Asian American Psychologist’s End-of-Year Reflections: Things My Clients Taught Me in 2025
Looking Back in Order to Move Forward
Over the last two years, I’ve started deliberately sitting down to do quarterly and annual reflections on how my practice is doing, and how I’m doing, clinically, professionally, personally. Left to my own devices, I probably never would have started such a wise habit but luckily, my friends at Location Independent Therapists provide meetings to support therapists like myself with this.
When you’ve been practicing as long as I have, sometimes ideas/themes/challenges seem to coalesce for different people in my caseload at around the same time. This makes sense because a lot of what is discussed in therapy is pretty universal. And occasionally, there are events in the world that impact us that we can’t help but bring to the therapy space (e.g., Trump’s presidency in the US). In any case, I benefit when this happens because the way these themes develop with one individual might help me provide perspective and support with another individual struggling with that theme.
Another interesting reflection is that sometimes I’m learning things about life, sometimes life in general or about my own personal life, as I do this work with others. This is why I want to share some of the wisdom I’ve gained from working with my clients this year. Of course, these are quite general and they’re not from any specific client’s sessions.
Feelings are not “truth;” they are physiological reactions that arise for many different reasons and our job is to interpret them as accurately and helpfully as possible.
One of the most liberating realizations in therapy is understanding that feelings, while valid and important, are not always accurate reflections of reality. Our emotional responses are shaped by past experiences, present stressors, physical states, and interpretive habits. This means they can sometimes mislead us about what's actually happening in the moment. For instance, when we're anxious, our minds often generate worst-case scenarios that feel true but aren't necessarily so. When we're angry, we might attribute malicious intent where there was only carelessness or miscommunication. The work isn't to invalidate or minimize our feelings, but to get curious about them: What is this emotion trying to tell me? What choices do I have in how I interpret this feeling? This kind of emotional literacy allows us to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively, and to distinguish between what we feel and what we know.
Even when it's not our fault, it's our responsibility to manage our emotions, relationships, and responses to the past.
This is perhaps one of the hardest truths in therapy, and one that my clients courageously embody. We don't get to choose the families we're born into, the traumas we experience, or the imperfect societies we live in. None of that is our fault. But we do get to choose how we respond to those realities now. Taking responsibility doesn't mean blaming ourselves for what happened or for mistakes we’ve made along the way. It means recognizing that we have agency in how we heal, how we show up in relationships, and how we break cycles that were handed down to us. It's the difference between staying stuck in justified anger and moving toward the life we actually want.
Bravery is just as important as safety.
Therapy often emphasizes creating safety. People need to feel secure enough to explore painful experiences and vulnerable emotions. But what I've learned from my clients this year is that safety alone doesn't create the change they want. Growth requires bravery: the willingness to have difficult conversations, to sit with uncomfortable feelings, to try new behaviors even when they feel awkward or scary. Sometimes the bravest thing is setting a boundary with a parent. Sometimes it's choosing to be vulnerable with a partner when past relationships taught you that vulnerability leads to hurt. This concept aligns with what educators Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens (2013) describe as "brave spaces"—environments that balance psychological safety with the courage to engage in challenging dialogue and growth. Safety gives us the container, but bravery is what moves us forward within it. The two need to be held in careful balance because with too much emphasis on safety, we stay small. WIth too much emphasis on boldness, we can re-traumatize ourselves or engage in behaviors that feel too scary for us. My clients have shown me what it looks like to honor both.
Conflict is a part of any healthy relationship.
For many people, especially those raised in families where conflict was either explosive or completely avoided, the idea that conflict belongs in healthy relationships feels counterintuitive. But my clients have taught me that the absence of conflict often signals the absence of honesty, boundaries, or authentic engagement. Conflict doesn't mean screaming matches or contempt; it means the willingness to navigate differences, to speak up when something doesn't feel right, to repair when harm has occurred. It means trusting that the relationship can withstand disagreement and that both people can advocate for their needs without abandoning each other. The goal isn't to eliminate conflict but to learn how to move through it with respect, curiosity, and care. Relationships that never have conflict are often relationships where one or both people have disappeared. The healthiest relationships I've witnessed this year have been the ones where people show up fully—including when they disagree.
Mental health journeys are not one-size-fits-all.
Sometimes people come to therapy with clear ideas about what the issues are and what they need to change. Sometimes those understandings shift entirely as the therapeutic process unfolds. This is not only normal, it's often where the deepest work happens. What continues to strike me, year after year, is how the same presenting concern can require completely different approaches and resolutions for different individuals. Two people might both come in struggling with anxiety or difficulties setting boundaries with family, but the path forward for each of them will be shaped by their unique history, cultural context, relational patterns, and what feels true and possible in their own lives. That’s because when I work with individuals in the Asian diaspora, family dynamics are often layered with intergenerational conflict, migration experiences, the impacts of documented status, historical trauma, and cultural expectations that don't translate neatly into Western therapeutic frameworks. There is no template per se for healing these complexities. But I’ve found careful, collaborative work on understanding what this particular person needs in this particular moment to be very fruitful. Beyond content, the therapeutic relationship itself is irreplicable. The focus, pace, tone, chemistry, and atmosphere that develops between therapist and client is entirely unique to that pairing. Some relationships are warm and conversational; others are more structured and reflective. Some clients need gentle encouragement; others thrive with direct challenge. This uniqueness is part of what makes the work so meaningful and also what makes endings bittersweet when the work is done.