Individual & Couples Therapy

Located in Arlington, MA

 
Individual therapy client smiling after online therapy appointment
 
 

Individual Therapy

Discover yourself

Do you find reasons to put others first and diminish your own challenges, needs, and success? Perhaps there are implicit expectations, from your familial or cultural background, or from others’ biases about who you’re “supposed” to be or how you’re “supposed” to behave. It feels like there’s a set of rules you never agreed to, and yet you find yourself struggling to adhere to them. Maybe you are exploring your relationship to your racial identity and realizing you want to dig deeper but are having a hard time knowing where to go to talk these feelings out.

 If you feel torn in a thousand directions, you’re not alone — many people I work with feel this way. Together we can try and make sense of what is happening and work towards establishing patterns (both life habits and thought patterns) that better serve you.

 

 Relationship Therapy

Whether you are in a new relationship or a well-established one, You can approach conflict differently

From time to time, we all feel out of sync with our partners. Sometimes it looks like tip-toeing around the conflict and sometimes it looks like endless arguing without resolution. Figuring how we get caught in this stuck pattern, in a non-blaming way, helps establish safety and enables us to give and receive love more freely within our relationship.

 
 
Multiracial couple embracing after a relationship therapy session

Hi, I’m SuMing Sullivan

While I love a good gratitude practice, I am not going to help you find the silver-linings in your life. I will hold space for the hard stuff.  If you find yourself longing for a deeper connection with yourself and others, we will explore the patterns and investigate what’s nourishing their roots. We will work together to understand how and why you got where you are so that you will be able to move with more freedom and agency going forward. 

I'm comfortable talking about the uncomfortable. I'm curious without interrogating, and you can tell me if I get it wrong and I will listen. I have done and continue to do my own race and identity work. I engage with humility and am committed to checking my assumptions and privilege.

I want to help you better understand yourself and to see yourself with compassion. Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “Compassion isn’t for me, that’s letting myself off the hook.” Compassion isn’t a shirking of responsibility AND it can help you get out of patterns that keep you stuck. I want you to be able to let go of beating yourself up as a daily practice and embrace curiosity and self-kindness. You deserve to feel love for your whole self, and you will be better prepared to address whatever it is that has been holding you back.