness — both internally and relationally.

What therapy can help with

Our work may include:

• Understanding the protective role emotional distance has played in your life
• Building greater comfort with vulnerability without feeling emotionally flooded or overwhelmed
• Learning how to recognize emotions before they shut down, numb out, or become intellectualized
• Developing the capacity to stay emotionally present during conflict, intimacy, or relational tension
• Creating a stronger sense of internal safety in relationships
• Processing experiences of loneliness, grief, shame, or unmet attachment needs that may have been carried privately for a long time
• Helping you feel more emotionally connected without losing your sense of autonomy, authenticity, or self-protection
• Experiencing closeness as something that can feel grounding rather than threatening

This work is not about becoming a completely different person. It is about connection no longer feeling dangerous, but now accessible and deeply satisfying — all while maintaining your autonomy.

Many emotionally avoidant adults fear therapy will feel invasive, emotionally overwhelming, or pressuring. My approach is not confrontational or emotionally forceful. I believe emotional closeness develops through safety, pacing, and genuine relational experience — not through being pushed past your limits.

Therapy can become a place where you begin noticing that you no longer have to manage emotional experiences entirely alone. Over time, many clients find that what once felt threatening — being known, emotionally seen, emotionally needed — begins to feel more possible, tolerable, and even meaningful.

Therapy in California for emotionally distant and avoidant adults

I provide in-person therapy in my Eagle Rock office in Northeast Los Angeles near Highland Park, Pasadena, South Pasadena, and Glendale, and online therapy for adults throughout California who struggle with emotional disconnection, avoidant attachment, intimacy issues, overthinking, relationship difficulties, and difficulty accessing or expressing emotions.

Many couples wait to seek therapy because they assume relationship problems need to look dramatic or catastrophic before they are "serious enough."

But emotional disconnection often happens much more subtly.

You may still love each other deeply. Yet you start to feel alone in the relationship, which can resemble more like roommates, co-parents, or logistical and business partners rather than romantic partners. When conflict arises, you find yourselves stuck and cycling around in the same unresolved, exhausting arguments. So you start to avoid conflict altogether, becoming increasingly withdrawn or guarded with one another.

Sometimes one partner pursues more closeness while the other shuts down or pulls away. Sometimes both partners have stopped reaching out because the hurt and disappointment is too much to bear.

The problem is usually not what couples think it is

Most couples come into therapy focused on the content of their fights — communication problems, sex and intimacy, parenting disagreements, household responsibilities, in-laws.

While these concerns matter, they are often expressions of a deeper attachment pattern happening underneath the surface. More often, the deeper questions underneath are:

When these questions feel uncertain, couples can become stuck in painful cycles of pursuing, withdrawing, criticizing, shutting down, overexplaining, or emotionally distancing. The cycle becomes the problem — not either partner individually.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples

My approach to couples therapy is grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), attachment theory, and experiential work. Rather than teaching surface-level communication techniques alone, EFT helps couples understand and shift the emotional cycle keeping them disconnected.

The goal is not perfection or constant harmony. The goal is helping both partners feel more emotionally accessible, responsive, and connected to one another.

Many emotionally disconnected couples are protecting themselves

When couples feel disconnected for a long time, both partners often develop protective strategies. Usually, neither person is trying to hurt the other — and those protective patterns can unintentionally reinforce the very loneliness both partners are trying to escape.

What therapy can help with

Our work may include:

• Identifying the negative interaction cycle keeping you emotionally disconnected
• Helping both partners feel more emotionally understood and less alone in the relationship
• Learning how to communicate vulnerable emotions underneath anger, criticism, shutdown, or defensiveness
• Rebuilding trust, emotional safety, and responsiveness after periods of distance or conflict
• Helping withdrawn partners feel safer staying emotionally engaged
• Helping pursuing partners express needs in ways that create connection rather than escalation
• Strengthening emotional intimacy, closeness, and relational security
• Rebuilding a relationship that feels emotionally alive rather than emotionally managed

Many couples seek therapy because they do not want to continue drifting further apart emotionally. Often, both partners still care deeply about each other. They just no longer know how to reliably reach one another through the hurt, defensiveness, or exhaustion that has built over time.

Therapy can become a space where couples begin having different emotional experiences together — not just different conversations.

Couples therapy for emotional disconnection, conflict, and attachment struggles

I provide in-person therapy in my Eagle Rock office in Northeast Los Angeles near Highland Park, Pasadena, South Pasadena, and Glendale, and online couples therapy throughout California for partners struggling with emotional disconnection, attachment injuries, conflict cycles, communication difficulties, avoidant/pursuer dynamics, intimacy concerns, and relationship distress.

Many Asian American adults grow up navigating multiple emotional worlds at once.

There may have been deep love in your family alongside emotional distance. Sacrifice alongside silence. Care expressed through responsibility, achievement, practicality, or obligation rather than direct emotional attunement.

You may have learned:

• To stay aware of other people's needs, expectations, or moods
• To avoid burdening others with your emotions
• To minimize conflict, disappointment, or vulnerability
• To work hard, stay humble, and keep going regardless of how you felt internally
• To prioritize family stability, harmony, or duty over personal emotional experience

For many people, these patterns become so normalized that it can feel difficult to even recognize your own emotional needs, anger, grief, or longing. You may appear highly functional externally while internally carrying chronic pressure, loneliness, self-criticism, or emotional disconnection.

Therapy that understands cultural context — not just symptoms

Many Asian American clients come to therapy after years of feeling unseen in spaces that misunderstood or oversimplified their experiences. Sometimes therapy has felt overly individualistic, emotionally rushed, or disconnected from the realities of immigration, intergenerational trauma, racism, bicultural identity, or family obligation.

My approach is grounded in attachment theory, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), AEDP, and culturally responsive relational therapy. Together, we explore questions like:

This work is not about blaming your family or rejecting your culture. It is about making space for the full complexity of your experience.

Many Asian American adults carry emotional experiences that were never fully named

You may struggle with:

For some people, there is also grief around what was missing emotionally growing up — grief that can feel confusing when your family also sacrificed so much for you.

Emotional patterns often make sense in context

Many coping strategies that once helped you survive or stay connected may no longer feel sustainable. You may have learned to overfunction emotionally for others, suppress needs to avoid conflict, intellectualize emotions instead of feeling them, or tie your worth to achievement, competence, or self-sacrifice. These adaptations are often deeply understandable. Therapy can help you approach them with compassion rather than shame.

What therapy can help with

Our work may include:

• Exploring how family dynamics, cultural expectations, and attachment experiences shaped your emotional world
• Building greater connection to your own emotional needs, desires, and internal experience
• Understanding perfectionism, people-pleasing, overfunctioning, or emotional suppression through a compassionate and culturally informed lens
• Processing grief, anger, loneliness, shame, or unmet attachment needs that may have never had space to fully exist
• Developing healthier boundaries while navigating guilt, loyalty, and family responsibility
• Processing experiences of racism, marginalization, invisibility, or identity conflict
• Creating a relationship to yourself that feels more authentic, emotionally connected, and internally secure
• Experiencing emotional vulnerability as something survivable, meaningful, and human rather than dangerous or burdensome

This work is not about becoming less connected to your family, culture, or community. It is about creating enough internal space that your life no longer has to be organized entirely around survival, performance, or emotional self-abandonment.

Many Asian American adults are used to explaining, minimizing, or intellectualizing their emotional experiences before they even share them. Therapy can become a space where you do not have to constantly justify why something affected you, why certain family dynamics feel complicated, or why conflicting emotions can exist at the same time.

Therapy in California for Asian American identity, family dynamics, and emotional healing

I provide in-person therapy in my Eagle Rock office in Northeast Los Angeles near Highland Park, Pasadena, South Pasadena, and Glendale, and online therapy throughout California for Asian American adults and couples navigating family dynamics, attachment wounds, identity concerns, perfectionism, emotional disconnection, intergenerational trauma, relationship difficulties, and cultural stress.

Spiritual deconstruction is often much more than an intellectual shift in beliefs. For many people, it affects:

You may feel grief, anger, confusion, relief, loneliness, numbness, fear, or freedom — sometimes all at once. And because spirituality is often deeply relational, questioning or leaving a faith system can feel like losing not only beliefs, but an entire emotional world.

Therapy for people untangling faith, identity, and emotional survival

I work with adults navigating spiritual deconstruction, religious trauma, church hurt, and complicated relationships to faith, spirituality, and religious communities.

This work is also personally meaningful to me.

For many people, deconstruction is not simply "walking away." It is grieving, rebuilding, disentangling, and learning how to trust yourself again.

Religious trauma is often relational trauma

Many people associate religious trauma only with overtly harmful or extreme experiences. But spiritual trauma can also develop in quieter, chronic ways. You may have learned:

• That your emotions or doubts were dangerous
• That your worth depended on obedience, purity, self-sacrifice, or performance
• To distrust your own instincts, body, sexuality, anger, or autonomy
• That disagreement meant rebellion, failure, or moral deficiency
• To prioritize appearing "good" over feeling emotionally authentic
• To suppress grief, confusion, or questions in order to stay connected and accepted

For some people, faith communities also involved spiritual manipulation or control, shame-based teachings, fear of punishment or abandonment, emotionally unsafe leadership, racial, gender, or sexuality-based harm, or pressure to overfunction and remain emotionally compliant. Often, people leave these environments still carrying the emotional survival strategies they learned inside them.

Deconstruction can feel lonely — even when it is freeing

Many people navigating spiritual change feel deeply isolated. You may feel disconnected from family or longtime community, afraid of disappointing people you love, emotionally untethered without familiar certainty or structure, or overwhelmed by the pressure to "figure out what you believe now."

That confusion often makes sense. When belief systems shape your identity from an early age, untangling them can affect nearly every part of your emotional and relational life.

My approach to therapy

My work is grounded in attachment theory, AEDP, emotionally focused therapy, and relational trauma work. I approach spiritual deconstruction with deep respect for complexity. My role is not to push you toward or away from religion, spirituality, or any particular belief system.

Instead, therapy becomes a space to:

• Reconnect with your own emotional experience and internal sense of truth
• Process grief, betrayal, fear, anger, shame, or loss connected to religious experiences
• Understand how spiritual environments shaped your attachment patterns, self-worth, and nervous system
• Rebuild trust in yourself, your emotions, and your ability to make meaning
• Create space for ambiguity without immediately needing certainty
• Explore spirituality, faith, doubt, or identity in ways that feel emotionally safe and authentic to you

I believe healing often happens not through replacing one rigid system with another, but through developing a more compassionate, grounded relationship with yourself.

What therapy can help with

Our work may include:

• Processing religious trauma, church hurt, or spiritually abusive experiences
• Exploring grief related to lost community, identity, certainty, or belonging
• Understanding shame, fear, perfectionism, or self-silencing patterns that developed within faith systems
• Rebuilding connection to your emotions, body, intuition, and personal agency
• Navigating family conflict or relational strain related to faith differences
• Disentangling your authentic values from fear-based conditioning
• Healing attachment wounds connected to authority, emotional safety, or conditional belonging
• Developing a stronger internal sense of self not organized entirely around fear, performance, or external approval

This work is not about telling you what to believe. It is about helping you feel more emotionally whole, internally grounded, and connected to yourself — wherever your spiritual journey leads.

Many people delay therapy because they feel uncertain whether they are "allowed" to question, angry for feeling hurt, or conflicted because parts of their faith still feel meaningful. You do not need a perfectly defined belief system to begin. Therapy can be a space where complexity is welcome.

Therapy in California for spiritual deconstruction and religious trauma recovery

I provide in-person therapy in my Eagle Rock office in Northeast Los Angeles near Highland Park, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Atwater Village, Silverlake, and Glendale, and online therapy throughout California for adults navigating spiritual deconstruction, religious trauma, church hurt, identity shifts, attachment wounds, perfectionism, emotional disconnection, and recovery from spiritually harmful environments.

Many parents are surprised by how emotionally activating parenting can feel.

You may deeply love your child and still find yourself overwhelmed by reactions you don't fully understand — becoming reactive or shut down in moments you wished you hadn't, feeling intense guilt afterward, or noticing patterns emerging that you swore you would never repeat.

Sometimes parents tell me:

Parenting has a way of reawakening old attachment wounds and unmet emotional needs that may have stayed dormant for years. Not because you are failing. Because caregiving relationships naturally touch the deepest attachment systems we carry.

You want to parent differently. And it's harder than you expected.

Many parents today are trying to raise their children differently than they were raised — with more emotional attunement, less reactivity, more connection. And at the same time, you may be noticing how difficult this becomes when your own nervous system feels overwhelmed or triggered.

Healing generational patterns is not simply about learning better parenting techniques. Often, it involves learning how to stay connected to yourself emotionally while also staying connected to your child. These are two very different skills — and both take time.

What we pay attention to in this work

My approach is grounded in attachment theory, AEDP, emotionally focused therapy, and Nonviolent Communication. Rather than looking at parenting struggles through the lens of shame or self-criticism, we get curious about what is happening underneath your reactions.

What happens inside of you when your child is upset, demanding, or dysregulated? What did you learn growing up about emotions, conflict, or repair? Which emotional experiences feel hardest to tolerate or stay present with? These questions matter — because your child's experience of you begins with your experience of yourself.

The goal is not becoming a perfect parent. It is developing the capacity to repair, reconnect, and respond more intentionally — even when parenting feels emotionally hard.

Parenting often activates the parts of us that once felt alone

For many adults, childhood wounds were not always dramatic or obvious. You may have grown up in a family that was loving in many ways while still lacking emotional attunement, repair, or space for vulnerability. A child's crying, defiance, or emotional intensity can unexpectedly touch places in ourselves that once felt overwhelmed, unseen, or emotionally alone.

Therapy can help you approach these moments with compassion rather than shame — and with curiosity rather than self-criticism.

Often, healing begins when you no longer relate to your own struggles with the same harshness you are trying not to pass down.

Therapy in California for parenting triggers, attachment wounds, and generational healing

I provide in-person therapy in my Eagle Rock office in Northeast Los Angeles near Highland Park, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Atwater Village, Silverlake, and Glendale, and online therapy throughout California for parents navigating parenting stress, emotional triggers, attachment wounds, generational trauma, perfectionism, relationship strain, and the emotional complexity of raising children while healing themselves.

Who individual therapy is for

My individual therapy clients tend to be thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive creatives and professionals who want more — more depth in their relationships, more understanding of themselves, more freedom from patterns that no longer serve them.

Common reasons people seek individual therapy with me include:

• High-functioning anxiety, perfectionism, and chronic overthinking
• Avoidant attachment and difficulty trusting or getting close to others
• Asian American identity, intergenerational family wounds, and cultural grief
• Faith deconstruction, religious trauma, and spiritual abuse recovery
• Life transitions, grief, and identity shifts
• Relationship patterns that keep repeating

My approach: AEDP + EFT

I primarily use AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) and Emotionally Focused Therapy principles in individual work. These approaches share a belief that healing happens in the context of safe, attuned relationship — and that our emotions, when gently explored rather than suppressed, are a profound source of wisdom.

Rather than talking about your feelings from a distance, we'll work experientially — noticing what arises in your body, following emotional threads in real time, and allowing your nervous system to have new experiences within the safety of our therapeutic relationship.

What to expect

Sessions are 50 minutes. We typically meet weekly, especially at the beginning, to build consistency and momentum. Over time, we'll find a rhythm that fits your life and your process.

I offer a free 20-minute phone consultation before we begin — a chance for you to ask questions and for both of us to sense whether we're a good fit.

What is EFT?

Emotionally Focused Therapy was developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and is grounded in attachment theory — the understanding that humans have a deep, wired need to feel securely connected to the people they love most. When that bond feels uncertain or threatened, we don't simply think our way through it. We react. We pursue, withdraw, shut down, or explode — not because something is fundamentally wrong with us, but because our nervous systems are doing exactly what they were designed to do.

EFT works by helping couples slow down and look underneath the surface of their conflict. Most couples come in focused on what they're fighting about. EFT gets curious about what's happening emotionally — the fear, longing, shame, or grief that often drives the cycle but rarely gets named directly.

What the research says

EFT has been studied for over 30 years and has one of the strongest evidence bases in couples therapy. Research consistently shows that 70–75% of couples move from distress to recovery, with approximately 90% showing significant improvement. What makes that meaningful is not just the numbers — it's that couples tend to keep those gains over time, rather than returning to old patterns once therapy ends.

How the work actually unfolds

EFT moves through three broad stages, though in practice the work rarely feels that linear. Early on, we spend time mapping the cycle — understanding what each partner does when they feel disconnected, and what that behavior triggers in the other. Most couples are surprised to discover that what looks like a fight about dishes or sex or time is usually a much older question.

From there, the work shifts. As partners begin to feel safer in the room — and with each other — they're often able to share what's underneath the defensiveness or the shutdown. Not because I push them to, but because the emotional ground has become stable enough to hold it. This is where real change happens: not in practicing scripts, but in having genuinely different emotional experiences together.

The later work is about consolidating that change — helping couples understand the new patterns they've built, and trust them enough to use them when things get hard again outside the therapy room.

Who EFT is for

EFT is well-suited for couples navigating emotional disconnection, recurring conflict, painful pursue-withdraw cycles, recovery after infidelity or a major rupture, or relationship strain that has accumulated quietly over years. It's also something couples seek out before things get bad — because they want to build something more secure together.

What brings families to therapy

Relationships between adult children and parents can carry years of emotional history. Many families care deeply about one another while still feeling stuck — in patterns of emotional disconnection, unresolved hurt, criticism and defensiveness, or conflict that escalates before anyone knows how it started. Cultural and generational differences often add another layer: differing expectations around independence, emotional expression, closeness, or what it means to be a good child or a good parent.

Often, family members want connection but no longer know how to reach each other safely.

An emotionally focused approach to family work

My approach to family therapy is grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), attachment theory, and relational therapy. Rather than focusing on communication skills or problem-solving alone, EFT helps families better understand the emotional patterns underneath conflict, distance, or repeated misunderstanding.

In many families, protective roles develop over time: one person pursues while another shuts down; vulnerability gets expressed through anger or withdrawal; family members feel unseen or emotionally alone despite caring deeply about one another. Together, we work to slow these cycles down — creating more emotional understanding, responsiveness, and safety within the relationship.

This work is not about assigning blame or deciding who is right. It is about helping family members better understand each other's emotional experiences so new patterns of connection can become possible.

Family therapy may help with

Families come to this work for many reasons — rebuilding connection after years of emotional distance, navigating cultural or intergenerational differences, improving communication around conflict or boundaries, healing longstanding attachment injuries, supporting one another through caregiving stress or changing roles, and finding more emotionally honest ways of being together.

Family therapy in California for adult children and parents

I provide in-person therapy in my Eagle Rock office in Northeast Los Angeles near Highland Park, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Atwater Village, Silverlake, and Glendale, and online therapy throughout California for adult children and parents seeking greater emotional understanding, healthier communication, and more connected relationships.