Asian/Asian American Couples Therapy with Dr. Canzi Wang
Listen to Full Episode Here
About My Guest
Dr. Canzi Wang is a licensed clinical psychologist practicing in California, with over 17 years of experience providing therapy to individuals, couples, and groups. She specializes in working with Asians/Asian Americans, immigrants, adults, and couples through a relational and multicultural lens. Grounded in mindfulness-based approaches and emotionally focused couples therapy (EFT), Dr. Wang creates a warm, authentic, and culturally sensitive space where clients feel truly heard. Her goal is to help people gain clarity, heal, and make meaningful changes through compassionate reflection and presence.
You can find Dr. Wang on her website, through her YouTube channel @drcanziwang, and on RedBook at Dr. 粲子心理话.
In This Episode
Dr. Wang introduces the framework of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a prominent framework for couples therapy work. EFT is an evidenced based practice that focuses on the attachment dynamic between couples, redirecting conflict to the emotional content between partners and allowing them to find new ways of communicating. Dr. Wang discusses the values of slowing down the process of conflict in order to take time to understand the hurt underlying there anger in conflict, which can open the pathway to connect more vulnerable and honest connection.
In her work with Asians and Asian American couples, Dr. Wang observed challenges to implementing EFT with this population and began adjusting her approach to be inclusive of the unique social needs and ways of processing information and relationships that she encountered. She discusses communication differences, such as how people from Asian cultures may use direct and indirect communication differently than white American cultures. Societal pressure to fit into model minority roles can also contribute to whether and how a couple is willing to engage in mental health therapy. Dr. Wang relates how Asian and Asian American communities often associate mental health services with failure and how it is not uncommon to associate one’s worth with their socioeconomic status, both of which can complicate couple conflict. As a result of her niche, Dr. Wang has found ways to culturally adapt the skillsets of EFT to more effectively support Asian and Asian-American couples.
Finally, Dr. Wang then shares about her own experience moving to America as a young adult and how failure became a way of life as she learned to navigate living in a new country. Dr. Wang explores how training cross culturally both made her education harder and, ultimately, richer as she learned through trial and error. Dr. Wang makes the case for failure as a necessary and unavoidable, albeit painful, part of the the immigrant experience.
