Meet Kirsten Cheong, Therapist for Women and Building Healthy Boundaries

Building healthy relationships, setting boundaries, and building confidence.

Don’t let fear define you.

Right now you’re afraid, powerless, and stressed.

You’re at your breaking point in your relationship with your spouse, parents, or siblings. You tell white lies to avoid conflict. Despite how toxic your relationships can be, you’re just too afraid to confront them.

I know how to help. I know your next step.

I work with anxious women who look put together on the outside but are crumbling on the inside—stressed about their relationships with family or romantic partners and are stuck in a cycle of people-pleasing because their afraid of conflict.

How I work:

  1. We start with building trust. In order for you to begin addressing your relationships, we start with ours. I will offer you a safe space where you are empowered to say the quiet parts out loud and to voice your pain to someone who won’t dismiss you.

  2. We look at your history and identify patterns of behavior between you and your loved ones. We look at cycles of conflict and call out at which point during altercations you give up or break down.

  3. We redefine “conflict” and work on making it less scary for you.

  4. I share information and engage you in exercises to help practice healthy boundary-setting. We practice phrases, communication skills, coping exercises to get you through your next confrontation.

  5. You overcome your fears and kick shame, doubt, and anxiety right in the ass!

I’ve been where you are:

Restless nights overthinking about things you can’t control. Spending too long crafting the perfect text that won’t upset the recipient. Avoiding conflict at all costs. I get it.

I practice the same work I can teach you. It starts with recognizing that your anxiety is merely a symptom of something that lies underneath. Recognizing that the people-pleasing and avoiding conflict are only temporary solutions to make the anxiety go away. But you’ll get into another situation where your truth may upset someone you love and you want to stand your ground and stay firm in your opinions.

Then you’ve landed in the perfect place. I can help get you from frazzled mess to a confident communicator without compromising yourself anymore. The answer to your problems is setting healthy boundaries—not just for your relationships but for yourself.

specializing in:

Anxiety Therapy

People Pleasing & Boundaries

Online EMDR Therapy

Education & Licensure

  • Bachelor’s of Arts in Psychology

  • Master’s of Arts in Psychology

  • Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist 121725

  • Professionally associated with CAMFT

Modalities

  • EMDR

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

  • Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

  • Inner-child work

Let’s chat

 My beliefs about therapy

Experience

I know what healing feels like and my goal is for you to grow into your full potential.

Humor

Let’s laugh a little. While I take your feelings seriously, sessions don’t have to feel stiff.


Validation

As your therapist, I can handle your emotions. Let therapy be a place where you can say the things you think in secret.


Methods & Modalities

  • You may not think you have trauma because nothing severe happened to you. However, trauma comes in many forms. Big ‘T’ trauma is life threatening. Little ‘t’ trauma are things that aren’t violent but do cause significant distress. Anxiety and people-pleasing are often born in little ‘t’ experiences. Exploring the little ‘t’ is where we do most of our work.

  • I use a mix ofCognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and trauma-informed approaches such as EMDR and IFS to help you understand how you are programmed to feel anxious and use people-pleasing to cope with that anxiety.

  • I use ideas from inner child work to “talk” to the younger version of yourself who hi-jacks your brain and makes decisions out of fear and a desir to protect you.