Psychotherapy
Everyone goes through times when life feels heavy: stress, worry, a relationship under strain, a loss or a big change. At such times, working with an experienced psychotherapist can help you understand what is happening and find a way forward. Dr. Yowon Choi offers psychotherapy in English and Korean, by video call, wherever you live in Korea.
With Dr. Yowon Choi
Yowon Choi is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with more than 20 years of experience in Korea, the United States, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In Korea she holds two national licenses, as Clinical Psychologist and as Youth Counselor (both level 1), and she is a Certified Counselor of the Korean Psychological Association (No. 645). She is also a federally certified psychologist in Switzerland.
She has worked in hospitals, clinics and counseling centers, with individuals, couples and groups, combining evidence-based methods in an integrative approach. She holds a PhD in psychology on happiness and mindfulness, trained as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher at the University of Massachusetts, and has practiced meditation for more than three decades. Having lived and worked in several countries, she knows from experience what it means to make a life in another culture, and she specializes in supporting people facing acculturation stress, relocation and the relationships of multicultural life. She is also a mother.
More about her background: About.
What Yowon offers
- Individual counseling for adults and adolescents.
- Couple counseling for partners who want to understand each other better and find their way together.
- Parenting support for parents, including parents of gifted and twice-exceptional children.
Looking for help with a question or change in your life rather than therapy? See Coaching.
What you can come with
You might want to talk about, for example:
- stress, burnout or exhaustion
- worry, anxiety or panic attacks
- low mood and depression
- trauma and its after-effects, including post-traumatic stress
- relationships, couples and family conflict
- parenting, and raising a gifted or twice-exceptional child
- being gifted or twice-exceptional (gifted, with a learning difference such as ADHD or dyslexia), at any age
- settling into life in Korea: a new language, culture and work, or feeling lonely far from home
- identity and belonging: being part of a minority, sexual orientation and gender identity (LGBTQ+)
- career questions, loss, change and big life decisions
- spiritual questions, including difficulties that can come up in meditation practice
- finding more calm, balance and joy in daily life
How we work
Sessions are a safe and confidential space to explore what is going on, at your own pace. Yowon’s work is person-centered: it starts from you and your own strengths. Depending on what you need, she draws on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), mindfulness-based approaches and positive psychology, and, when you are ready, on exploring patterns that go back to childhood. Where it helps, you also learn simple mindfulness exercises that you can use in daily life.
Practical information
- Languages: English and Korean.
- For: adults, adolescents, couples and parents.
- Where: at the moment, all sessions are by video call, from anywhere in Korea.
- Fees: explained in the first (intake) conversation.
Getting started
Use the contact form to write a few lines about what you are looking for, and whether you prefer English or Korean. You don’t need to explain everything: health information is best kept for the first conversation. You can also email mail@hellomindfulness.com.
In a crisis
Hello Mindfulness is not an emergency service. If you are in danger, or are thinking about ending your life, call 119 (emergency services in Korea) or the 24-hour suicide prevention line 109 (in Korean).