Episode #7 – What Are You Hoarding with Dr Chia-Ying Chou
Hi, this is Welcome to Self ™ Caring for the Human in the Therapist Chair, and I’m your host, Dr. Hayley D Quinn, fellow human, clinical psychologist, supervisor and trainer. Welcome to Self ™ is a place where you can come and learn ways to elevate your own care and compassion. A place to rest, be soothed, and at times maybe gently challenged to think about yourself and your practice. A place to remember that you are human first, choose the helping profession is just one of the roles in your life. My aim is that this is a place of soothing, comfort, nourishment, growth and nurture. A place where you can also welcome your self.
Welcome to another episode, I just like to take a moment to thank Wendy for leaving a review. Wendy says:
“I really enjoy Hayley’s podcast. Very relatable and full of wisdom to gently negotiate the pointy aspects of our lives. I think everyone can benefit by becoming a little more in touch with self. Thanks, Hayley and guests.”
Thank you, Wendy, for your lovely feedback. It really is much appreciated. So today, I’d like to introduce Chia-Ying Chou PhD. Chia-Ying is a clinical psychologist born and raised in Taiwan, and currently based in California in the US. She specialises in trauma, PTSD, and hoarding disorder. She is the director of a group practice San Francisco Centre for compassion focused therapies where clinical care and research are equally emphasised. Chia-Ying’s clinical work is influenced by her expertise in compassion, focus therapy, Zen Buddhist practice, and an interest in somatic practices. It is with great pleasure, I introduce my friend and colleague, Chia-Ying, to Welcome to Self ™.
Hayley: Hi, Chia-Ying, such a pleasure to have you join me on Welcome to Self ™ Caring for the Human in the Therapist Chair. How are you going?
Chia-Ying: I’m doing well. Thank you so much, Hayley, for inviting me. And I’m very excited to have this conversation with you.
Hayley: Fantastic. So I remember that you and I met through a mutual friend, our friend Grainne, at the second annual compassion retreat in New York.
Chia-Ying: Yeah, that was really lovely. When I sort of knew you, like, kinda like knew but not personally knew you. And then because Grainne and I, we were at UCL at the same time. And so we were friends, and then through her, I met you so it just feels like that professional knowing you is like tinted with this personal feel. So it’s really lovely.
Hayley: Yeah, it’s really lovely. And it’s so lovely to have you on today. So can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, and what drew you to becoming a helping professional?
Chia-Ying: Well, okay, so whenever people ask me to tell them about myself, I, for some reason, the first thing I would say is I’m born and raised in Taiwan, even though I live in the US in San Francisco. But I’m 100% Taiwanese. And I started to know that I wanted to be a therapist since high school. And I actually don’t know why I knew. And it just, it was just very real to me that I wanted to know more about people’s internal world, rather than what they show outside. So I just felt drawn to that path.
Hayley: And then did you go straight on to study from school?
Chia-Ying: Yeah. So after I graduated from high school, I went to National Taiwan University for my psychology undergrads. And the fun story is that back in the days when I was still a young student, as if I’m very old. So back in the day, I was still a young student. In Taiwan, there’s not that much public awareness about psychotherapy. So my dad was saying, Well, if you want to become a therapist may as well become a fortune teller. No offence about fortune teller, but it’s two different professions. I just thought it was a funny story to mention, but I didn’t care about what he said I did anyways, yeah. And I never regretted.
Hayley: So after you finished your university, what did you do then?
Chia-Ying: Well, after I finished my university, I wanted to continue to, because in Taiwan at that time you need it at this time as well, you need to have a need to have a master’s degree and the master’s degree in Taiwan is like a four year master’s degree that includes a full year of clinical training. And so that’s the requirement to be licenced. So then that was a no brainer for me that I felt, okay, then I’ll just have to do that. So I apply for master’s degrees, I did it. And during my master research, I was really interested in trauma. And so I have been, I became very, very interested actually, besides clinical work. I was also interested in research. And at that time, I thought, okay, I want to learn more about research. So I wanted to pursue a PhD. And because the things that I read a lot, and I liked a lot about PTSD were done by this professor, his name is Chris Bruin. And he is in University College London. And so that was when I reached out to him at the end of my master’s degree and asked him if he’d be interested in taking me as a PhD student. And I didn’t know that he would reply, I just thought, Oh, it doesn’t hurt to just email somebody who may not ever reply. So he replied, and then I was very surprised. And then it all went quite smoothly. And then I was able to go to University College London to do my PhD on trauma and PTSD. Yeah, and that’s when and where I met Grainne.
Hayley: Yeah. So you move from Taiwan to London, right?
Chia-Ying: And then to San Francisco for my postdoc.
Hayley: Wow. That’s so cool. And you have a special interest in hoarding. So what brought you to that?
Chia-Ying: Well, I needed a job at the end of my PhD. In this job, at the time, I actually didn’t know what hoarding was. And the reason why I was looking for a job, and in California was because at that time, I was trying to quote unquote, hoard a dead relationship. So I met someone when I was in London, and the last thing I knew is, was that he got a job in California, so I thought, I’m gonna hold this relationship with no, I didn’t know what it was. So then I was looking for postdoc positions in California. And there was one three year postdoc position that UCSF University of California, San Francisco, and they were looking for a postdoc, to run treatment groups, for people with hoarding challenges, and also to do research in that project. And I remember having to Google to find out what what hoarding was. Yeah, it was so new, and it still is so new. And after reading more, I realised, wow, there’s a lot of association between hoarding and trauma. And so I thought, wow, that’s definitely very fascinating to me. And so then I applied. Yeah, and that’s what brought me to San Francisco.
Hayley: Wow. So you sort of have a following? following I think you said holding a dead relationship. That’s quite a term, isn’t it?
Chia-Ying: When I googled and I realised what that, what hoarding was, and I thought, Isn’t this what I’m doing right now? Good. This isn’t meant to be.
Hayley: So what’s been your biggest learning in the work that you’ve been doing with people who struggle with hoarding?
Chia-Ying: I really felt like this is indeed meant to be it feels like, like it’s such a healing process for myself. Working with my clients is a healing process for me. But it’s true. Like I learned a lot from helping them. And I can see parts of the things that I, I also swapped struggle with in very different ways in the topics that they are struggling with. The presentations are maybe very different, but the processes or the mechanisms of some of the things are very similar. Yeah, one of the things that I learned, I always find that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Yeah. Because when you have to teach it, you have to go through a lot of things internally to be able to teach it to somebody else.
Hayley: You really have to know something to be able to teach it. But I think as well, your comment about, you know, you sometimes feel bad saying that you’re learning from working with your clients, I think if we allow ourselves to we can all really learn and heal from the work we do with our clients in different ways.
Chia-Ying: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for reinforcing that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, one of the things that I’ve learned, kinda like, was very beneficial was, was about boundaries. Yeah. A lot of people are holding challenges. Very, very obvious issue is boundaries, the boundaries as like, in showing up in various ways, such as, like, we don’t like people with hoarding problems, they don’t know, what is enough, or how to say no to a person or to an object. And so learning to say no, and learning about boundaries we like involves checking in with ourselves. And so that also helps us help me at least, to learn how to check in with myself to see why I feel good about this. Do I like this? Do I want to do this? And not so much about should? Yeah, not so much about stretching myself very faint. Just so that I seem nice.
Hayley: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s brilliant. I mean, I think, you know, many, many people struggle with boundaries. And all of us benefit from boundaries. Absolutely. Indeed. That’s fantastic. And any other learnings that have come from that apart from this stuff around boundaries for you?
Chia-Ying: Yeah. So boundaries led to the learning about, like, my basis, checking in with myself. And then also, like, through that path, it’s like, the next step seems to be inevitably self love. And self acceptance. Yeah. And so you, you learn that, okay, I, I have a feeling Wow, I am you learn to honour and listen to your feelings. And you learn to be okay with your feelings. Yeah. And that just leads to self love and self acceptance. And, like, that was my biggest fruit and biggest journey for the first couple of years, when I first started to work with people with hoarding issues, because I can just see how, even though we see the physicality of this, this this mental health problem, like, we see the stuff filled up in people’s environments. But isn’t it true that in a different way, we also have a lot, a lot of mental clutter, clutter in our body, in our mind, and that’s just invisible, but it’s, it’s actually very similar. And how do we choose what to stay? What to let go of? Yeah. reasonably, I’m also noticing that they’re working with this population. Another very powerful thing is about grief. Yeah, in the past I have often thought that grief is about, like having some big loss, and then you prefer that big loss. But it’s not like that at all. It can be every day.
Hayley: Absolutely shows up in so many ways, doesn’t it? And I think certainly from a Western culture, we don’t deal with grief at all. Rarely, we don’t speak about it. And I think you’re right, it shows up in some of the smallest things or what might seem like the smallest things. We can have the continual moments of just neglecting all this. Paying attention. I think what you were saying before about this process of checking in, not playing, slowing down checking in with ourselves, how am I feeling? This feeling is valid? Why does it make sense? That self acceptance that self love leads us to be able to make different choices for ourselves, which was more helpful. It allows us to slow down and grieve the things we need to grieve. I think you make really beautiful points there.
Chia-Ying: Thank you. I feel very heard and understood. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s that self love and self acceptance is kind of like building a cushion internally for you to be feeling safe enough and supported enough to even feel and acknowledge that grief. Grief is so, so tender and so hard to bear.
Hayley: Yeah. I love that building the cushion inside. I think as a mom, I’ve always felt like I want to be that soft place to fall for my son. Yeah, having that cushion inside of ourselves, we have a soft place to fall inside. Oh, lovely. Oh, that’s really lovely. You know, when I was thinking about having you on the podcast, I myself have thought about hoarding in different ways and things like, you know, I can have a bit of clutter at home, not to the point that I find it distressing or particularly problematic. But I have times where I’ll do decluttering. And I know I get caught in that all but this thing is, you know, when I attach all this meaning to things, and then I have to feel like I have to be quite, you know, strong in terms of now I need to move these out of my life. Now, they no longer need to be with me. But also I was thinking about, you know, helping professionals or really anybody at work? How might there be ways that hoarding shows up for us at work? And what impact might that have? What are some of the things that people could be more mindful of in terms of recognising hoarding behaviours in themselves and their workplaces? Because I’m sure there would be ways this shows up.
Chia-Ying: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you, for opening up this, this conversation, this topic. I can emphasise enough that holding is not just about the physical stuff. And that’s, that’s also true. So true for people with what we now call diagnosed with hoarding disorder, even though they have physical stuff, it’s never just about the physical stuff getting to either stop is an outcome of what’s going on internally in the psychology. When we do, even if we don’t have physical clutter, we can also share a lot of hoarding traits or hoarding tendencies. Speaking for myself, I have a tendency to hold project in responsibility. I love to be in control. And I have, like, I am curious and interested in different things. And I see potential in different things that I get excited about. I say yes to things. Yeah. And then I taste the consequences. And then that’s alright, I have to learn to let some of these responsibilities go, I need to learn to delegate. Yeah. And it’s, it’s that the responsibility piece is so so. So similar to what I see in my clients who have hoarding issues. For instance, they can be looking at like some plastic items, and they feel so responsible for Mother Earth, they don’t want to put it in the land field. And so that they rather keep it or they want to find good homes for it. And that kind of responsibility to want to save everybody. I can also see that happens to allow them to help professionals. I cannot let this like some, some clients Paul call you and say well, do you have a day you’re still taking new clients and maybe you are maybe you’re very fool, but this person really sounds like somebody that you can help. Then I have the tendency to fit them in. And then a couple of days later, when I’m really busy, what is an overflowing schedule of activities, then I just regret why do I have so many clients? Now I regret taking any of them, but it’s just that I can take more than what I can. I can take more than said, sacrifice other areas of my life because I feel responsible. I feel like I have to help.
Hayley: Yeah, I think that is a common problem, particularly during this pandemic. You know, when I’m supervising people, I have a lot around, you know, but I need to take them, there’s nobody else available. There’s a real over-sense of responsibility. And I think we do have to be really mindful, because you can’t just keep taking on more and more people and expect that to be sustainable. Okay, that’s a really good point. And just going back to what you were saying about the, you know, the landfill, but the sense of responsibility, and I can relate so much to that when I’m decluttering. I’m like, I have to find somebody else that will have this because I don’t want to put it in the landfill. It just feels so awful to do that. Yeah. As you were talking, I was like, Oh, my gosh, that’s me.
Chia-Ying: But it’s definitely me as well.
Hayley: I’ve come to the place of consuming last, just consume one. And then you don’t have this issue to have to get rid of things.
Chia-Ying: Right. Right. That really is I think a better solution is to consume less.
Hayley: Start at the start, don’t create the problem.
Chia-Ying: Exactly. Exactly.
Hayley: Yeah. So how else might this show up? At work, I was sort of thinking in terms of, you know, a lot of people have handwritten notes, and then transfer them to electronic devices these days, but then they don’t want to get rid of their notes. And then they have these electronic notes, but then they have these piles of paperwork and things.
Chia-Ying: Yeah, that makes me think of another kind of like a psychological mechanism that I can see amongst people with the clinical, hoarding disorder is the fear, or some deep anxiety about things going wrong, and wanting to prepare for what ifs. And that I can relate to that in my own work as well, you can, especially in the US, you, you have very complicated. Texas, you have very, very strict laws to, to, to manage practitioners. And each state has different laws and like there’s just kind of like a general atmosphere in the air, you just feel like, you cannot relax, you have to prepare for any kind of audits. And so there’s just a very strong sense of fear that’s driving this behaviour of saving.
Hayley: Yeah. Yeah, similar stuff, you know, our governing bodies, there’s similar fears, I think amongst practitioners here. And I think if we link back to what you were saying before, about, you know, stopping and checking in and listening to what’s happening, then we can actually recognise Can’t wait that oh, this is actually being motivated by fear. Perhaps there’s a different way I can be with myself, so I can let some of this stuff go.
Chia-Ying: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I think that sometimes when I when I reflect on these things, and especially because I’m an I’m an immigrant, so I’m not that familiar with the Texas laws not not that not that I think perhaps people who grew up here, they may have similar fear, but I just kind of feel like this is, this is kind of confusing for me, I’m still learning so that I’m scared. And so, something that I’ve noticed one sometime, sometimes during my practice, I realised, oh, okay, I’m functioning based on fear right now. So let me let me ask somebody who actually knows to tell me what is the right thing to do and what is unnecessary? So in that Texas area I asked my accountant, and in others like note taking note keeping areas as my other colleagues and see what they do. If I really have doubts, I called the board of psychology to ask them what, what, what? Too much? What is what you want from me, really?
Hayley: Yeah, yeah. So then you take more helpful action, don’t you? You’re more grounded and take more helpful action. Like when we let reality, reality check.
Also knowing that we’re not alone in these things, we can reach out for support, we can seek supervision, we can seek information from our governing bodies. Right, I have to figure this all out alone. Right? Yeah. Any other ways that might be showing up or what people might sort of pay attention to. So they recognise that these behaviours aren’t very helpful.
Chia-Ying: I think another thing that I’ve, I’ve recently been thinking about, actually, I started to think about this, after you reach out to me to say, hey, you want to join my interview, to talk about self care, and how is hoarding showing up in professional life in your life? And then I thought, then that really triggered my thinking, and that that really triggered me to start to think about how I’m suffering in this line of work that I actually really love, but how can I suffer less so that I can love more or I enjoy them more? Yeah, and something that popped out in my head is the head of like, the, that wanting to control? Yeah, like I and now, since last year, I started to, to, to grow my own group practice. So that that I am, I have more responsibilities, and I have to take care of the marketing of the practice. And I have to do supervision and take up different projects in the, in the, in the practice. And I’m noticing that I because this, this was a transition for me. So I have always been working by myself. And even if I work in a team, I used to be a postdoc. So I suppose that you just have to do everything. Yeah. And you don’t have to delegate to anybody. So I’m very used to just doing everything by myself. And that actually, I realised that that gave me a great sense of control. And I’m used to having that amount of sense of control. Somehow that makes me feel like it’s not just that work is in control, but that my whole life is in control. Because my work is in control. Things are the way that I want them to go because I do it all.
Hayley: And then some comes at a cost, doesn’t it?
Chia-Ying: Oh my god, it’s so costly. Yeah, so costly. Yeah. And now I realise I just cannot manage doing that kind of sense of control. I have to let it go. Yeah, so that is something that I’m actually learning right now: how to let it go, and how to embrace other people’s creativity. And because if you delegate things are not always gonna work the way you imagined it to be? Yeah. And so how can you, how can you rely on other people’s creativity, their ideas, and appreciate that and actually, a lot of times I realised, when I asked for help people, people do it in a very different way that I would never have thought of. It’s great, because I would never have thought of doing it that way. But let him go, is something that I have to keep reminding myself of?
Hayley: Yeah, I think it’s really interesting that, you know, the hoarding isn’t just about the physicality of things, there’s a sense of hoarding responsibility is a really interesting one. And I think I can relate to that, actually, and what you’re saying about this control, I’ve always been somebody who’s done a lot of things by myself. And, you know, my business has changed quite a bit. And I have started, you know, having other people I outsource some of my work, people doing things. And like you say it is this letting go of it has to be done my way. And it’s okay, if it’s done another way. And actually, sometimes it’s better that it’s done another way that skills that I don’t have. But that constant checking in and recognising what is motivating this, and what am I trying to hold on to that I don’t need to hold on to?
It’s an ongoing process, let go and then let go again.
I started to notice that I need to let go because, because I am the first thing that I became aware of was resentment. We started to feel like I’m working too. I’ll have a holiday, when I see people posting their holidays on Facebook, I feel jealous. And I feel resentful. Why am I doing everything by myself? And I thought, I thought, hey, but you’re the one that makes you do everything yourself.
Oh, well, if I’m responsible for doing everything myself, that means I’m also responsible for delegating to other people as well, I get to do that. But we think about designing our work lives, our businesses in the way we want to do that, knowing that actually we can write income, you know, I guess if you if you’re working for somebody else, it can be different. And that might be a conversation you need to have with your employer around, how can we do this differently. But certainly if you’re working for yourself, I remind myself that, you know, this is one of the reasons I work for myself. So I can actually design things the way I want them to be. Right and create a lifestyle that actually is what I want to be living.
Chia-Ying: Right. Right. Yeah. And I noticed that because my current growing pain is about growing this practice, however, what you just said about if you work for somebody else, then you talk to your employees or employer. But that reminded me actually, that happens in therapy sessions a lot of times, well, I can only speak for myself, I can feel like I am, like taking on more responsibilities from my client has been helpful. Yeah, I can feel like I’m dragging somebody along. Yeah. And that that actually is not helpful. And it comes from a good place that I want to help, but really doesn’t help.
Hayley: That’s a really beautiful awareness. That sense of responsibility can leak into our clinical work. Yeah. At the end of the day, we don’t want to be working harder than our clients are working. We want the clients to be doing that, because it’s their life that they’re doing the work for.
Chia-Ying: Yeah. Yeah. And they have the wisdom, who says, wisdom is the right wisdom for them. Maybe my job is to take a step back, and, and have more so that in the therapy room, there will be more space for them to show up.
Hayley: So one of one of the favourite things that Paul Gilbert says, well, one of my favourite things that Paul Gilbert says is, “Think with your clients, not for your clients.” Oh, yeah. And I think that speaks to this, when we take responsibility and we take over it for our clients. It’s almost like we know best. And that’s, it should be, hey, we really want to be able to help the clients access their own wisdom. Right? You know, tune in that, like we were saying before about the slowing down tuning in checking in, what am I feeling? Why would I be feeling this? How does it make sense? What would be the next helpful step? We want clients to leave therapy and have the skills to do this for themselves. So I think anything with your client, not for your clients?
Chia-Ying: Right, right. Yeah, you want to empower them. And, I even think that empowerment is not even the right attitude. It’s as if they don’t already have top power, you have to empower them. I think now I’m thinking out loud right now, it’s probably more appropriate that we help them connect or reconnect with their power.
Hayley: Absolutely. For me, I always come back to this thing. My job is helping the client understand. Understand why they think the way they do, why they behave the way they do, how it all makes sense. And, and help them change their relationship with themselves.
Chia-Ying: Right. So important, the relationship with yourself.
Hayley: Now I’m going to have in my mind as well help them build their internal cushion. It just gives me this sense of, you know, hugging onto those little cushions. That’s all. comforting, it’s beautiful. So Chia-Ying, what’s been the best piece of advice you received in regards to navigating being a helping professional because it can be challenging.
Chia-Ying: Well, I’ve really feel very grateful for my path. This development as a psychologist And I’ve received so many very valuable and very timely advice and guidance. But one that very frequently comes back to me again, again, again, is when I was like when I first came to UCSF to do my postdoc, that was like, I was totally foreign. And I spoke with an accent. And I looked very young. And so the population that I worked with are in their 60s and 70s. And one of the first chapters of very big challenges that I encountered was a couple of clients said to me, my face saying, you look too green, I don’t want to work with you. And I was taking it very hard. And I had a very hard time accepting it, I felt angry, I felt misunderstood, that feel disrespected. And then I am with a lot of feelings, I would talk to my boss about this at the time. She’s a psychiatrist, and her name is Kara Matthews. She was the leader of this, this clinical trial. And she just very calmly said to me, “It’s not about you. It’s not about you. Like, what they are really saying is, can you help me? It’s the worst that you are too young, but actually reading between the lines. Can you help me? I want to know if you can help me.” Yeah. And so that was very powerful. For me, I think that was the right time for me to receive that message. And just that, then it’s not about me, either, like, Oh, I don’t have to be entangled. in that, in that suffering, I can actually come back out of that mess, and then then show up as my powerful self and say, “Yeah, I look young and I can help you.”
Hayley: Oh, that’s beautiful. And that tells you, they must be really powerful words, because in a different context, I have heard the same thing. Debra Lee came out to do some training over here in Australia. And we went for dinner afterwards. And I was talking about wanting to do more training and workshops, but that I was feeling very anxious. Debra looked across the table at me and just said, “It’s not about you.” And I actually at first felt like, what? It’s not about you, it’s about what you’re offering to other people. That has been one of the most powerful things that’s been said to me in my life allows me to let go of this kind of anxiety. Well, it’s not about me, it’s about what I can offer. Right? It’s about what other people need to hear. Right. And I think you know, for you to hear that from Carol. It’s not about you. It’s about what the client is asking. It’s the fears of the client. Right if I’m suffering, are you able to help me?
Chia-Ying: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Hayley: Two brilliant women telling us wonderful words. Let’s take a moment to thank them both. Thank you. Thank you. Goodness, it’s not about you. We should all hold that in mind.
Chia-Ying: Right. Right. Yeah, I think that that’s still applied sometimes now, that even I, I have aged look as young as green is that used to be? But there are still moments in different contexts, such as when I say that I can get into this, like, feeling responsible and wanting to drag the clients along that kind of more. This same? It’s not about you that still applies? Yeah. Different meanings? Yeah. It’s not about me. It’s about the client,
Hayley: I think sometimes as therapists we can get into that sense of having to prove that we’re good therapists, you know, when I’m doing supervision, I, it’s this sense of what’s going on for you in that moment. Right, right. Right system gets activated. So I’m going to prove that I’m a good therapist. Well, actually, no, it’s not about you. Use this phrase, this could be like a catchphrase for life. Except when we are thinking about the challenges that we experience in terms of taking care of ourselves, and then it is about us. What I’d like to ask you is what do you find are the biggest challenges that you face. In terms of taking care of yourself as a practitioner.
Chia-Ying: I think that the biggest challenge, or I should say the challenge that I’m learning and exploring, in terms of how to improve is I realised that I take the emotions of my clients and put it in my body. I don’t find myself in the middle of the night thinking about what they say, that does not happen very often to me. But every night, at the end of the day, I can feel different parts of my body is very much aching. Yeah. And I can even sometimes since that, in the moment, have a have a difficult conversation in a moment of somebody sharing something like my body is very actively working, not just my door, my mouth. It’s not it’s not just talk therapy. My whole body is helping. And I have better ways to release things in my mind, but I’m still learning ways to release tension in my body.
Hayley: Do you have particular things that you do?
Chia-Ying: Yeah, yeah, a couple of things that I’ve been exploring lately. One thing is Alexander techniques. So for those who are probably not familiar with the techniques, I can only say from like, my on my very, like, not insider kind of this description. I think that Alexander techniques are how you can learn to examine how you hold your posture, how you use your body and check in and to see where you are using more effort than necessary. Yeah, and I work with the teacher once a month. And she, she, I tell her what’s been bothering me. And then she said, “Well, let’s do this practice.” And then we do different kinds of exercises, to help me gain awareness of how I use my body. And we even try to sit at a desk I will usually sit at, to me with my clients. And imagine, like trying to remember a session that was stressful, or intense. And think about that. And then I tell her what my body’s doing. Yeah, so just gaining some awareness of how my body has been like, without me knowing trying to help, I can let my body know, hey, you can relax, you’re fine. You thank you for your help. But let’s relax and we are all good, the client is also safe. So we don’t have to be in fight or flight mode.
Hayley: I think you make a really good point, because it isn’t just about what we’re thinking and saying in therapy, we as a whole person are in that co-creating with our clients. I mean, gosh, we could do a whole other episode on this, maybe maybe we will later. But I think it’s really important. I think it’s great awareness for you to actually recognise that you are having these feelings in your body, this tension in your body. I know for me recently, I think, you know, with all the stuff with the pandemic, and just different bits and pieces. I’ve been on a bit of a break, some annual leave. But what I’ve noticed is I’m just intuitively dancing. I’m not even consciously going, Oh, I’m gonna dump out my body is actually releasing stress for me. This is a really intuitive way. It’s actually quite fun.
Chia-Ying: I’m so excited. I’m so glad that you mentioned this because another practice that I’ve been doing for a couple of years now is also this kind of intuitive or aesthetic dance. It’s called Five rhythms. There’s no instruction to tell you how you should do what kind of moves you should do. But it’s a practice for you to be in tune with your body and let your body speak the body’s own intelligence and know how to heal yourself.
Hayley: Yeah, if that’s the thing, it just happens. It’s fantastic. We have those classes in Brisbane actually, I was thinking of giving that a go. Give it a go. Fantastic. Oh, well, I’ll let you know how I go with that. But in the meantime, I do my own Five rhythms. Just let your body do and shake and move the way it needs to because I always feel great afterwards. Right? For those it’s holding on to stuff that’s perhaps not so helpful.
Chia-Ying: Right, right. And we can think about how to help it. But we just need to let go and give space and know.
Hayley: Again, that letting go. Exactly. It’s coming up, isn’t it? There’s let go. Right? Yeah. So why don’t you tell us a bit about any projects that you’re currently working on? Because I know you’re a busy lady and you’d like to know you say you like to hoard?
Chia-Ying: Well, do. Do we have another hour?
Actually, two to three things come to my mind. When I knew that you asked me to share. One thing is that I would like to mention that there’s this workshop coming up. It’s about anger, power and love. That I will be co leading with Chris Fraser and Isabel Labouth. I’m not sure if I said her last name, right. That’s French, I don’t know if I pronounced it right. But we will be doing a workshop exploring anger as a starting point, because we have so much stigma attached to this mis human emotion, anger, we are either afraid of it. Or we think that we never experience it, or we try to suppress it. And a lot of times anger is a very good messenger to help us to understand where our boundaries are. Yeah. And when we are in touch with our boundaries, when we are in touch with our feelings, that actually is we are in touch with our power. And this kind of power is not the kind of power that’s like dominating, or like trying to, like political power, or kind of like, use it to, to to oppress other people, that power that we are trying to help clients, or help our participants to discover is their internal wisdom, where they are, where their strength is. Yeah. And then we’re also talking about how this can help us connect with people in a very harmonious, but still authentic way. And how can you build love from that standpoint?
Hayley: Beautiful. And Chris and Isabel are wonderful, too. I’m sure that will be great.
Chia-Ying: So we’ll be offering this zoom, and it’s gonna be in October, it’s gonna be for Saturday mornings in San Francisco, midday in the East Coast of the US. And early evening in the UK. Anywhere on Earth, if you can log into zoom, you can participate. So that’s the first thing. And the second thing is, this is a big thing that I’ve been doing this better treatment for holding groups, and that we are recruiting participants who have holding challenges, who live in California, to join our compassion focused therapy group or cognitive behavioural therapy group. And so if you know anybody who needs help with holding, this is our please contact a team. And maybe I’ll share our contact information later. And so it’s going to be online, and it’s 20 weeks. Oops. So that’s something that we’ve been working on. And we collect data from clients, and ask them if they would let us use their de identified information or did identify the data to do research on these modalities of treatments, yeah. Yeah, so these are the two main things.
Hayley: That’s fantastic. So what’s one piece of advice you might share with our listeners?
Chia-Ying: I am actually looking at my notes now. I thought, I will share that. I kind of find that clients come to us, not totally randomly, some somehow not to be totally mysterious or who but somehow I feel like that universe has its play. And so you draw the people who are meant to be working with you during a certain time. To have time to do your practice, at least that has been my experience. And sometimes I feel that when I take care of myself, when I honour my process, and give myself space to work through something internally in me, and somehow, somehow my clients changed without me directly, directly working on some things with them. It’s kind of mysterious, but I kind of feel like there’s some soul connection, if you will, like, like you, you are working with a group of souls. And then when you work through something, somehow, somehow it kind of encourages other people in their palaces and can be totally different things. But often, I feel like when I give myself a break, when I decide, okay, I’m going to take five days off, and I’m just gonna be meditating, I’m just gonna be taking long walks, I’m just gonna be taking care of myself. And I like my thinking my thing, okay, when you go back to that, and seeing your clients, they’re gonna be in such crisis, because you like them, they’re going to have a lot to talk about, when when they come back, they often tell me, you know what, something interesting happened, something just shifted, or that thing that bothers me does not bother me as much. Now there’s something else that I’m thinking about. It feels like that. That inter-connectedness, that young description, is somehow in work there that we don’t know, taking care of you taking care of everybody.
Hayley: Yeah, absolutely. And I think when we do that, when we take care of ourselves, and we show that to our clients, we’re modelling as well, it’s okay to take care of yourself. Right? You know, I remember a client one time when I was at the height of my chronic illness, I had to cancel sessions. And I can remember her saying to me, thank you so much for that. It really showed me that it’s okay for me to not do things when I’m sick. I’m so distressed about Oh, I’ve got to cancel clients. Again, this is bad. And actually, it really helped me reframe like, no, it’s when I take care of myself when I behave in certain ways. I’m modelling this to other people as well.
Chia-Ying: Right. Right. Yeah. And similarly, when we set our boundaries, it’s also model modelling.
Hayley: Yeah, absolutely. I think we can’t underestimate that, you know, that the work we do for ourselves is work we do with our clients, because they see it. Right. Now they experience us being authentic, they experience us taking care of ourselves, they experience us putting boundaries in place. And that learning in itself, isn’t it?
So I asked this to everybody dying. If you could meet yourself 20 years from now, what do you think your future self would say to you?
Chia-Ying: Oh, yeah, I thought about this question. Um, my anxious self right now would say answer that question, say 20 years later self is say, we say, “You should have been doing that more and this less” So I’m so that makes me feel like oh, I don’t know if I’m making the right decision prior to prioritising the right things. And then when I am more relaxed and more grounded I would imagine my future self will say to my current self saying, “Well, you had a lot of fun doing everything. And you have a lot of fun whether that was the right decision or the wrong decision, the right thing to prioritise or not, you were experiencing your life.”
Hayley: Oh, that’s beautiful. The tricky mind, the anxiety of jobs and I want to speak first. I want to speak because I don’t something bad might happen. Gosh, I mean, it just happens doesn’t it’s like I was born here I am. That’s so beautiful that you were experiencing your life. You’re having fun, whether that was the right priority or not. You were engaging in your life. Because we know there is no can we can always No, no. Oh, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. So finally, if people want to find out more about you or get in touch, where can they find you and engage with you and your work? You mentioned some stuff earlier and put that in the show notes. Depending when this goes It will, will depend whether that coincides with one of what was the best way to get hold of you.
Chia-Ying: I think maybe the best way to get a hold of me and have most of the information would be my website or my practice website. Our our website address is sfcompassion.com
And from there, you can get my email address and my phone number. And we have my YouTube channel on that website. And so I think that’s the best way.
Hayley: Oh, fantastic. Because you’ve got a whole series on compassion focused therapy for hoarding, haven’t you on YouTube?
Chia-Ying: That was recorded last year since the pandemic started. So yeah, it’s so nice to speak with you Hayley.
Hayley: Oh, Chia-Ying. It’s been an absolute pleasure. And thank you for all your wisdom and your openness. It’s been really lovely. And I think it will be really helpful for people that are listening.
Chia-Ying: Oh, thank you so much. I have so much fun.
Hayley: You take care.
Chia-Ying: You take care too.
Hayley: Thank you for sharing this time with me today. I hope your time here was helpful and supportive. If there has been something in this episode that you have found helpful, I invite you to share it with another person you think might benefit. I’d also love it if you’d like to leave a review wherever you tune in. Reviews really helped to increase awareness of podcasts, meaning I can spread helpful information more widely. All reviews are welcome and much appreciated. As I know they take time out of your day. If you’d like to be notified when the next episode airs, please use the link in the show notes to join my mailing list. Music and editing by Nyssa Ray. Thanks Nyssa. I wish you all well in your relationship with yourself. And may you go well and go gently.
Practice website: sfcompassion.com
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Vq-vr016OBjyPuT2Ifu3A/featured
The workshop mentioned in the interview, Anger, Power, Love: A Journey Back to Connection, is now postponed to January 2022. There is a chance to register! Find out more here: https://sfcompassion.com/
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