Andrea Yuen-Sing Chan, LCSW
Message from Andrea Yuen-Sing
Welcome! I hope you feel good about taking the first step in reaching out, which is often the biggest hurdle to overcome. I understand this often comes with substantial anxiety about how this process can or will work, so I look forward to easing your mind once we meet. My experience has been that most people feel sharp relief even after one session and I want to hear and learn about you and the challenges or difficulties you are facing.
About Andrea Yuen-Sing's practice
Weekdays 9am - 5pm
$$$
Sliding scale
Directive
Reflective
In-person available: Yes
Virtual available: No
Anxiety
Career-Related Stress
Dating
Life Transitions
Procrastination
Romantic Life
Social Life
Out of network providers
NY
Why state matters
Get to Know Andrea Yuen-Sing
"Yuen has a warm, engaging presence in the room, and has helped me learn to trust my own feelings more and more. I've begun dating again after a bad break-up and Yuen has shed a lot of insight into my relationship patterns with men. I would say that our long-term work, which has been emotionally difficult, was made more manageable in the sessions by the empathy she communicated. Most important, I have learned that I have much for control over my problems than I once thought."
AT, Client
"I was really nervous to start therapy as I hadn't ever done it before, but Yuen made me feel comfortable and I began to enjoy going every week, even though sometimes it was hard to talk about things. I got used to it, though, and after awhile I knew that even when I didn't feel like going, things would feel better afterwards. I would definitely recommend Yuen as she helped me sort through a lot of stuff that was going on in my mind."
KW, Client
"Having Yuen as a colleague has been a consistently rewarding experience and one which has improved my own work. During the past two years, I have witnessed her passion to clinical work and her drive not only to improve her clinical skills but to share her knowledge with others, and I have benefited from these qualities greatly. Yuen shows an immense level of dedication and warmth to her clients, and her peers benefit from this same warmth and dedication."
LW, Colleague
What is the best part of the work for you?
Taking part in someone’s healing process is one of the most rewarding experiences a person can witness. I am eternally in awe at the power of the human spirit to prevail, often in the face of unspeakable tragedy, and to see this up close within the room is nothing short of reverence- difficult to even put into words, but it is deeply transformative.
Where did you work before going into private practice?
I worked in fashion and advertising as a casting director. It was a job that also involved humans and their stories, so it’s not a huge leap to find myself pivoting into a career in which the human story is centered within my work.
What led you to become a mental healthcare practitioner?
I have a deep existential desire to make the world a better place, and I can think of nothing more meaningful than working with people to become their best selves. I strongly believe the work we do in the consulting room causes a ripple effect, such that those who are affected by us, will go about and effect change on others.
What is unique about the work you do, or how have you found your work to be different than your colleagues'?
My experience as a therapist is filtered through the experience of being a bi-racial, bi-cultural cisgender woman, but I also think deeply about attachments to early caregivers, trauma, and relational patterns that often keep us stuck. I strike a good balance of empathy and warmth but I believe strongly in being honest and direct in order to advance the client’s potential. Often that comes in the form of encouraging action by facing our fears, and developing a client’s capacity to tolerate and metabolize frustration and pain through the safety of the therapeutic space.
Please share 2-3 anonymized examples of how the work can play out and/or look in the room so that I can form a visual or narrative of what to expect.
A client is having difficulties managing an overbearing mother-in-law, who often uses emotional manipulation such as guilt trips, crying, and other things to get her way. While the client’s husband is understanding and intends to stand up to the mother, he seldom is able to, and the entire family eventually caves to the mother-in-law’s demands. This causes the client considerable resentment towards her husband, which seems to have insinuated itself into their lives such that they now fight and bicker more than ever. On top of all of that, they just had a baby and this has heightened the stakes. In this case, I would work with my client on a two part strategy. One would be to help her consider what her boundaries are with both her husband and her mother-in-law. My feeling is her resentment comes from her inability to effect change on her husband’s behavior, but meanwhile she is also failing to enforce her own boundaries with him. The expectation that the husband should stand up to his mother on my client’s behalf forces her husband to “choose” who he loves more, which can escalate tensions for him no matter what he does. He is in a double bind. Better to find a way for my client to live with the real situation and effect change through managing her own resentment, such that her husband feels he must set his own boundaries with his mother in order to maintain equilibrium for himself and his family. So I might say “when your mother-in-law makes requests or pursues a manipulative tone that are outside what you feel is reasonable, how can you best set boundaries with your husband that will mitigate your resentment?” Of course, setting boundaries is very difficult because they are counterintuitive, at first they don’t feel good, they feel restrictive. This is often because people believe that more open, fluid boundaries indicate that we have been designated as special, as this person will do anything for us. On the contrary, boundaries are one thing that allow us to feel safe, and are absolutely essential in healthy intimacy, so establishing firm boundaries is really an act of love! Of course, too strict boundaries can also be a defense from getting close to someone, so one must walk the tightrope between the two (which a therapist does every day!). For my client, the answer might lie in simple strategies such as saying things like, “I’d love to be a part of the family activity with my mother-in-law, but I don’t want to do this particular thing because I am afraid it will make me angry and resentful, and I want to feel good about our relationship. So I think I will sit this one out, unless we can find something that we all agree on.” With time, this strategy really works!
Is there ever a time when you would encourage me to leave or graduate? Or how do I know when it's time to end or move on, or time to stay and explore more?
It can be difficult for a therapist to say good-bye to a client, but when therapeutic goals and potential are achieved, then it is time to graduate and take those newfound skills out into the world. Sometimes, people come to therapy because they want to figure out how to confront a difficult situation at work, or break-up with a partner, or ask for a promotion, or find some clarity around a toxic family situation, and when we achieve those goals, it is reasonable time to end therapy. Plus you can always come back if needed!
How will our relationship be different than relationships I have with friends/loved ones?
A therapist is trained to listen differently than a good friend or a loved one. We are unbiased and neutral, whereas friend’s often aren’t, and our job is to look for troubling relational patterns, and challenge negative or conflicting beliefs that we hold onto because they feel comfortable. A friend will listen and that can be meaningful, but therapists have a stake in helping you achieve your potential.
How should I prepare for my first session with you?
Take a deep breath and get yourself to my office, and we will figure out the rest of it together.
How participatory are you during sessions?
I am actively attuned with my clients such that I hope to know when a client needs more active responses and direction in sessions, and when it is better for the client to take the lead. In general though, I am an active participant, providing insight, interpretations, and feedback where and when I feel they are helpful.
How much do you share about yourself during our time together and why?
I share judiciously, and only as much as is needed to move the work along. Mostly I want to protect a neutral therapeutic space so that the client can use it as freely as possible without being self-conscious. But I am not rigidly withholding of information, so I tend to ask a lot of questions before I disclose things about myself. And after working together for a while, clients tend to know more about therapists than we realize.
How long should I commit to being in therapy, at least in the beginning?
It depends on the goals of each particular client. If a client comes in with chronic anxiety or depression, it can take a little longer to unpack the underlying reasons than it might for someone who wants to address a specific topic, like a toxic work environment. Some people come for 3-6 months, while others stay for years.
How do you approach diversity in the room or working with clients who may come from a different background than you?
Diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are cornerstones of my practice, having lived through through much of them myself. I think having to live outside dominant social groups will naturally influence the way in which we see and experience the world. It is not only an internal process, but an external, objective, and pervasive sense of otherness that can accumulate within our physical and mental bodies, and I want to understand what this means in particular to each and every client I see. I practice from a culturally competent place, such that I am highly sensitive about the kinds of questions I ask, and if I don’t know, I will seek outside consultation to lessen the burden on my patients in the room. My work is heavily informed by anti-racist, critical race, and feminist theories, and diversity of age, race, political viewpoint, gender, sexuality is of utmost importance to me.
How can you tell if I am feeling stuck, unseen, or unheard?
People use more than just words to communicate their inner world, and as a trained therapist, I “listen” with my whole body. That means watching body language, facial expressions, and most of all, my own instincts and feelings towards the patient to try to understand their world. If I am feeling stuck, it’s likely that the client is as well, and it is my experience that it is not necessarily the client who impedes progress. Therapists are human beings too, and despite our professional experience and the neutrality we bring with us into our work, we can and do stumble. What is important is that we recognize these impasses, and use them therapeutically to enhance communication and to bring more closeness and healthy intimacy to the relationship. Our clients are our best resources and our most important collaborators, so I check in often with my clients to make sure they are feeling understood and heard. If they are not, then I work diligently to understand what is impeding that progress.
How can you tell if I am benefiting from working with you?
I check in a lot about this! But a client should feel mostly have the feeling of being “seen” or “known” which in an of itself can be therapeutically beneficial. To be perfectly frank though, people don’t always feel better right away, and sometimes they feel more intensely than they have before, which can be experienced as “bad.” But therapy is work, and it can be painful, and it is a giant leap of faith. So sometimes we need to feel worse to feel better. I think therapy is helping so long as you don’t feel bored or stuck, or like you must censor yourself because of a fear of judgement from the therapist. Lastly, therapy is working when you start feeling less afraid, start embracing life and being more spontaneous, or knowing that whatever you do, you can bring that back to your therapist and together you will figure it out.
Have you received any particular training beyond your post-Bachelor's training?
I graduated from Hunter School of Social Work with top honors. Since then, I was accepted into the postgraduate psychoanalytic adult training program at IPTAR, which is a rigorous 4-6 year program which entails a 4x a week personal psychoanalysis, plus working in the clinic with low-fee clients, and working with different supervisor’s that cover a wide range of modalities. In addition, I have taken numerous courses and attended many seminars on gender and sexuality, feminist theories, trauma-focused and attachment theories. I also attend a monthly “Clinical Conundrums” meeting in which clinicians will talk about cases they have in order to further our understanding of the rich dyadic field and how best to help our clients. And I maintain supervision which means that I consult with another colleague who can help me understand my cases and what I might be missing (but don’t worry, everyone is anonymous!).
From your perspective, what is therapy?
Therapy is a dedicated, warm, non-judgmental space in which a person who is having trouble finding meaning or fulfillment in their life can come to talk to another human being who is trained to listen in a particular way. My entire focus is to help organize complex feelings that impede a person’s growth. A lot of times people don’t know what is wrong, they just have a “feeling” that something is off. I help to excavate the storyline, by threading together common themes from the unconscious but also from our relational patterns (which really just means the way we usually relate to other important relationships). I once heard a well-known psychotherapist say that the goal of psychotherapy is to “put the ghosts that haunt our inner lives to rest, such that they can, once and for all, become ancestors. Ancestors are those for whom we grieve the loss, but are able to move on from and to have our own lives.”
Do you have experience (5-10 years+) working with any types of obstacles or people in particular?
I have experience working with people who struggle with identity and intimacy issues, and extensive experience working with parents and family dynamics.
Do you assign homework, activities, or readings for me to do between sessions? Why or why not?
That depends on the client! Some people find the process of additional homework to be stress-inducing, adding yet another thing to their already piled-high list, and if this is the case then I might just ask the client to “take a mental picture of something that happened to bring into the next session, maybe something around a triggering event, a dream, or just a thought that they keep ruminating about.” For others, homework helps to ease the transitions between sessions and to make the person feel as if they are doing something. In this case, because it can reduce anxiety and is also therapeutically useful, I will ask for journal entries, or to practice behavioral interventions and then to notate them in a journal. Occasionally I suggest a book or article that might be helpful to the client.
Are there any philosophies or values that inform your work that I should know about?
My work is guided by the belief that human beings have incredible resilience, but that we often lack the capacity to heal ourselves. We are social creatures and we need each other to thrive. I think the most fundamental value is my belief that humans heal other humans (although animals can help a lot too!). My clients are my greatest resource, and I have often found that I grow as much from my relationship with my clients as they do from me.
If I have never been to therapy before, what should I expect? How do I know if I should go, and how do I start?
If you have that feeling that no matter what you tell yourself, or how many self-help books you read you just aren’t able to white knuckle yourself into compliance, it might be time to try something new. If only we could all just find the inner discipline to make the changes we want to see! Alas, it often takes another person to heal ourselves, someone who can help challenge our ruminating, inner-spiral of negative thoughts and get us to come out of our “comfort zone.” Therapy is like going to the gym but for your mind! At the mental gym, we can explore our own idiosyncratic thoughts and mental processes, strengthening those that are weak and fine-tuning our best skillset. It is a place that can be serious but also playful, and often people find it to be stimulating and exhilarating.