Welcome to Blooming Wellness Psychotherapy, Inc. :)
Our Origin Story (like any superhero story lol)
We, Dr. Elena Duong and Dr. Susanna La, are both originally from SF Bay Area but did not meet until we returned home for internship. We went away for graduate school (i.e., Elena to Southern CA and Susanna to New Mexico) and got matched to the same internship site, San Jose State University: Counseling and Psychological Services, where we first met.
After an eventful first day of internship, all the interns left together. Elena happened to be walking out with Susanna to the parking garage to get their cars to go home. Susanna parked on the garage level thinking it was Level 1 and spotted Elena’s car mistaking it for hers (of course, not only are we twins but so are our cars). Elena and Susanna decided to look for Susanna’s car together, and during this time, great conversations formed and then began the start of their "ride or die" friendship.
Our internship proved to be a challenging time, we leaned on each other through it solidifying our bond. Elena, Susanna, and our friend R became the 3 musketeers at our internship. We hope our third musketeer, R, will soon join our practice (*cross-fingers*). We all bonded on being people of color and how our life experiences led us to where we are today. R also accidentally gave us one of our nicknames, Selena (because apparently together, we make one functioning brain), and Susanna gave us our other one, the NaNa twins, due to our many similarities lol.
Why Form Our Own Practice?
We both trained to be licensed psychologists to help people with their mental health. Between the two of us, we have worked at many different settings, including hospitals, schools, and more. In working at various places, we discovered a faulty healthcare system, including insurance companies, that do not properly help people with their mental health concerns in the long-term. All they do is put a band-aid on the current issues without addressing the root cause of the issues to properly begin the healing process.
We founded this psychotherapy practice to be outside of the healthcare system and do not accept insurance for the same reason. We want to give quality care to you without having to report back to a system that may decide to deny you care or deem you not “sick” enough to seek care. We think most people have the capacity to heal if they can access the appropriate care and resources. We want to be one of those resources for you. We want to help you achieve your mental health goals and move forward with your life. We want to help you now, so you can hopefully flourish in your lives and not need us one day.
Why Did We Name Our Practice, Blooming Wellness Psychotherapy, Inc.?
You may be wondering why we named our practice, Blooming Wellness Psychotherapy, Inc. We actually spent a lot of time trying to decide on what to name our practice. We wanted our name to speak to how we practice psychotherapy. We chose "Blooming" since to us, it means you already have the capacity to grow like flowers do in nature. We don't want to force you or tell you what to do. We want to help foster an environment, where you can start learning how to bloom on your own. "Wellness" was chosen because we want you to be healthy or become healthy on your journey to being and finding yourself. Psychotherapy is fairly self-explanatory, so we won't go into it. Our goal is to help guide you towards your healing, which is an inner wisdom already ingrained within you.
If you decide you want to connect with us about services, please visit our site here. If you want to learn more about Dr. Elena Duong, please click here or Dr. Susanna La, please click here. If you are interested in learning about our "Specialties," feel free to click here.
Stay tuned. The next topic is on "Who Needs Therapy?"
Written by Elena Duong, Psy.D.
Edited by Susanna La, Ph.D.