Creating space to reflect and heal
I work with you to deepen your understanding of the psychology that maintains your chronic frustrations and relationship issues.
Feeling unfulfilled even though you’ve seemingly checked off all of your goals on paper?
Unsure how to move forward in life?
Extreme mental challenges do not always manifest as a clinical depression diagnosis. Sometimes we just need to speak with someone who understands your unique cultural challenges.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist based in Manhattan
I am Dr. Danny Liu, a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in cultural, relationship, and mental health support.
Why you should work with me:
Exploring the complex landscape of cultural, psychological, and social challenges of Asian Americans has led me on my journey of becoming a therapist. I have over a decade’s worth of clinical experience and have worked with clients ranging from executives, founders, and tech professionals.
My approach with my clients is to help explore and resolve blind spots, deeper fears, and core beliefs that are holding you back from living life with greater fulfillment and self direction.
Clinical Areas of Focus
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Having worked with Asian American founders, executives, and entrepreneurs, a pattern that I often notice is that the nature of their work pushes them to their mental and emotional limits. Compounding intense responsibilities at work, balancing work relationships, personal relationships, and attending to your own self care, it is easy to see why founders and executives often feel overwhelmed and burned out.
In many instances, the most difficult part of being a founder or executive is managing your own psychology.
When we are mentally taxed to our limits, our insecurities (e.g., internalized limiting beliefs, fear of failure) are often easily triggered and unearthed.
Unlike executive coaches, I can provide support at a deeper level of targeting your core beliefs, thought patterns, belief systems that influence how you process and make decisions both professionally and interpersonally.
Areas where I specialize in:
Identifying limiting core beliefs that shape decision making and thought processes
Managing work stress that inhibit you from being emotionally “present” at home/outside of work
Increasing mental and emotional resilience working through professional setbacks
Managing burnout, motivation level, uncertainty, and procrastination
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You may find yourself constantly chasing the next step on the corporate ladder, achieving in order to prove your worth, and constantly managing how you’re perceived while balancing the weight of expectations from your family.
But over time, this can lead to a deep sense of exhaustion, disconnection, and apathy from your work, your relationships, even yourself. Burnout doesn’t always look like a sudden collapse; sometimes it’s a slow loss of joy, motivation, and purpose.
Areas where I can support:
Navigating the push and pull of what society, culture, and others tell us/expect us to be doing, versus pursuing what you find meaningful and fulfilling. Working through Filial Guilt.
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
Processing and navigating work pressures, systematic racism and discrimination at work place.
Lack of fulfillment in the corporate world.
Identity and Self-Worth outside productivity and corporate world.
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Do you find yourself constantly pleasing people and putting others needs before your own? Do you keep encountering the same dating issues and patterns, like chasing after emotionally unavailable people?
In many moments of the journey of life, we have to stop and reflect in order to ultimately get to where we want to be. I provide a space to help address old relational wounds and current relationship frustrations.
Areas where I specialize in:
Developing different perspectives towards managing interpersonal relationships.
Values, setting healthy boundaries and developing effective relationship communication skills.
Constantly feeling like a burden to others, feelings of deep shame.
Attachment style and secure dating. Dating burnout.
Managing loneliness
Root issues associated with people pleasing
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Growing up with immigrant parents that have grown up with a culture different than your own leads to its own distinct set of challenges, ranging from self identity development issues to anxiety and depression to work through later in life as adults.
Areas where I specialize in:
Navigating the push and pull of what society, culture, and others tell us/expect us to be doing, versus pursuing what you find meaningful and fulfilling.
Working through Filial Guilt.
Managing cultural and intergenerational conflicts with parents
Healing from emotionally unavailable parents/narcissistic parents
Intergenerational Trauma
FAQ
How long does therapy take?
Often our deepest insecurities, fears, and core beliefs were derived from the first 18 years of our lives.
Think: 365 days x 18 years of relational attitudes, beliefs and assumptions that were modeled to us by our caretakers and other experiences in our upbringing environment. For example, if you were raised in a household where your emotional needs were often met with disappointment, overtime you will likely develop a generalized assumption (core belief) that “ others cannot meet my emotional needs, so what is the point of help seeking, talking about it, or working through issues with someone? ”
In therapy, I utilize the therapy relationship to reshape these deeply ingrained relational attitudes. 12 months of treatment would be considered short-term. Many of my clients work with me for multiple years. It is through the aggregate process of therapy contact that enduring change occurs.
As I am making a commitment to you in your healing journey, 1x a week therapy cadence (excluding holiday breaks) is the requirement in order to work with me. This frequency is necessary in order to reconstruct old relational attitudes stuck in the past, and to promote healthier ways of relating to oneself and others, down to the neurological pathway level.
References
Relapse after cognitive behavior therapy of depression: potential implications for longer courses of treatment. (1992). American Journal of Psychiatry, 149(8), 1046–1052. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.149.8.1046
Ali, S., Rhodes, L., Moreea, O., McMillan, D., Gilbody, S., Leach, C., Lucock, M., Lutz, W., & Delgadillo, J. (2017). How durable is the effect of low intensity CBT for depression and anxiety? Remission and relapse in a longitudinal cohort study. Behaviour research and therapy, 94, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2017.04.006
Leichsenring, F., & Rabung, S. (2008). Effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. JAMA, 300(13), 1551–1565. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.300.13.1551. This meta-analysis examined 23 studies involving over 1,000 patients and found that long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (lasting at least one year or 50 sessions) was significantly more effective than shorter-term therapies in treating complex mental disorders, including personality disorders and chronic conditions.
Available for in person 1-on-1 sessions
Based in Manhattan, I am a firm believer in face to face interactions as I am able to achieve deeper results. Some things about the therapy process can only truly be understood and unpacked in an in person setting, which is free of distractions and delays from digital interaction.
Talking in person can build a more direct and personal connection to allow for more thorough and detailed assessments as we start your healing journey.
But I understand not everyone can meet in person, so I also offer virtual therapy sessions.
Affiliations
Press
Corresponding to the Monterey Park Tragedy, I am grateful to ABC News Sacramento to be interviewed in their segment on raising awareness of the barriers for those in the AAPI community seeking mental health support, & to provide resources so that people can begin to heal.