RaeAnna Sang, APCC
Associate Therapist #20143
Supervised by Ashlei Lien, LMFT
Hi! I’m RaeAnna.
I believe a life well lived is one that stays close to your values—focusing on what matters most to you, the relationships you care about, and the kind of person you want to be. But sometimes, we lose touch with those things.
Maybe anxiety keeps pulling you into worst-case scenarios or intrusive thoughts and compulsions are taking up more and more space in your day. You might feel like past experiences are still showing up in your body, your relationships, or how you see yourself. You might know something feels off without knowing exactly why.
If you’re feeling irritable, confused, constantly on edge, or simply not enjoying life like you used to, you are not alone.
You can bring the heavy stuff here. And you don’t even have to have the right words for it yet.
Therapy for OCD, Anxiety, and Trauma
As a bicultural, multilingual therapist, I specialize in working with teens, adults, and families navigating OCD, anxiety, and trauma.
My approach is neuroscience-informed, evidence-based, and grounded in genuine curiosity about you as a person.
Therapy with me is a collaborative process. Depending on what you need, I draw from several approaches:
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
An evidence-based treatment we use to help manage OCD and anxiety.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
We’ll explore your values and how to move toward the life and relationships that truly matter to you.
Somatic and Trauma-Focused Therapy
This allows us to pay attention to both your emotional experience and what might be happening physically in your body.
Therapy with me isn’t about squeezing you into a particular technique. Beyond any single method, I care about creating a space that feels safe, collaborative, curious, and genuinely human. I want us to make meaningful progress while still honoring the complexity of who you are.
What Can You Expect in Therapy with Me?
I’m interested in more than asking, “What’s wrong?”
More than anything, my practice is rooted in a sincere desire to truly know and understand you. I want us to understand what happened, what your mind and body learned from it, what has helped you survive, and what you want your life to look like moving forward.
Together, we’ll explore:
Your history: The experiences, relationships, family dynamics, and cultural influences that shaped you.
Your inner world: The connection between your thoughts, emotions, physical responses, and behaviors.
Your resilience: The strengths and survival skills you already carry, even when they’re difficult to see.
Your future: The values, relationships, goals, and experiences you want to move toward.
And yes, I may gently challenge you. With your permission, I’ll ask questions that encourage you to look at familiar experiences from a different angle. Growth often asks us to become curious about our own assumptions and patterns, but you won’t have to do that alone.
My Story and Background
I was born in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Changsha, China. Growing up biracial—Chinese and Caucasian American—meant learning from an early age how to navigate different cultures, languages, expectations, and ways of understanding the world.
I grew up speaking Mandarin and English and later studied Spanish in college. Today, I am fluent and provide therapy in all three languages. For many clients, being able to speak about family, identity, anxiety, trauma, or other deeply personal experiences in the language that feels most natural makes a huge difference.
Living between cultures taught me that identity is rarely simple. In my own life, I have seen how culture shapes the way we understand family, emotions, success, relationships, mental health, and even what we believe we’re allowed to need from other people. For immigrants, children of immigrants, multicultural families, and anyone who regularly find themselves navigating different worlds, I want you to know that your unique cultural layers are understood here and can be a vital part of therapy.
My background led me to counseling, eventually working with refugee and immigrant communities in San Diego. Walking alongside people rebuilding their lives while navigating language barriers, cultural displacement, changing family roles, and profound loss taught me the power of simply feeling seen and understood.
Therapy That Considers the Whole Person
Mental health doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Our brains, bodies, relationships, cultures, histories, and environments are all connected. That’s why I look far beyond a diagnosis or a list of symptoms.
I want to understand you.
Together, we can be curious about why certain patterns developed, which ones still serve you, and which ones may be keeping you from the life you want to live.
Healing doesn’t mean becoming an entirely different person. It’s about understanding yourself well enough to reconnect with the person you already are and choosing where you want to go from there.
My hope is to help you better understand how your mind, body, past experiences, and present circumstances all connect—so that what you’re experiencing feels less mysterious and change finally feels possible.
Let’s Connect
If you’re looking for support with OCD, anxiety, trauma, identity, life transitions, or family challenges, I’d be honored to help.
Finding the right therapist matters, which is why I offer a complimentary 15-minute phone consultation. During it, we can talk about what you’re experiencing, what you’re hoping to get from therapy, and whether working together feels like a good fit.
You don’t need to know exactly what to say. Reaching out can simply be the first step.
Call or email today to schedule your consultation.
Phone: (919) 909-7025
Email: raeanna.sang@ashleilien.com
Location: Online therapy available throughout California
Languages: Therapy available in English, Mandarin, and Spanish
