PSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH PROJECTS (My Journey into the Mind)

RESEARCH

Parental Emotional and Cognitive Responses Study (Research Assistant, May 2025 – Present)

I’ve always been fascinated by the unspoken emotions that color our relationships. Working on the research project about parental responses to children’s developmental changes felt like I was given a special lens to see those colors more clearly. My role involved helping to design and distribute a survey, but it was so much more than that. With every response we validated, I felt a deeper connection to the parents on the other side of the screen. I imagined them filling out the survey after a long day, reflecting on their journey with their children. This experience wasn’t just about learning how to conduct regression tests in Excel; it was about learning to listen, to empathize, and to understand the intricate dance of family dynamics. It truly solidified my passion for understanding the human heart and mind.

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MOOD CHECKER

Creating the ‘Mood Checker’ was like learning a new language – a secret, visual language spoken by children, and I was their humble student. The idea was sparked in a classroom, but it was built on a colorful mat on the floor of the Bình Minh Center, surrounded by crayons, laughter, and a profound, thoughtful silence. My mission was to co-create a set of stickers for eight core emotions, but I quickly learned you can’t just design a feeling. You have to listen to it.

I remember the “anger” sticker vividly. My initial designs were clichés: a red face with a furrowed brow and a frowning mouth. I presented it to a small group of children, and the reaction was… nothing. Just polite indifference. It meant nothing to them.

But then there was Minh, a thoughtful boy who rarely spoke but saw everything. He didn’t just ignore the sticker; he gently pushed it to the far edge of the table. His message was clear: That’s not it. That’s not my anger.

Frustrated, I put the designs away. I got down on the floor with him and simply asked, “Minh, when you feel that big, hot feeling inside, what is it like? Not on your face, but in your body?”

He paused, then slowly clenched his small hand into a tight fist. He pointed to his chest, then made a low rumbling sound in his throat before stomping his foot once, lightly. It was a volcano. The pressure building up inside, the heat, the feeling of something about to erupt. It was the most eloquent description of anger I had ever heard, and he hadn’t used a single word.

 

That moment with Minh changed everything. We threw out the angry face and, together, sketched out a little volcano with red sparks at its peak. When I showed him the new sticker a week later, a slow smile spread across his face. He pointed to it and nodded. Yes, his eyes said. That’s it. You see me.

From that day on, every sticker had to pass the “Minh test.” Sadness wasn’t just a teardrop; it became a deep, oceanic blue circle that felt like sinking into a soft blanket. Calm wasn’t just a peaceful smile; we wove in the subtle petals of a lotus flower, a symbol of peace any Vietnamese child would recognize. The entire toolkit became a mosaic of these tiny, shared moments of discovery. More than a design project, it was an act of translation, turning silent, internal storms into a shared, visible language. It was a bridge, built one sticker, one story, and one shared understanding at a time.

My Internship ☆

The most important question I learned to ask myself during my internship at the BrainCare Institute was this: “What does this sound like to a worried parent at 10 PM, scrolling on their phone after the kids are asleep?” It became my North Star. I realized that the brilliant, complex psychological theories I was studying were locked behind a door of academic language. My job, as I saw it, wasn’t just to be an intern; it was to be a translator, a bridge, a builder of doors.

This hit me hardest when I was tasked with writing my first article, “What Parents Should Know Before Bringing Children to Therapy.” My initial draft was confident, clinical, and completely useless. It was full of terms like “cognitive-behavioral frameworks” and “intake assessments.” I had written it to sound smart. Then, I pictured that parent at 10 PM. They weren’t looking for a textbook. They were looking for a hand to hold.

I scrapped the whole thing and started over. I threw out the jargon and tried to turn clinical concepts into kitchen-table conversations. “Cognitive reframing” became “helping your child change their worry channel.” An “intake assessment” became “the first ‘get to know you’ chat where you can share your story.” I wasn’t dumbing it down; I was making it human. I was translating the language of the clinic into the language of the heart.

The most profound moment of translation, however, wasn’t with words at all. It was with silence. We were hosting a mindfulness workshop for over 80 parents, led by the wonderfully calm psychologist Vu Thi Oanh. My official role was logistical, here and there checking names, arranging chairs, making sure the audio worked. But as the session began, I stood at the back of the dimly lit room and just watched.

I saw shoulders that had been hunched up with the day’s stress begin to drop. I saw furrowed brows soften. And then, after a guided breathing exercise, a sound moved through the room. It was a soft, collective sigh. It wasn’t a sound of sadness or exhaustion, but of release. It was the sound of eighty individual burdens being set down, just for a moment, in a safe space. In that single, shared exhalation, I understood the entire mission of the BrainCare Institute. We were offering therapies and writing articles, but most importantly we were creating spaces for people to breathe. My internship taught me that psychology’s true power lies not in its complexity, but in its profound ability to offer simple, actionable hope. Sometimes, that hope is as simple as the permission to take one, deep, restorative breath.