About Mike

I am a generation 1.5 Chinese - Indonesian immigrant from Indonesia. I have a blended family of 4, with two boys, a 19 month-old and an almost 9 year old. I’m in my second career as a therapist, after spending about 7 years working as an engineer for Intel. After college I moved to Portland, OR, then Singapore, then the San Francisco Bay area, where I met my wife and became convinced that the Midwest was the new “hip-place.” She offered Duluth. I countered with Minneapolis. She took me up on that.

What’s with all the energy in setting up a web property for TherapistsNotworking? It doesn’t look like there’s much money in that (I mean, look at the name).

In my last career, we focused a LOT on scaling. This doesn’t mean that I want a lunch with 1000 people, but I envision this as a bigger thing - a place for therapists to counter the loneliness that is inherent in being of service to people day in and day out. I want it to be a place of solace and support to hard-working therapists. This website is a navigation buoy for people so they can always find Us.

Isn’t this just lunch and a drink in nice restaurants once a quarter?

Maybe. But I hope it can be more in the future. A referral source for people. A place where we can attract speakers. A place where we can learn from other industries like marketing or IT. A place where we can have honest and heartfelt conversations about the unique difficulties of being professional listeners. A place where we can find a shoulder pad to rest our head on.

But I just want a drink and lunch.

Great! We have great things for you here.

Why were you an engineer?

I was raised to believe that I could “do anything my parents put my mind to.” So while I spent a lot of time pushing hard in academics, I rarely questioned the direction. The family expectation was that I would be a doctor. (In some Asian families, being a doctor, lawyer or engineer are acceptable. This was not one of those families). In college, I realized that I didn’t want to graduate with a bachelors in Cellular Molecular Biology, nor did I want to become a doctor. I remembered the excitement I had for engineering and transferred to electrical engineering. My thinking was that it was good enough so that I could get a job, make a living, and plot out my next steps when I had more differentiation and resources. After beginning my job, I soon forgot to take note of my own desires and adopted the corporate metrics Intel had for me. Again, I forgot that I had an internal compass and allowed others to decide my direction.

Why did you get into therapy?

I had a wonderful experience in my own therapy addressing my own depression and feeling of aimlessness. Therapy was the cure for my ailments and therapy as a career was the cure for finding my own agency and autonomy. I thought that this was a worthy and honest occupation that could have a future.

What type of therapy do you do?

I work mostly with couples. I predominantly use EFT therapy, though I’m also a Gottman level-2 clinician. I also work with individuals on their traumas, and market it as a solo-relational repair therapy. For individuals, I utilize EMDR in an attachment framework to help with trauma.

Why Couples?

I’ve seen people close to me spend decades fighting with each other. I feel as a field, we really gravitate towards things we’ve seen in our own lives, and this is no different. I can feel the impact that I have and find it immensely satisfying to help a couple create change on this level.

What About Couples Work Is Exciting?

There is also an urgency with couples work that is absent from most individual therapy. It’s a different feel, and I love the feeling of a session when two people are able to finally see the other’s perspective.

What’s with the orange A-aron button at the top of each page on the website?

Well, I originally saw this it's just a funny skit to relieve people of their daily stress. It's a Key and Peele sketch though, so there's always something underneath. Then I remembered that I had a six grade teacher who told an African American student he pronounced his name wrong because it didn't sound "respectful" to himself. His name was Dedrick, and the teacher refused to pronounce his name “Dead-rick” but instead told the student that she would call him by a more respectful pronunciation of “Deed-rick.”

It’s mind-blowing in retrospect that she did this. The level of arrogance and disregard she had to tell him he pronounced his name wrong seems otherworldly. but it happened and it was wrapped in the social nicety of saying it was “for his own self-respect.” That’s a cherry on top. Oh, and here was another cherry on top. My 11 year-old self was complicit in that weird quasi-neo-colonialist patronizing. I too thought it was great she was standing up for his “self respect.” Not my best work.