Today we’d like to introduce you to Yang Jiang.
Hi Yang, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Looking back on my life, it seems pretty clear that I was going to end up a therapist! The first sign was my hunger for stories. I was always reading and watching movies. The other sign was my interventions with my parents, who were often fighting. When I was 6, I actually interrupted them during one of these arguments and dragged them out to the front yard, where I had taken a family picture down from the wall and placed it against a tree. Pointing emphatically at it, I asked them over and over, “Are we a family or not?” until they gave up on arguing for the night.
I didn’t grow up knowing about the field of psychology, though, and it wasn’t until I was 22 that I considered it for a career. I had just gotten laid off from my first post-college job selling corporate bonds and credit default swaps on a New York trading floor. Having hated my job, I turned to taking the Myers-Briggs personality test to find a new career. It told me I was an INFJ and that counseling was a potential fit. My mom had just happened to do a late-career switch into being a marriage and family therapist, so I decided to give it a shot.
That led me to the University of San Diego for my Masters in Marital and Family Therapy. For my practicum, I worked at Phoenix House, a county-funded program for adolescent substance abuse. I loved my job, which included running groups of up to 8 families at a time, but I felt unready to become a full-time therapist. I still struggled with my own sense of self and purpose, and at 26, I felt too young and inexperienced.
To get a greater context, I went back to USD for another 4 years in their Leadership Studies Ph.D. program. Here, I learned much more about power dynamics and sociocultural dynamics, such as race, gender, and class. I also gained a deep understanding of how to hold authority and developmental psychology.
Finally, in 2020, I worked up the courage to go back to finish my marriage and family therapy license. Still afraid but unable to find meaning in any other job, I spent 3 years getting my internship hours. With the support of my amazing family, I was able to successfully get my license and launched my private practice, Sweet Mirror Counseling, in January 2023.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story— has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely has not been a smooth road! But it has been a rich, transformative, and meaningful one. My own mental health and confidence needed a lot of work along the way. I had done very badly at my first real job on the New York trading floor. Going from Wellesley College, an all-women’s college, to what was essentially like a modern day version of The Wolf of Wall Street was a total shock. I was routinely bullied, made tons of humiliating mistakes, and was surrounded by a toxic workplace of insecure men. I realize now that I was attracted to the bravado and intensity of that culture because my father was deeply loving but covered up fear with anger and controllingness.
I continued to struggle with purpose and motivation for several jobs, leaving me with a sense of fatalism about my career and capacity for success. I also felt confused– would being successful and having power require me to be as domineering and egotistical as the men I had been exposed to? Deeply sensitive to the responsibility and integrity of power, I feared wielding it myself and becoming like those who had hurt me. For a long time, I doubted my goodness and right to be seen as a guide to others. I also had a hard time committing to a career path. I was always worried that everything would fall apart again.
I also dealt personally with mental health because of my stressful relationship with my Chinese immigrant father. Trapped by conflict with him, it terrified me to begin to challenge him and become my own authority. But, when I began working seriously as a therapist, I found myself unable to help my clients beyond my own personal development. So, I began to hold interventions with my father, where I held boundaries and did not back down from naming issues. Having grown up intimately with his anger, it shook me to my core to challenge him. But the more I believed in myself, instead of giving into self-doubt and depending on him to be the strong and smart one, the less I felt like an imposter as a therapist, and the more I saw genuine results in my clients.
My work saved me by forcing me to go into the most insecure parts of myself and face my deepest fears. I had to provide myself with the strength, hope, and courage to keep going until I truly became the person I had always believed myself to be. Building my private practice has only deepened my personal growth and my relationship with my father. Working together on my business has helped us to slowly build a more respectful, healthy, and open relationship.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business.
I specialize in helping people gain the emotional freedom they have always desired, the strength to truly be themselves again with dignity, courage, and wholeness. I see my work as intimate liberation and emancipation of the human spirit, revealing the picture in all of its glory under the dirt. Having grown up being curious about and accepting of all the facets of being human, I see so many people who are struggling to free themselves from being defined by their past.
In other words, I guide my clients from self-abandonment, the art of trying to be someone else, to self-reclamation, the art of being yourself. I want my clients to understand they never had to be anyone else and that their greatest challenge is actually to find the courage to believe in who they believe they are. They are not foolish, they are not selfish– they are good, and kind, and have meant well, and will continue to learn to express their deepest joy in increasingly sophisticated and effective ways.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I believe that being human and being alive is an honor. It is a sincere privilege to get this crazy experience and I feel most myself when I remember and come back home to that. So I think that helps me with what I’m really trying to do– just give people some hope again.
Pricing:
- $150/session if direct pay, otherwise most insurances taken
Contact Info:
- Website: sweetmirrorcounseling.com
- Instagram: @sweetmirrorcounseling
Image Credits
Anthony Le
Mikol Blas
