Yu Chak Sunny Ho

Dr. Sunny Ho is a licensed psychologist in the State of Washington. Prior to moving to Seattle, he completed his APA-accredited pre-doctoral internship at the Rutgers University’s Counseling, Alcohol and Other Drug Assistance Program & Psychiatric Services (CAPS) and graduated from the APA-accredited Counseling Psychology Ph.D. Program at the University of Iowa (UI) in 2020. He is passionate about liberating and empowering international, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ clients in his clinical practice. His research is primarily focused on multicultural psychology and culturally responsive therapy approaches.

Dr. Sunny Ho's teaching philosophy is to provide students with a liberating, courageous, and collaborative classroom environment. He is passionate about contributing to the future generation of diverse mental health clinicians and researchers and exposing them to counseling literature, particularly those written and published by minority scholars. He has enjoyed supporting students’ intellectual, social and career development through forming and maintaining close teacher-student relationships, which is congruent with his value of collaboration and engagement. He facilitates classroom discussion using the social constructionism approach. He does not assume himself as an expert in the classroom. Instead, he encourages students to speak up about what they have learned and share their own understanding. By incorporating real-life and culturally relevant examples, he ensures his students are empowered to apply psychological theories in the real world.

Dr. Sunny Ho's healing philosophy is to empower clients by taking on strength-based, relational and systemic approaches in therapy. When working with clients with complex trauma, he spends time on building rapport and trust first, then understanding their conceptualization of pain and suffering. After that, he listens to clients’ traumatic events with a systemic and anti-oppressive lens. He facilitates conversations with clients about the meaning of life and explores their wisdom, resilience and resources based on their worldviews and culture. He has accrued a wide range of therapy experiences that continue to allow him to appreciate indigenous power to heal and restore. Additionally, he employs an open-minded, flexible and humanistic approach with his clients. He takes it as his responsibility to work with his colleagues to critically evaluate Westernized approaches in psychotherapy and integrate culturally relevant treatments. There is not one theoretical orientation that fits all clients. He hopes that students will be able to foster clients’ growth through developing authentic and non-judgmental relationships.