Hello! I’m Masaaki. Let’s work this out together!

I am a queer, mixed-Asian American man and I grew up in North Carolina! My favorite words are y’all, reckon, and Bojangles. Jokes aside, I lean into therapy by working to create a welcoming environment for my clients. It is important to me that you feel comfortable in the space that we create together. Growing up in the South, I noticed the lack of Asian American and Pacific Islander teachers, clinicians, and doctors. With a knack for always being able to break the ice, I sought to be the change I wanted to see in the world by becoming a therapist.

After graduating from college, I spent an extensive amount of time within the education system abroad and in the U.S. I had the unique, yet challenging experience of teaching elementary and junior high school English in Japan. Upon my return to the U.S., I spent time teaching English language and English cultural knowledge to refugee students from across the world in a small, rural community in the South. Amongst those moments, I also spent quite a few summers working with high school students in various capacities.

Needless to say, working with children of many different ages and many different backgrounds showed me how our upbringing shapes a lot of the ways we view the world as adults. How anxiety in math as a child may lead us to believe we can’t do math at all. Or how losing a loved one early on can shape how we show up in the classroom, and even how we relate to our peers. As a teacher, I aimed to create a warm and welcoming classroom, and as a therapist, I aim to do the same, in a therapeutic setting, while honoring and respecting your lived experiences. After all, you are the expert of your own life, and I seek to build a brave space, in
which you can recognize and build on your strengths, while breaking down the barriers that are limiting your growth and healing.

Working with Me

As a therapist, I believe that we all have strengths that lie within us. Through therapy, people are able to unearth strengths that they may not have known about. I will ask about your identity and we can explore what it means to you and how it shows up in your everyday life. I also provide a non-judgemental space in which we can comfortably and safely explore previously impactful life
experiences.

While therapy can be a serious process, I appreciate the beauty of authentic human connection. In order to understand yourself, I believe it is important to let your emotions flow – the big feelings and the small ones – with people that are going to provide you with a safe environment to do so. That’s what therapy is all about! Whether it be inconveniences at work or friend drama that has gotten out of control, I invite you to let it all out! I believe we have emotions because we are meant to express them and I look forward to hearing about each and every one of them.

Therapy for Anxiety

Anxiety can present itself in many different ways. Sometimes it gives us headaches and it can feel like this is an endless pit at the bottom of our stomachs. It can cause us to feel immobilized, like there is no way we can control our life, especially our futures. Anxiety can present itself in many different ways and I believe that not only are skills (like grounding techniques or mindfulness) important, but also recognizing the context in which we are living is important. It can feel overwhelming to be a marginalized person in this current sociopolitical climate and I want to recognize that while addressing anxiety may involve skills to calm down what is going on in our head, there are external influences to our anxiety that we can process as well.

Therapy for Life Transitions

Transitions can come in many different shapes and sizes and how we deal with them may require some creative solutions. From moving homes to losing a loved one, as humans we all take a different path toward healing, though oftentimes we find ourselves stuck, unable to soothe our restlessness. These moments in our lives can bring on depression and anxiety, to the point where we may be questioning “who am I,” and “how do I fit into the world.” Times like these can be scary and leave us wondering “what’s going on?” That part is where I come in.

I approach our work with holding space for all the questions that life throws at us. Let’s explore why these questions are coming up and how we can answer them, or if they even need an answer at all. Together, we can work through the hard times while also celebrating life’s joys. I will work with you to set goals, while giving time and space for processing transitions. I am glad
you are here and welcome you to engage in this work with me.

Therapy for the LGBTQIA+ Community

The LGBTQIA+ experience is not a linear one. Depending on where you grew up and what kind of family you come from, many members of the LGBTQIA+ community experienced growing up very differently. Based on this, your internal acceptance of your identity may manifest in different ways externally. In our work together, we will explore how this part of your identity makes you the amazing person you are today. As a fellow member of the community, I invite you to share what it means to be a member of this community. I invite you to not only reflect on the difficult times, but also share moments of queer joy, gender euphoria, and affirming interactions.

Therapy for Family, Culture, and Mixed-Race Identity Issues

I was born to a white American mother and a first-generation immigrant Japanese father. After my parents separated, I grew up in a small, rural, military town in the south. Exploring my identity in a place where there were almost no other people that looked like me was a challenge. Primarily living with parents and grandparents that did not look like me always brought in questions from my peers. Having a Japanese first name, but being unable to speak the language made me question if I could even claim being Japanese.

I share this to remind you that being mixed-race can feel like an isolating experience, and it is also an experience that we can celebrate and process together. I understand how hard it may feel to live between two different cultures. Expectations from either side of your family may differ and conflict between parents may arise when there are cultural differences. As a child, it may be difficult to understand where you “fit” in the grand scheme of things. This feeling may get more complex as a teenager, when you begin to consider the big “who am I?” question. Even into adult life, being a mixed-race person can provide internal and external challenges. As I reflect on my own experiences, I resonate with how difficult it can feel to be torn between two cultures and have seen the ways in which either culture expresses acceptance. My approach to addressing these topics in therapy starts with highlighting the amazingness of you – double the culture, double the brilliance. From there we can explore belongingness, the challenges that arise in your lived experience, and what it means to be you.

I look forward to embarking on a journey of self-discovery, self-compassion, and growth with you.

Registered California Board of Behavioral Sciences Number: ACSW 139946

Supervised by Brigitte Ly, LCSW 77077