Beyond the Couch

This week, Sam is joined by comedian and author Youngmi Mayer to discuss their unique experiences being biracial. While Youngmi grew up in Korea and Saipan and Sam was raised in the U.S., the two connect over memories of being othered both within and outside of their respective families, and delve into how their lives reflect larger forces of immigration, culture and privilege. Youngmi shares how her identity work influenced the writing of her upcoming memoir, "I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying," as well as her mom’s response to including raw details about her childhood and the healing effect of humor.

Youngmi Mayer (she/they) is a standup comedian, content creator and author living in NYC with her son, Mino. 

• Instagram @ymmayer
• TikTok @youngmimayer
• Listen to Hairy Butthole Podcast
• Pre-order I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying
  
  

Thank you to Embrace Change for sponsoring this episode!

• Saying No free resource: https://www.embracechange.nyc/saying-no-beyond-the-couch
• Embrace Change website: https://embracechange.nyc/
• Don’t Stay in Your Lane: The Career Change Guide for Women of Color: https://www.embracechange.nyc/book
• Embrace Change Coaching: https://www.embracechange.nyc/career-coaching-programs
• Follow Embrace Change on social media:
• https://instagram.com/embracechangenyc/
• https://linkedin.com/in/embracechangenyc/
• https://www.youtube.com/embracechangenyc
• https://tiktok.com/@embracechangenyc

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
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Welcome to Season 3 of Beyond the Couch! We're back with a fresh look and a revamped structure. Join us as we dive deep into a new theme each month. With May being both Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re starting off with the theme of identity. This week, Sam, Diana and Christie catch up on how transitions and travel during the break have allowed for their own exploration, and discuss what’s to come this season. Tune in every Wednesday as we explore identity, queerness, body, spirituality, and career with new and returning guests. 

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
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@bridgesmentalhealth
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Content warning: family abuse, sexual abuse, self-harm

This week, Christie, Sam, and Diana get together to reflect on the past year, and share which of the 104(!) podcast episodes they have recorded were some of their favorites. Then, Sam speaks with Heawon Hake about how family secrets can affect and damage a family. Heawon describes the difference between good and bad secrets, which types of secrets must be disclosed, and the types of ego defenses that result from a festering family secret.

Heawon Hake (she/her), LCSW-R, ASAC, is a Korean American psychotherapist with 34 years of experience across clinical, community and nonprofit work. Her newly published memoir, Daughter of Korean Freud, is a heartbreaking and raw account of how her work as a counselor resurfaced childhood wounds and allowed her to connect with freedom and healing in the process.

Connect with Heawon:

• www.koreanamericanpsychotherapist.com
• [email protected]
• Instagram @thewayofkap

Mentioned in this episode:

• Christie’s highlighted episodes: 
  • Intergenerational Trauma & Internal Family Systems with Natalie Hung (Apple / Spotify)
  • Ancestral Healing Work with Chi Young Kim (Apple / Spotify)
  • Racialization and Reconnecting with Ancestors with Natalie Hung (Apple / Spotify)
• Sam’s highlighted episode: 
  • ADHD & Partnerships with Suzanne Eng (Apple / Spotify)
• Diana’s highlighted episodes: 
  • People-Pleasing and Codependency (Apple / Spotify)
  • The Drama Triangle (Apple / Spotify)
  • Stepping Out of the Drama Triangle (Apple / Spotify)

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
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Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
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This week, Diana chats with Dr. Matt Poon about growing up with Asian parents, the pitfalls of perfectionism, and how we can expand our mindset to live a fuller and more balanced life. Dr. Poon shares how he helps clients slow down, reflect, and move away from binary thinking, and how talking openly about struggles or perfectionism can help us all feel supported and less alone.

Dr. Matt Poon (he/him) is a licensed clinical psychologist practicing virtually in NYC. His practice specializes in working with high-performing professionals who struggle with perfectionism, work-life balance, and relationship issues.

Connect with Matt:

• Website: www.drmattpoon.com
• Instagram: @drmattpoon

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
Join our Clinician Community

Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
buymeacoffee.com/bridgesmh

This week, Christie is joined by NYC-based clinical psychologist, Dr. Yun Chen, to discuss what it’s like to have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help mitigate the pain that might come with living with OCD. They explore the ways in which the tenets of ACT can help people live fuller lives through learning to address and cope with negative thought patterns, as well as accept and make the best of their situation. Christie and Dr. Chen also discuss some steps for quieting an especially powerful intrusive thought and how ACT can be applicable or resonant with the Asian population.

Connect with Dr. Yun Chen:

• [email protected]
• dryunchen.com
• Youtube

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
Join our Clinician Community

Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
buymeacoffee.com/bridgesmh

This week, Diana (@therapywithdiana) sits down with Pallavi Ankolekar (@healingwithpallavi) to talk about how growing up as a child of immigrants can the ways we navigate our finances. They discuss how generational differences in attitudes towards work and rest also translate into how we use money for bare necessities vs pleasure. They also talk about the guilt that can arise from using money on ourselves, and how a scarcity mindset often prevents folks with immigrant backgrounds from taking career-related risks or the space and time to slow down.

Pallavi Ankolekar (she/her), LCSW, is a 1.5 generation South Asian therapist currently living in DC but licensed to practice in NY and NJ. She specializes in trauma and incorporate many different modalities including EMDR through an overall relational lens.

Connect with Pallavi:

• Instagram @healingwithpallavi
• https://www.steadynyc.com/
• [email protected]

Mentioned in this episode:

• Ramit Sethi's How to Get Rich on Netflix

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
Join our Clinician Community

Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
buymeacoffee.com/bridgesmh

This week, Sam is rejoined by Minji (our very own Bridges intern) for the second installment of the Grad School Diaries mini-series. Minji shares updates from her second and final year of her program, what it’s been like to see clients for the first time, and the joys and challenges of practicing therapy in the real world. She also opens up about personal lessons she’s learned from being on the other side of the room as the therapist.

After nearly a decade in the creative industry, Minji (she/her) is currently a counseling psychology student at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles. She is especially interested in working with Asian, Asian diasporic/immigrant individuals, couples, and families, as well those navigating interracial relationships or other cultural challenges. She loves chatting about all things mental health, career-changing, and dogs (bonus points if poodles), so don’t hesitate to connect with Minji at [email protected].

Mentioned in the episode:

• Couples Therapy (Showtime)
• Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
Join our Clinician Community

Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
buymeacoffee.com/bridgesmh

This week, Christie sits down with Jiaming Ju to chat about the value and deep wisdom of traditional east Asian medicine. Jiaming shares how she went from her long career as a longevity economist to joining the work of her father at Kun Health. They talk about eastern medicine’s individualized approach to every person, the shortcomings of western views on health and food, and how traditional medicine can become more accessible to younger generations. They also discuss what it means to “eat your feelings, how mental stress shows up as physical ailments, and the power of reclaiming one’s culture while living in western society.

Jiaming Ju is the co-founder of Kun Health, a virtual Traditional Chinese Medicine clinic, which she runs alongside her father Ying Ju. Jiaming grew up watching her father work in his TCM clinic in north-eastern China where the smell of herbs drifted through the air. After building a career leading the world’s largest data collection on senior adults from New York to Singapore, Jiaming enrolled in one of the only dual lingual TCM graduate schools in North America. Connect with Jiaming @kunhealth

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
Join our Clinician Community

Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
buymeacoffee.com/bridgesmh

This week, Sam reunites with Samuel Shin to chat about how people-pleasing shows up specifically for Asian men, and the importance of men tending to old wounds and connecting to their inner worlds. Samuel discusses his methods and techniques for helping Asian men heal, get in touch with their authentic selves, and regain their agency. He shares his thoughts on how masculinity and toxic masculinity have become conflated in the discourse of today, and how he aims to help redefine and reclaim what it means to have healthy masculinity.

Samuel (he/him) is a licensed therapist, certified men’s coach and 2nd generation Korean-American. His education & training was in humanistic-existential, psychodynamic and transpersonal psychologies. However, he left the therapy field in 2018 to become a transformational coach where he has been focusing his work on Asian mental health specifically with Asian men. Samuel works 1:1 with Asian men in his coaching practice, but also runs Asian men’s groups and will be running the first-ever Asian men’s retreat in early 2024! Connect with Samuel @thehealingasian

Mentioned in this episode:

• Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly
• King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
Join our Clinician Community

Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
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This week, Christie talks with Jonathan Blazon Yee, LCSW, about how his work as a psychoanalyst was first inspired by an experience of feeling deeply seen in therapy. Jonathan shares how contemporary psychoanalysis tunes into the relational worlds between client and therapist, and allows one to explore the question of “Who am I?” Together, they explore the importance of addressing differences between oneself and others especially as Asian therapists working with Asian American clients.

Jonathan Blazon Yee (he/him), LCSW, is a relational psychoanalyst who works collaboratively with clients to help them understand the thought patterns, belief systems, and expectations that influence how they move through the world. He completed psychoanalytic training at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, where he currently serves on the faculty. Connect with Jonathan on Bridges.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Asian American Center for Psychoanalysis

 
Bridges Mental Health connects Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian Americans (APISA) with culturally responsive mental health professionals and resources. We hope to make mental health care more accessible and approachable across the Asian diaspora.
Find a Therapist
Join our Clinician Community

Write to us with comments & questions, we'd love to hear from you.
@bridgesmentalhealth
[email protected]
buymeacoffee.com/bridgesmh