Dr. Suzie Dong-Matsuda

I m a licensed clinical psychologist and licensed clinical social worker with more than 25 years of experience in mental health. Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of supporting individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds through anxiety, depression, trauma, grief and loss, relationship difficulties, life transitions, and other emotional challenges.

I integrate evidence-based practices with mindfulness, self-compassion, and a trauma-informed perspective. Rather than focusing only on symptoms, I seek to understand the whole person—their experiences, relationships, culture, values, strengths, and hopes for their life.

As a bilingual and bicultural Vietnamese-American clinician, I have a particular appreciation for the ways culture, immigration, family expectations, intergenerational experiences, and identity can influence emotional well-being. I provide therapy in both English and Vietnamese and welcome clients from all cultural backgrounds.

My goal is to create a therapeutic relationship in which you feel heard, respected, and emotionally safe. Whether you are experiencing anxiety or depression, healing from difficult experiences, navigating relationships or major life changes, grieving a loss, or simply wanting a more peaceful and meaningful relationship with yourself, we can work together at a pace that feels right for you.

I believe therapy is not only about reducing distress. It can also be an opportunity to cultivate greater self-understanding, resilience, compassion, freedom, and a deeper sense of peace in your life.

My approach to therapy is warm, trauma informed, compassionate, collaborative, and culturally responsive. I believe that people often already carry within themselves important strengths, wisdom, and capacity for healing. Therapy can provide a safe and supportive space to reconnect with those strengths, better understand patterns that may no longer serve you, and develop new ways of relating to yourself and to others.

I believe that healing begins when we have a safe space where we can be fully ourselves—where our experiences are heard and understood without judgment.

I view therapy as a partnership. Rather than telling you what you should do, I will work alongside you with curiosity and compassion to understand what you are experiencing, recognize patterns that may be contributing to distress, and discover choices that feel authentic and meaningful to you.

My work integrates evidence-based approaches with mindfulness, self-compassion, and attention to the connection between our thoughts, emotions, relationships, and life experiences. I also recognize the important influence of culture, family, identity, immigration experiences, and intergenerational patterns on emotional well-being.

I believe that people carry strengths and inner wisdom even during difficult periods of their lives. Therapy can help us reconnect with those strengths while developing new ways of responding to life’s challenges.

Ultimately, my hope is to help you develop greater self-understanding, emotional resilience, and compassion for yourself so that you can make choices from a place of clarity rather than fear and create a life with greater peace, freedom, and meaning.

Our first session is an opportunity for us to get to know each other and begin creating a space where you feel comfortable, respected, and heard. There is no expectation that you need to tell your whole story at once. We will move at a pace that feels comfortable for you.

I will invite you to share what brings you to therapy, what has been happening in your life, and what you hope may be different as a result of our work together. I may ask about important relationships, life experiences, cultural or family influences, your strengths and sources of support, and any concerns that are affecting your emotional well-being.

Just as importantly, you will have an opportunity to get a sense of me and whether I feel like the right therapist for you. I believe a trusting therapeutic relationship is an important part of healing.

By the end of our first session, my hope is that you will feel heard and understood, have a clearer sense of how we might work together, and leave with a little more hope about the path ahead.