Sapphire YuehChun Chao, Art Therapist
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Therapy with Sapphire Chao
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Partnering with me, we can gain better insight into your feelings, emotions, and thoughts and how you adapted them to your roles in relationships and to your perspectives on your surroundings. When we have unprocessed feelings and emotions, we may experience repetitive patterns and find it difficult to pinpoint the reason. With your permission, I would like to explore your deeper feelings with you. We will pay close attention to your physical sensations, embodied emotions, and internal world. The process of feeling “feelings” sometimes can be uncomfortable. You may find it difficult to verbalize your internal world. We can use a combination of art, creativity, and talk to work through it with new perspectives.
My immigrant background helps me attune with immigrants and their families, and Asian-Americans, to work through depression, anxiety, trauma, cross-cultural adjustment, codependency, and/or perfectionist tendency.
I have great experience with developmental trauma, relational challenges and cross-generational differentiation with couples and families. We all have the desire to be heard and seen in a relationship. I facilitate a compassionate and collaborative space for couples and families to enhance secure and assertive communication and to embrace the difference and similarity in a relationship.
Therapeutic Approaches
As an integrative therapist, my approach is holistic and humanistic, incorporating a combination of art therapy and psychotherapy. I am trained in evidence-based techniques such as: Mindfulness, Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT), Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), and Internal Family System (IFS). My approach is multi-culturally informed, attachment-based and emotion-focused to help individuals and couples integrate their internal conflict and external stresses toward healthy relationships and mind-body wellness.
Seeing a therapist may sound intimidating, but sharing your story with a supportive professional allows your story to be heard and seen. I believe with holistic support throughout the sessions you are able to embrace your own resilience which motivates you to take the lead in your journey.
Specialties
Anxiety, depression, high achiever, internal conflict, trauma, attachment, life transition and adjustment, sexual identity, relationship issues, couple & parent-child therapy, grief, self-harming & suicide prevention, low self-esteem, parenting coaching (pregnancy to early childhood)
License & Certificate
New York State / Creative Arts Therapist (LCAT) #002513
American Board Certified and Registered Art Therapist (ATR-BC)
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
Parent-child Intensive Certification (Ackerman Institute for the Family)
Advance:
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) Core Skills
Internal Family System (IFS) Circle
Experience
Ally Counseling and Therapy
Stuyvesant High School (New York)
University Settlement Society of New York Early Childhood
OHEL Kadimah PROS Psych Outpatient
Kids Esteem Montessori School
Taichung Veterans Hospital Psychiatry Department
Lung-An Elementary School
Taipei City Hospital Department of Psychiatry
Education
Long Island University, Master’s in Clinical Art Therapy and Counseling
Taipei Municipal University of Education, Bachelor of Counseling Psychology