Meet Jorgie Wu of Jorgie Wu Therapy

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jorgie Wu.

Hi Jorgie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in a predominantly Asian immigrant suburb in the Bay Area, CA, immersed in a culture which valued high achievement and academic success. My high school was known for being one of the best schools in the U.S., often sending students to the top UCs and Ivy Leagues. In hindsight, I think most of us were carrying the common but unspoken pressure that many children of immigrants carry — to be excellent and successful to make our parents’ sacrifices worth it.

I started out undergrad as a business information systems major, thinking I’d end up building a stable career in the Silicon Valley. Long story short, I got to a point where I didn’t love where my path was headed. Halfway through college at the beginning of my junior year, I changed my major to psychology. As a pretty risk-averse person, this was really uncharacteristic of me, but I totally fell in love with the study of psychology.

I took several psych classes with a certain professor who was Latino. I was studying at a PWI (predominantly white institution), so in most of my classes (especially psych classes), I was often one of a handful of students of color. This professor really supported me through the process of changing my major, and he eventually became my advisor for my senior project, which was a research project about culturally affirming therapy and best therapy approaches for Asians and Asian Americans. While doing my senior project, my professor asked, “Jorgie, have you ever thought about becoming a therapist? There’s a huge need for therapists of color, especially Asian therapists.”

As a second generation Asian American college student, I wasn’t used to the idea of seeing my career as a place to “make an impact” or an opportunity to “see dreams come true.” For a lot of children of immigrants, we’re taught that success means securing financial stability in our careers. Choosing the path of becoming a therapist felt more unstable and risky, but my professor’s comment planted a seed in me. The idea of being a therapist specifically to support BIPOC and Asian American communities suddenly felt exciting, meaningful, and worth the risk.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been far from a smooth road, but I wouldn’t be where I’m at without the struggles along the way. Earlier in my training, I approached therapy in a very formulaic way, believing that if I just mastered theories and followed certain steps, it would lead to good outcomes with my clients, and that would make me a good therapist. When that didn’t happen, I was really hard on myself. I needed to un-learn some of what was ingrained in me from my upbringing — the belief that if I just worked really hard and “got it right,” that I’d be successful. I realized that therapy isn’t something that can be “mastered” in this way; it’s more about attuning to and being with my clients in ways that are unique to me, and so much more.

It’s also been challenging navigating the state of our world and experiencing so many painful and scary events locally and globally — the pandemic, shootings, fires here in LA, and social injustices. A lot of times, it feels like the weight of the collective trauma we’re all carrying feels overwhelming and unbearable. There have been a lot of moments I’ve thought to myself, “How is therapy really helping when all this is happening around us?” I’ve had to learn that being a therapist during these times doesn’t mean fixing or taking away the pain and anxiety for my clients, nor does it mean ignoring how these events impact me personally too. I’ve learned to give myself permission to lean in and allow myself to feel and be human too with my clients.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I’m an LMFT in private practice, and I work with BIPOC and Asian American adult children of immigrants who are struggling with burn out and anxiety as a result of caregiving, people-pleasing, and high-achieving tendencies. A lot of the people I work with have trauma stemming from their upbringings and racial/cultural identities, but they maybe haven’t named their experiences as “trauma” because they’re so used to minimizing or burying their feelings. I also specialize in supporting folks who grew up religious and are now navigating deconstructing their faith values and beliefs. I practice from a “parts work” approach, which is based on the idea that we each have an “inner world” of different “parts” of us (think of the movie Inside Out). I find that this approach gives a helpful framework around the experience of having internal conflict or mixed emotions, and it resonates especially well with first and second generation immigrants who are used to straddling multiple worlds or multiple things being true at once.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
A lot of this is already happening, but I think we’ll continue to see a lot of shifts in psychotherapy practices as AI continues to become more advanced. For example, I think more and more people will utilize chat bots and AI-based therapy. I get it – so many people are seeking immediate relief from their pain, and it’s much quicker and easier to get that from a chat bot who will say the “right” thing, right away. While I wholeheartedly believe that nothing can replace human-to-human connection, we can’t ignore the reality that AI is here and will continue to impact not only our industry, but our humanity, our lives, and the world around us. It serves as a good reminder to me – that perhaps one of the best ways to preserve our humanity in an AI-world – is to truly honor the sacred space that’s created when two humans sit together, share curiosity, and explore the depths of one’s inner world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jorgiewutherapy.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgiew/

Image Credits
Headshots by Kenny Wong