Dennis Nguyen

I’ve always been very highly driven and self-motivated. And that helped get me very far in my career! But I started to realize that while I achieved a lot, I didn’t feel happy. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I kept feeling like an imposter, struggled against my own high standards, while being painfully aware of how different I was from my Midwestern community as a queer Asian American. The American Dream I had internalized from my immigrant parents felt so far out of reach.

In therapy, I learned that I became a perfectionist to survive. As the son of immigrants, my parents passed the lesson that high performance will protect me from the horrors they experienced. Through therapy I was able to reinforce my life with love and support in order to find self-esteem outside of my achievements.

I’m a Chicago based Social Worker dedicated to serving Queer BIPOC through inclusive and evidenced based behavior change counseling. My passion is exploring how intersectionality affects our experiences and helping others through counseling, community building, and workshops. I identify as a cis queer Southeast Asian male.