There's a chair in my supervisor's office that I can't sit in while I'm doing my sessions. It's a comfortable chair, the kind that gently sends your body backward the moment you settle into it. My supervisor sits in it during his own sessions. But every time I have a session there, I find myself moving the other chair into place, the one without the deep recline. I noticed something else along the way. In my own sessions, my default posture is forward. Not anxious or perched, just oriented...

What Is Complex Trauma? When most people think about trauma, they picture an event, like a car accident or a natural disaster, something dramatic. Trauma, in the popular imagination, has a shape, a timestamp, a name, something you can point to and say, that's where it happened. Clinicians sometimes call these "Big T" traumas. They are real and serious, and they cause a great deal of suffering, but they are not the only kind of trauma there is. In my clinical work, I encounter a different kind...

For many high-achieving Asian Americans, professional success has come with an unexpected cost: emotional numbness. There's a disconnection between outer accomplishments and inner experience, like watching your own life from behind glass. This isn't a personal failing. It's often a survival strategy shaped by cultural expectations and the "model minority" myth. What helped you succeed may now be keeping you from truly living. If this resonates with you, know that reconnecting with your...