Hi, I’m Ji-Youn 지연

My lived experiences of pain and trauma led me to navigate my own healing journey at a young age. And as I learned about intersectional feminism in college, I began to more clearly make sense of myself, the world, and the interconnectedness of it all. I believe that when I heal, the world heals. When the world heals, I heal.

My values for collective liberation, healing, and community have led me to this work of therapy. I appreciate the value of this work (truly, I have been a client for 10 years myself), and I also want to address some of its gaps as it exists on Turtle Island, colonially known as North America. I recognize the ways that cis-hetero-patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism influenced the origins of the mental health industry, and how they continue to seep into therapy. I recognize that Western counselling psychology was not made with BIPOC or marginalized communities in mind. I recognize the industry’s historical and ongoing harms of pathologizing BIPOC and marginalized communities for very appropriate responses to oppression.

As a justice-oriented therapist, I aim to disrupt and dismantle these oppressive systems within myself and in my practice to make counselling a safe(r) space for folks who are targeted and made marginalized. Collective liberation is my vision. To help you feel a little more liberated in yourself, in your community, and in the world. This process often asks us to dip into our rage, our joy, our grief, as well as our pleasure, and I look forward to supporting you throughout your process.

Read about my name: Ji Youn as in Beautiful Purpose

Social Location

With the intention of transparency and safety-building, I briefly locate myself. I am a currently non-disabled, upper middle-class, solo poly(ish), queer femme (gender is weird for me) in my late twenties. I am also an immigrant and settler of Corean ancestry, with citizenship in so-called Canada.

My paternal ancestors are from just north of the 38th parallel and my maternal ancestors are from the coast of South Chungcheong Province, ROK. I was born in Bucheon right before the IMF financial crisis to middle-class parents. This shaped our immigration to so-called Vancouver, Canada as uninvited guests in 2000 and I grew up here on stolen and unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories since then.

While I experience myself as quite neurotypical currently (I think?!), I grew up with many years of mental illness, behavioural addiction, chronic suicidality and police-involved “mental health care” and I identify as a psychiatric survivor with Mad experiences, knowledge and skills. In the ongoing pandemic, I identify as COVID cautious/conscious with my continued practices of COVID safety.

In terms of religion and spirituality, I grew up with hints of Buddhism as philosophy, personally love astrology and have a curiosity for The Four Pillars of Destiny (Ba-Zi) as it’s big in Korean culture. I’m generally critical of institutions (and weaponization) of religion but am open to and curious about all forms of spirituality and faith.

Given my privileges and complicities, I am constantly in the process of unpacking my own anti-Blackness, anti-Indigenous settler complicity, ableism, classism, cisheteronormativity, and I welcome feedback and critique (and make space for it) with my client community members. While my social location offers an incomplete picture of my lived experiences and embodied understandings of liberation, I share them explicitly in hopes to make your therapist-finding process a little bit easier.

Therapeutic Approach

As a coach/counsellor, I aim to embody a person-centered, justice-oriented approach. 

A person-centered approach means that I am neither the expert nor the strategist. I do not have all the answers, and in fact, I aim to help you explore the answers within yourself. My role as a practitioner is to be the exploratory guide in helping you dig up awarenesses and shine light on new choices so that you can learn to empower yourself. And even then, we don’t always have to be ‘productive’ (because f*ck capitalism). I ask that you show up exactly as you are, whether you’re feeling determined, heartbroken, overwhelmed, frantic, or tender.

A justice-oriented (or anti-oppressive) approach means that I look beyond the individual and familial context, and I also invite you to look at how community, society, systemic oppressions, and ancestry play into your lived experiences and understandings. It also looks like unlearning disempowering beliefs that you may have picked up from society based on your identities and lived experiences. As a justice-oriented therapist, I am also continuously trying to minimize power dynamics between us by being transparent, asking for continuous feedback, and unlearning my own internalized oppressions, and redressing complicities.

Relatedly, I also aim to incorporate into practice anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-carceral, abolitionist, transformative justice, and disability justice frameworks. I am currently reflecting more on and learning to embody what it means to incorporate fat liberation, pro-sex work values. I also have political knowledge and praxis gaps in many specific histories and sociopolitical contexts, especially those of SWANA and much of the Global South. When these gaps come to light, I make sure to do my own homework in attempts to minimize perpetuating harm and such that clients don’t have to spend their session time on educating me about their oppression.

Please feel free to ask me what it looks like for me to practice these values both in and outside of sessions.

Read: 8 Ways that I Try to “Decolonize” Therapy

Professionalized Experience & Education

I have been working with client community members as a coach since 2017 and I completed a Professional Counselling Diploma in spring 2020. I am a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor (#2713) with the Association of Cooperative Counselling Therapists of Canada (ACCT). For community accountability, I see a clinical supervisor consistently for professional guidance and I am both challenged and supported by colleague friends with shared values/practices.

Communities

I am grateful to be among communities of justice-oriented therapists who share my values of justice, equity, and accessibility. Below are two directories that I am happy to be a part of, where you can further your exploration of finding a justice-oriented therapist who is right for you.