Be mindful

andy-smiling

Bio

Andrew D. Kang, JD, LICSW
Therapist

Andy is a licensed independent therapist. Andy specializes in working with professionals, addressing the barriers to wellbeing that he experienced as a lawyer for 10 years. Andy’s goal is help individuals, couples and families in need while de-stigmatizing mental health care for everyone. Utilizing modern mindfulness and behavioral therapies, combined with classical psychodynamic techniques, Andy helps clients achieve insight into the origins of their issues. With this insight clients begin to realize how their current behaviors cause, contribute to, or perpetuate their current problems. By working through resistance, utilizing insights gained, and changing maladaptive behaviors, Andy’s clients experience improvement in day-to-day living and overall contentment.

Current Practice

Andy opened Boston Professionals Counseling, LLC in 2010. Andy has treated clients with a variety of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, stress, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, and substance abuse and dependence. Andy works with families and couples to strengthen their relationships. In addition, Andy works in a coaching capacity with individuals regarding professional advancement, negotiation, and career changes. He has also done extensive work with people in the midst of divorce on a variety of issues.

Andy currently holds the position of Adjunct Professor at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work, where he teaches diversity in the modern era, and substance abuse clinical training.

Prior Practice

Prior to becoming a therapist, Andy was a counselor of a different kind, practicing law for ten years in the areas of complex commercial litigation and employment law in Boston. During his time in the field, Andy gained first-hand experience with the extreme pressure, stress and general feeling of unhappiness among lawyers, many of whom worked extraordinarily long hours, often at the expense of their mental and physical health, their families and other relationships. He noted the startling lack of resources for lawyers and other professionals who were ill-equipped to balance the simultaneous demands of work and life. It was this demonstrated need that inspired Andy to seek specialized training and obtain his independent license to practice therapy.

Education and Training

Andy completed his clinical training at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. While at Boston College, Andy worked as a research analyst at the Alfred P. Sloan Work and Family Research Network, writing on a variety of work-life balance issues. In addition, Andy worked in the community as a staff clinician at Advocates, Inc., a mental health clinic in Framingham, Massachusetts. He received his Juris Doctorate from Boston College Law School in 1997, and his BA in Philosophy from Bates College in 1992.