Angela Wu is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Empowerment Coach who is passionate about de-stigmatizing mental health in the AAPI community as well as helping women of color reclaim and raise their voices in order to embody their empowered authentic selves!
In her therapy practice, she helps individuals find healing from trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, as well as navigate acculturation and intergenerational issues, difficult life transitions, and relationship issues. Her approach to therapy is strength-based and anti-oppression.
In her coaching practice, she helps Asian women break barriers that keep them feeling stuck, find and strengthen their voices, and reclaim their empowered selves in order to take up space and combat the harmful narratives that subjugate Asian women.
She has developed a group coaching program called “Take Up Space” to help individuals unpack their Asian experience in order to better align with their cultural identities. She also provides speaking engagements and leads training to spread awareness around AAPI mental health issues.
Angela Wu was a former high school teacher (Teach for America 2012 Corps member) and taught in Title 1 high schools in Miami and San Francisco. She received her Master’s of Science in Education and Social Change from the University of Miami. It was through witnessing her students struggle with toxic stress and racial trauma caused by structural inequities that led her to pursue a degree in counseling at Fuller Theological Seminary School of Psychology. Her passion for working with culturally diverse and underserved communities with various mental health needs led her to work at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health Agency. With the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, she has seen the need to be a resource for the Asian community. This led her to start her own therapy and coaching practice.
As a 1.5 generation Taiwanese immigrant, Wu has experienced first-hand the challenges that come with acculturation stress—racial trauma, burdens of being the cultural broker, code-switching, navigating between two worlds but belonging in neither, the model minority myth, imposter syndrome, intergenerational trauma, immigration issues, identity formation, internalized racism, etc.
As an Asian American woman, she has experienced and fought against the fetishization of Asian women and combatted the expectation that Asian women are to “be seen and not heard.” By raising her voice to educate on issues that minorities face, Wu advocates for myself, her community, and marginalized groups.
In her own journey of healing, she was able to reclaim parts of herself that had been lost, rejected, and stolen. She has challenged barriers that held her hostage, and Wu has used her voice to find liberation. She has learned to unlearn dysfunctional familial patterns and has broken generational cycles. She is able to occupy a liminal space, an intentional space of belonging and of not fully belonging, in order to be someone who connects to all of humanity. Wu believes that deep suffering can lead to profound healing if encountered with the right tools, space, and people. Her own experience of liberation and healing motivates her to help others find that for themselves!
You can find Angela here: