Dr. Peggy Loo

Dr. Peggy Loo specializes in therapy for anxiety, perfectionism, complex trauma, grief, relationships, and helping BIPOCs talk through and recover from experiences of racism and marginalization. Dr. Loo is a licensed psychologist, clinical supervisor, and the founding director of Manhattan Therapy Collective.

Dr. Loo earned a PhD from Columbia University in counseling psychology, where she trained in a multicultural and social justice orientation to mental health care. Prior to her doctorate, Dr. Loo graduated with a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Wheaton College and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Illinois. She is a certified perinatal mental health professional (PMH-C) through Postpartum Support International and holds a certificate in traumatic stress studies from the Trauma Research Foundation. She enjoys being a clinical supervisor for postdoctoral fellows at the practice and psychology grad students at Columbia. Dr. Loo is on the advisory board for SPEAK, a non-profit organization centering Asian American mental health and serving the AAPI community in Westchester County. She is also a member of the NYC Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Association, the American Psychological Association, the Asian American Psychological Association, and the Women’s Mental Heath Consortium. Dr. Loo loves to bring her dog to work, hike, watch stand-up comedy, and anything pickled.

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I'd also love to help with

Anger
Anxiety (e.g., generalized anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety, health anxiety, etc)
Caregiver stress (e.g., caring for the chronically ill, mentally ill, and parentified adult children)
Dating & relationships (e.g., communication, breakups, marriage dynamics)
Emotion regulation
Grief (e.g., bereavement, miscarriage or perinatal loss)
Interracial and intercultural relationship concerns
Interpersonal dynamics (e.g., family relationships, friendships, coworkers)
Life transitions
Multicultural identity (e.g., marginalized identity stressors, racial, gender, bicultural, 2nd gen, and spirituality concerns)
Mindfulness
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs)
Perfectionism
Self esteem (e.g., imposter syndrome)
Stress (e.g., work-life harmony, professionals in high-intensity careers, burnout)
Trauma (e.g., emotional abuse/neglect, childhood or complex trauma, race-based or religious trauma)

How I work

I enjoy working with high achieving professionals, students, and caregivers that often forget or had to de-prioritize caring for themselves. I create exploratory and supportive space that balances encouragement and helpful challenge. As your therapist, I’d like to help you self-reflect, learn, and try new things - so you experience greater emotional flourishing and personal growth. In session, we may identify every day patterns (internal and external) in how you process and respond to your personal life, work, or relationships. I may also help you make deeper connections between key past experiences and their impact on you. If you’ve had experiences like relationship hurt, significant loss, or trauma and neglect, you likely adapted with survival strategies that carried you through those moments, but may not serve you best today. I support you in figuring out what it means to move forward. That may mean learning to hold your story with more self-compassion, cultivating useful perspective, or letting go and discovering something new.

While part of what I do is helping you deepen self-understanding, we’ll also talk about how to implement practical steps in your life. In other words, we will focus on making insightful connections and fostering actionable change. We may practice healthier responses to strong emotions or become more mindful of your body’s cues and your instincts. We may challenge patterns you have outgrown, or take realistic steps towards a life rooted in your hopes and values. As a psychologist, I believe mental health literacy is incredibly important. This means I take the time to teach about mental health and the tools I’m using. I want you to understand what we’re doing in session and see your mental health journey with clarity and kindness. I’d describe myself as collaborative, curious, and highly conversational in session. I love to laugh with my patients, and think a sense of humor is essential to life and being healthy. I’m committed to understanding who you are, process what you’ve been through, and helping you live fully.

As a multiculturally responsive psychologist

I want to connect with you as a whole, multidimensional person and protect space for you to be fully yourself. As your therapist, I treat your identities with dignity and respect. What makes you, you (e.g., racial, spiritual, gender, cultural, sexuality, age, nationality, class, etc) fundamentally shapes your experience of the world (and how others experience you)- so it’s a thread through your life story I listen for and honor. I welcome honest dialogue about our similarities and differences as people and I aim to always self-reflect on how my own identities influence my perspective and our therapy relationship. I also don’t skirt around the “-isms”. In fact, I think discussing where we have privilege and how we’ve been oppressed can help us grow and heal. For example, I listen to your life experiences in light of broader social realities and injustices. Part of what I do is point out when what you’re feeling isn’t your fault (or about you), but the result of systemic failures around you (e.g., patriarchy, unjust institutions). As a woman identifying psychologist of color, I’m passionate about naming and validating experiences of sexism and racism as a part of taking care of your mental health. My hope is that you can transform harmful internalized ideas about yourself into celebrated and integrated parts of who you are and your life story. I’m also deeply invested in Asian American mental health and dedicated to helping people from AAPI communities connect to multiculturally responsive therapy.