Takeaway: You deserve a therapy space that celebrates and understands your cultural identity while also recognizing you as the expert of your own experience. My therapy room can be that space. As an Asian American therapist of mixed race ancestry in Los Angeles, I help fellow Asian Americans feel heard and supported as they navigate both challenges and successes. Reach out today to learn more.
Asian American Therapist Los Angeles | Dr. Noah Lau Branson
Culture of any kind is the water we swim in. We don't always realize how it influences our thinking, behavior, way of seeing the world, relationships, and so much more.
Asian Americans are still the group least likely to access mental health resources in the United States. This is for multiple reasons: specific asian cultural norms, shame culture, immigrant culture, and other cultural habits deprioritize spoken communication. Asian and Asian Americans need mental health resources more than ever. With the rise of Asian hate in 2020, economic stressors, immigrant stressors, and the political climate becoming increasingly polarized, there are more societal stressors on Asian American populations than ever before.
Having Asian therapists who understand the unique elements of Asian mental health is critical. In this post, I will walk through the distinctive aspects of working with an Asian therapist, specific aspects of Asian American mental health, and how we can get you the support you need.
Meet Dr. Noah Lau Branson | Asian American Therapist in Los Angeles
My name is Dr. Noah Lau Branson. I am an Asian American (specifically chinese american), biracial licensed clinical psychologist who provides therapy and counseling services in Pasadena, California. I was born and raised in California, and I identify as Hapa (half Chinese/half Caucasian).
I have sent my life in multicultural and diverse communities and thus work to integrate the various worlds I am a part of and have encountered. More specifically, I spent my childhood going to Hawaii every summer to visit my Popo and Gong Gong. I lived life with them and learned their stories of living through WWII, trying to make their immigrant dreams a reality in Texas, only to face racial forces in Texas, and then saw my Gong Gong die of anxiety and depression. I have witnessed the love of my Popo cutting up fresh fruit for me or my Gong Gong driving us to the beach. Yet I have also witnessed my mother wrestle with culturally-normed misogyny, intergenerational trauma, and a complex spiritual history. I share these parts of my personal experiences to help normalize and name stories that we Asian Americans hold. While the Asian American experience is not monolithic, it does have some common through lines.
My approach to therapy pulls on Relational Psychodynamic Theory, Emotion Focused Theory, and Internal Family Systems Theory. I pull on several different theories because humans are complex. The name of the theories isn't that important but essentially what it means is in my practice, we focus on healing rather than just symptom management. While modern medicalized western psychology has made significant contributions to our understanding of mental health, it is often too focused on the individual over the systemic, it doesn't pay attention to other sources of wisdom and meaning-making, and it has regularly missed BIPOC communities.
While Asian and Asian American people in particular often want quick results to make their pain or symptoms stop, I balance working to decrease symptoms and journeying with you into deeper wholeness. I do work with you to lessen the suffering that comes with depression, anxiety, trauma, or other difficulties. But I also collaborate with you to understand and heal the roots of your pain so it doesn't just come back in a different way.
This means sifting through things such as generational trauma, the immigration history of your family, how race/ethnicity/culture shaped your identity and experience, how spirituality and religion impacted you, and how love, fear, and anger were expressed in your family, among many other things. We work to hold a holistic picture of your story so you can embrace all of who you are, both the pain and the joy. This will ultimately help you be more at home within yourself, which will allow you to access deep resources within yourself in your community. This will enable you to walk through life holding the tension between hope and the realities of life's challenges.
Therapy services I offer
Let me first introduce some of the specific services I offer in my practice. To all of these forms of therapy, I bring my extensive experience as a therapist as well as my lived experience and cultural sensitivity/curiosity to create a competent and safe space of healing.
Individual Therapy
I provide individual therapy for late adolecents and adults (anyone over 16) dealing with a range of issues, including depression, self-esteem, anxiety, complex identity, trauma, racial trauma, intergenerational trauma, religious trauma, life transitions, relationships, men's issues, and family of origin issues, to name a few. While I have experience working with individuals of all backgrounds, I specialize in working with Asian Americans and mixed race individuals. Therapy with me looks different client to client because I work to co-create a therapy space that helps you, as a unique individual, heal. Individual therapy is a relationally safe space where you can learn tools to cope with what feels stuck and painful, but also integrate and live all parts of your self and your story. We ultimately work to bring healing so you can discover your significant capacities, values, and gifts to live an authentic, genuine, and integrated life.
Couples Therapy
Romantic relationships are both loving and beautiful as well as painful and disorienting. The support of others is often needed to untangle the conundrum and mystery of what it is to merge two lives together. For Asian Americans, this can involve complex family dynamics and expectations in addition to the dynamic between the two of you. In therapy, I work to create a space where each of you feels listened to and understood. This will help reset your nervous systems, promote a sense of safety, and increase each of your capacities to be reflective and communicate. We will map out the unique patterns of your relationship, naming your strengths, identifying where you tend to get stuck, and understanding how you trigger each other, so you can develop the capacity to communicate and connect in deeper ways.
Pre-marital and Pre-engagement Therapy
Engagement and marriage are amazing opportunities for growth and transformation. Some couples come in wanting help figuring out if a relationship is right for them long term. Others have committed to each other but want to gain insights into various factors that come with weaving their worlds together, such as family of origin, communication style, religion, raising children, holidays, and sex. Both addressing relationship issues and articulating points of connection and resilience at this point in your relationship can set you up for success down the road.
Benefits of working with an Asian therapist
There are several benefits to working with an Asian American therapist for Asian American clients. Asian American therapists can more readily understand the nuances of Asian, collectivist culture, the immigrant experience, the negative affects of the model minority myth, and other unique tensions.
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An Asian therapist not only has clinical experience with Asian culture, but also has lived experience. While there is great diversity and nuance within the Asian American experience, there are also many shared experiences you will not have to explain to someone who has experienced similar dynamics and culture. For instance, the experience of having clashing values with your Asian parents, the quietly painful experience of being treated like a perpetual foreigner in your hometown, the self-doubt that can come from experiencing racism, discrimination, or micro-aggressions, or the performance pressure pervasive in Asian American families.
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Asian American culture is subtle and nuanced. If a therapist isn't looking for those subtleties, it's easy for them to miss significant dynamics contributing to your struggles or needs. For example, they might not understand the communal mindset of Asian cultures and see your family relationships as dependent or lacking boundaries. They may also miss the complexity of the intergenerational dynamics of Asian immigrant families or the challenges of growing up being told that the best version of yourself is a version that others have defined for you––your parents/family on the one hand, and dominant white culture on the other. This is truly a balance. Having a therapist who can recognize and name these subtle dynamics can both validate your experiences and bring added clarity.
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The common therapy approaches today were created and studied in Western contexts. Many of these approaches don't work as effectively in Asian contexts. Non-Asian therapists may suggest interventions that are too direct and don't account for the implicit communication common in Asian culture. They may also focus too much on the individual and overlook important communal and relational dynamics. Non-Asian therapists may also center verbal expression as the primary pathway forward, ignoring more holistic, embodied, and nonverbal means of growth, communication, and healing.
Many Asian immigrant families carry unspoken intergenerational trauma and pain, and it can be helpful to process and work through this pain with someone who is not only trauma-informed, but understands the nuances of these complex experiences.
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As a biracial therapist, I also have the unique perspective of both being an insider and outsider in Asian culture. I both identify as Asian American and am able to observe Asian American experiences from a bit of distance, having had to interpret the differences I experienced within my own family and beyond. This means that I have the unique opportunity to support you amidst your challenges, offering compassion and understanding from knowing your world intimately, but also offering helpful insight from being slightly outside of your world.
FAQs about working with an Asian therapist in Los Angeles
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Many common therapy approaches, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), have been shown to be less effective with Asian American populations. While CBT can be helpful for symptom reduction, it has limits in addressing the implicit communication and collectivistic cultural dynamics of Asian American mental health concerns.
Even within the Asian American population, therapy needs will differ from person to person. The best therapy for Asian Americans is one that honors your cultural background, cultural differences, and with a therapist who practices cultural humility. This means a therapist who holds the complexity of shame culture, implicit communication, and different expressions of things such as anger, grief, and love. Ideally, this would be a professional therapist who has experience working with Asian American clients. Lastly, because many Asian cultures are high context cultures (less verbally explicit), this requires a therapy that pays attention to how feelings show up in a client's body or get expressed in unique ways. Mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies have also been shown to be helpful for Asians.
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The overwhelming majority of therapists in the US are white, and the majority of therapists, regardless of their ethnicity, are trained in Western modalities of therapy. The community of Asian therapists is currently growing, with California currently having well over a thousand therapists of Asian descent. This representation is important to continue to normalize mental health services for Asian Americans, who are still the least likely group to seek therapy, even when acute psychological distress is present. It takes a particular courage for Asian Americans to seek out and explore therapy because issues like depression, grief, or anxiety aren't always discussed openly.
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A therapist is a general term for a professional trained to provide mental health support through various forms of talk therapy. This title can include psychologists, social workers, counselors, and marriage and family therapists. Therapists help clients manage and explore emotional difficulties, stress, and mental health conditions using therapeutic skills and techniques. Their educational background typically includes a master’s degree, and they are licensed according to their specific field.
In contrast, a psychologist is a specific type of therapist who holds a doctoral degree in psychology (PhD or PsyD). Psychologists have more extensive training and are trained in both therapy and psychological assessment. Psychologists also receive extensive training in research and psychological theory, leading them to often teach, consult, supervise, do assessments, as well as do talk therapy. Due to their extra years of training, they often work with more complex cases and a wider variety of clients.
Find healing with the help of an Asian American therapist in Los Angeles.
I would love to support you in your journey of finding health and wholeness that honors your Asian identity, culture, and roots, versus not honoring them or even pathologizing them. As an Asian American therapist in the Los Angeles area, I want to keep providing resources for any asian or asian american person looking for healing and wholeness. Looking for a therapist can often leave you feeling overwhelmed on top of whatever is bringing you to therapy in the first place.
Please reach out for a free phone consultation. I commit to helping you find the best space to heal, whether it is with us or another healing space. All the best on your journey.