Our Mission

The Story

When I was a young therapist, I spoke with dozens of therapists in San Diego to find my own personal therapist. Over a decade later, I still remember one of the therapists telling me that because there were Black classmates in her graduate school, she was qualified to be a culturally sensitive and compassionate therapist to a person of color. Needless to say, I did not continue working with that therapist. While thankfully the mental health landscape has changed in the intervening years, it remains the reality that people of marginalized communities continue to be harmfully misunderstood by therapists. Even as recently as a few years ago, I vulnerably shared at an IFS training about the intergenerational effects of war and famine. In response, one of the training facilitators simply stated that I “hadn’t done the work” to heal.

We all exist in a web that connects us to ourselves, each other, and the communities that surround us. None of us are immune from the effects of existing in such interconnected systems. And I believe, especially for those of us with marginalized identities, therapy needs to honor that. But unfortunately, many therapy spaces do not, and they can become a continuation of colonization and erasure of people of marginalized communities. The standard of “wellness” and “health” continue to be based on standards of the dominant community, erasing or pathologizig wellness as it is understood in different cultures.

There’s also no getting around the fact that therapy itself is a western construct. Historically, in many Asian communities, healing happened in communities, not behind closed doors with just one individual. But that doesn’t mean therapy isn’t for us. There is a place for us to exist in the mental health space, we just need to create it and claim it. And that’s the mission of Full Well Therapy.

It is genuinely such a privilege and pleasure for me to share what I’ve created with you. Thank you for being here, and for being part of the mission.

-Ji Eun