Pim Vongkhamchanh LCSW

Hi, I’m Pim (she/her) and I’m really glad you found your way here!

I’m a first-generation Lao American, a daughter of immigrant refugees, and a woman of color who grew up at the intersection of a lot of things that don’t always get talked about in therapy spaces. I like to say I’m receptively bilingual in Lao. I grew up understanding it but lost the opportunity to speak it as English took over at school. Beyond the language itself, there was something much more complicated: trying to have honest conversations with family who literally didn’t have the words for what I was trying to say. Not just because of the language barrier, but because feelings weren’t discussed in my home. Mental health was taboo, maybe even shameful. And when you’re already caught between two languages, two cultures, two versions of yourself, finding words for your inner world can feel almost impossible. Nobody taught us how to name what was happening inside. Learning to name my own inner world took years and that’s a big part of why I do this work. I will never rush you to find the words before you’re ready.

I work with people who are in the middle of something hard or when life is life-ing and you’re at a standstill.

I’m passionate about working with Southeast Asian women who are navigating the particular tension of living between cultures, between expectations, between who they were raised to be and who they actually are. If you’ve spent your whole life shrinking, performing, or translating yourself for rooms that weren’t built with you in mind, you’ve come to the right place. You will not feel small, misunderstood, or unheard here.

More broadly, I love working with BIPOC clients, immigrants and first-generation folks, and people navigating systems that were never designed to support them. I enjoy working with “emerging adults” trying to figure out who they are outside of their family’s story, their culture’s expectations, or the pressure to have it all together by now. People pleasers and boundary beginners, I see you. Do you feel like you’re exhausted from over-giving, from saying yes when you mean no, or making yourself small so others can be comfortable? Well, come on through. We can work through that too. Are you maybe dealing with relationship conflict? Not just romantic, but family, friendship, and the complicated in-between. We’ll learn how to want things, say things, and stay in relationships that are real. I also have a passion to work with caregivers for aging parents. This is some of the most invisible, underacknowledged work a person can carry. The role shift of becoming the one who manages the appointments, the medications, the groceries, the quiet grief of watching a parent age. I know how much it asks of you, how little it gets acknowledged, and how much support you deserve in it.

You don’t have to code-switch in here. You can tell me how you actually feel, in whatever words you actually use. I know what it’s like to need time to find the words; to feel something deeply but not quite know how to say it out loud. That’s welcome here too and we can sit in that together. My style is soft, calm, and genuinely non-judgmental. I’m not passive. I’m present. I’m curious. And once you feel safe, I will challenge you, because I think that’s part of the work and I think you can handle it. I want to give you room to come to your own realizations rather than handing you mine. I’ll be right there with a question or a reflection when you need a nudge. I know how to hold a quiet space. I also know when to move.

I know what it’s like to need time to find the words; to feel something deeply but not quite know how to say it out loud. That’s welcome here too and we can sit in that together.

Relational therapy is at the core of how I work, which means our therapeutic relationship itself is part of the healing. The trust, safety, and honesty we build together is the work. Research shows that the quality of the relationship between therapist and client is one of the strongest predictors of meaningful change and I take that seriously. What we build in this space becomes a model for what’s possible outside of it. I also draw from Internal Family Systems (IFS) which is a way of understanding that we are all made up of different parts. IFS helps us get curious about those parts instead of fighting them. We’ll do the kind of inner child healing that gets underneath the patterns of the people-pleasing or self-abandonment. We will also utilize mindfulness! Not as a buzzword, but as a genuine practice of learning to be present with what is, without immediately judging it or trying to fix it. Which is really hard! Breathwork, noticing, feeling without attaching are practices I genuinely believe in, partly because of how I grew up. I was raised in a Buddhist (Theravada) household, and while I don’t actively practice today, Buddhist philosophy has shaped how I think about life and healing in ways I carry with me. The understanding that nothing is permanent, not your thoughts, not your feelings, not your pain and that suffering can loosen its grip when we learn to release rather than grip tighter. To me, that’s not just a clinical framework, it’s something I try to live by.

When we’re able to observe the way you learned to make yourself small or the way you navigate carrying your family’s survival story alongside your own, we’re also able notice that it has roots. It has context. It has history. And it belongs in the room with us. I practice from an anti-oppressive, equity-centered framework because ignoring those factors would mean not really seeing you. I’m still learning too as I hold privilege in some areas of my life and I won’t act like I don’t. My goal is a space where your whole self shows up. Not just tolerated, but truly welcomed.

Outside of sessions, I find joy in going back to the things that I took a slight break on. Such as reading, knitting, crocheting, and hot yoga. And then I try to take on a whole new hobby like sewing! On weekends you’ll find me at the park with my two dogs: Sully, a distinguished senior husky who is quite aloof and carefree, and Boo, a one-year-old German Shepherd-Husky mix who is obsessed with Sully. What’s unusual about having two dogs is that I am actually a cat person. I love to travel and I am fully unashamed about being a tourist. Where will you find me? Probably doing novel things like horseback riding in the Tetons or snorkeling to find sea turtles even though I don’t know how to swim.

If something here felt like it was written for you….it probably was. I’d love to connect!

Pim Vongkhamchanh received her Master of Arts in Social Service Administration (MSW), University of Chicago, 2018 Bachelor of Science, Human Development and Family Studies, Michigan State University, 2015

To schedule an appointment: info@mindfullifechicago.com