EP 114: Unveiling Joy: A Journey of Healing, Empowerment, and Authenticity
In this episode, I'm diving into what’s real and important — like why finding a therapist who vibes with your cultural background is pure gold, and why having them on your squad is like having a secret weapon in your back pocket.
We're not just scratching the surface here. I'm digging deep into the nitty-gritty of building trust in relationships, fostering a supportive team vibe, and untangling the knots of trauma healing through trauma-informed care, especially with writing.
Get ready for some real talk, as I unpack my own rollercoaster journey through the tangled web of happiness fears and the heavy-handed influence of authoritarian parenting. I share how I've flipped the script on healing generational wounds and leaving our mark on the world in the best way possible.
It's time to unleash your authentic self, make some real connections, and give yourself the love and care you truly deserve.
Let's embark on this wild ride together in this personal essay episode.
Download a sample of my book:
How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps: A Modern Asian American Guide
Takeaways
Finding a therapist with a shared cultural background can provide valuable support and understanding.
Having a therapist as part of your team can be invaluable in navigating challenges and personal growth.
It is important to ensure that books and other forms of storytelling do not have a negative impact on readers.
Trauma-informed care is crucial in providing compassionate and empathetic support.
The fear of happiness can stem from the belief that one must first experience pain and suffering.
Retraining the brain and overcoming self-devaluation are essential for personal growth and happiness.
Building trust in relationships is important, especially for divorced parents.
Creating a team and culture of support can lead to a strong and thriving business.
The double helix of trauma healing involves continually uncovering and healing layers of trauma.
Letting in the goodness and recognizing accomplishments is essential for personal growth and happiness.
Overcoming shame and guilt is crucial in healing intergenerational trauma.
Authenticity and meaningful connections are key to a fulfilling life.
Taking time for self-care and renewal is important for overall well-being.
Listeners are encouraged to leave a review for the podcast and stay connected with Judy Tsuei.
Episode Highlights
Chapters
00:00 Importance of Finding a Therapist with Shared Cultural Background
01:25 The Value of Having a Therapist on Your Team
03:20 The Importance of Trauma-Informed Care
04:15 The Limitations of Trying to Fit Everyone into One Mold
05:09 Fear of Happiness and the Influence of Authoritarian Parenting
06:04 Retraining the Brain and Overcoming Self-Devaluation
07:02 Building Trust in Relationships
08:00 Creating a Team and Culture of Support
09:27 The Double Helix of Trauma Healing
10:55 Letting in the Goodness and Recognizing Accomplishments
12:25 Overcoming Shame and Guilt
13:49 Healing Intergenerational Trauma and Making a Positive Impact
14:49 Embracing Authenticity and Meaningful Connections
15:18 Taking Time for Self-Care and Renewal
15:40 Closing Remarks and Call to Action
Transcript:
Judy Tsuei (00:02.606)
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today.
So I'm holding this notebook in my hand and it's a journal that I use during my therapy sessions. And I wanted to share some of these things with you because I've posted about my therapist before.
Multiple people have asked me for referrals and have also started working with her. She's Asian American, which I highly advocate that if it's possible for you to find mental health support, to also find someone who has a shared cultural background. I didn't even know that that was something that I could seek out or ask for. And that's why I brought on the therapists from the Yellow Chair Collective, because they have an array of therapists who are.
accustomed to the cultural nuance that anybody who's listening to this show may also need extra support in, you know, understanding the authoritarian parents, understanding what it's like to be children of immigrants, understanding what it's like to be a parentified child, things like that. So one of the things that, you know, I've been experiencing lately, we've been working together for a year and a half. She has a running tally of how many sessions that we have, 82, this last count. And,
One of the things that she says is she knows that I like a timeline. And so she'll know that it's time for us to, you know, no longer work together. And she's like, my goal is to put me out of a job for you. So when it comes to a timeline, we've basically said that in the midst of writing my book and all of the different things that are coming up, that it's invaluable to have her as part of my team.
I think it was, I can't remember exactly who the celebrity was, but I was watching an interview and she said, you know, I have a trainer for my body to keep me in optimal physical shape. Why would I not have a trainer for my mind and to make sure that my mind and my mental health and my emotional wellness is in optimal shape? And I really liked seeing it like that. The other thing is that I was on an EMDR training today because I want to make sure that in writing this book, it's not going to re -traumatize someone.
Judy Tsuei (02:21.614)
or that the inadvertent impact of the things that I share is that it causes this spiral into something else. Because that's how I started my eating disorder. I didn't know I was starving myself. I was becoming anorexic. And then when it became too much to no longer eat, that I needed sustenance and nourishment, I just happened to be watching an afterschool special and the afterschool special was warning about bulimia and the dangers of bulimia. One of the girls,
in the made for TV movie actually ended up dying of a heart attack or heart failure. And none of that penetrated through. Instead, what I saw was, oh my gosh, you can eat and throw up and not get fat? Well, that's great. So I had no idea bulimia even existed and that kicked off a 15 plus year battle with bulimia. So I wanna make sure that my book doesn't have the same inadvertent effect. And so being on this EMDR training today,
with the co -founders of this company that I am investing in, that I am working with, because they're doing innovative tech, and specifically in the mental and emotional health space. I'm very excited about what's to come. But in talking to him, he has this mission and this venture to have everybody, as many people as possible, be trauma -informed.
so that we can be providing trauma -informed care in everything that we do. And ultimately, trauma -informed care comes from a place of understanding oneself, understanding one's wounds, understanding how to approach people with compassion and empathy, and knowing that each other person who you meet is on their own journey. And so to try to make everybody fit into one mold, one model, is just unrealistic. It's not gonna happen. And then it creates these limiting...
circumstances and situations and potentially stigmatizing ones or ones that trigger someone or some memory because you're not able to be yourself in your full expression. You're not able to be yourself in where you are in that moment, showing up as you do with all of the different roles and responsibilities that you play. So all of those things are coming together in writing my book.
Judy Tsuei (04:40.91)
And in this last session, I was able to ask her some questions about why I think the way that I do, or just basically asking her some of the questions of statements that she's made to me. So one of the things that she said to me is, you're afraid of happiness. And I know that we hear that colloquially thrown around, that you're afraid of how the magnitude of who you can become as opposed to how small you are.
There's a Marianne Williamson quote who says that all the time. And when I asked her about it, what does that mean that I'm afraid of happiness? She explained it in this way and it suddenly felt like everything made sense. She said, whatever accolades came to you when you were younger, they came after punishment, criticism and judgment, which is the effect of authoritarian parenting, of tiger parenting. In order for something to be good, she continued, you had to suffer. That's why you're afraid of happiness.
you now think that for large amounts of happiness to happen, you must first experience massive amounts of pain. It felt like, you know, this truth bomb. Because of course, then I wouldn't want to be happy. Because somewhere in my mind, I believed that happiness would break me, that I could only enjoy my life if I were first annihilated by pain. So she told me that now I have to be a scientist.
I have to retrain my brain that this lived experience was an untrue lesson that I learned. And in addition to that, I was joking that my partner, we played Scrabble together. We play it fairly frequently. And the first time that we played it together, I was surprised that he beat me because when I was in my early 20s at my first full -time job, I worked at a high -tech advertising agency. And it was a startup and it was great. And we used to have these rigorous Scrabble matches.
at lunch, like we would leave the board there, we would go back and do work. It was wild. And I dominated like the amount of times that I got a bingo, which is like using all seven tiles and just, you know, the art directors, the copywriters, the CEO, we were all playing together. So I had pretty high confidence that I was good at this game. And, you know, the first time I think he beat me and I was surprised. So I said to him,
Judy Tsuei (07:02.798)
I'm shocked that you're good at this game." And he looked at me and he said, why? You know that I have a master's degree and I work in education. And when I mentioned this as kind of a joke to my therapist, she said, well, that's because you believe that there's something wrong with you. And so you think that anybody who likes you or wants to be around you, that there must be something wrong with them. So by devaluing him, you devalue yourself. And,
you know, you still are working through this idea of why would anybody like me? So I think that those two things, that this understanding that in order for me to be happy, some part of my psyche thinks that I would have to be annihilated, she used that word, or that this man who I love so, so much and who's been nothing but kind, he's grown with me tremendously and...
continually reminds me of how much he loves me and I always feel safe and trusting with him. I never have to worry. And I think for divorced parents, this is a big deal. We don't get a lot of time together because our custody schedules are different. We try to sync them up as much as possible, but the structure is different. And we just have busy careers and being a parent, a divorced parent especially, is very, very busy.
So to be able to trust in the relationship and that I have the bandwidth to pursue the other things that I love and want to do because this person is so grounding and our relationship is so solid. It's something that I want to enjoy and I want to really let in more similar to how I want to let in all the wonderful things that are happening in my life, in my business. I brought on new team members recently to our branding and content marketing agency and
Even in that, my therapist said, you know, I was feeling a lot of anxiety about it just from the normal business owner perspective of realizing, okay, well now you have more overhead, you wanna make sure that you bring in more business to cover those expenses and generate profit and all of that good stuff. But she said for me, it also feels different because for the first time in my life, I have people who are advocating for me, who are protecting me, who are protecting my interests.
Judy Tsuei (09:27.502)
I'm building these concentric circles around me. And I don't know, I haven't known what that's like. I don't know what to do with it necessarily. And so to learn to be with it and to be with all the normal challenges of owning your own business and then all the normal challenges of being in a relationship and all the quote unquote normal things. But with this extra layer or this extra lens, my therapist calls it the double helix of trauma healing where you're just going to continue to dig,
downward and you can't uncover that next layer until you feel safe to be able to do so. Otherwise, as I mentioned before, it could be re -traumatizing or not helpful. And I loved this idea of creating a team and a culture where the understanding also is that my time is more valuable, that these concentric circles create additional boundaries for me, healthy boundaries, so that people know that if they want my time,
they need to prioritize that or invest in that and understand the value of that. And one of the most beautiful things, because I think success metrics, I've had to teach and repeat myself over and over again, that it's not just about how much money you're bringing in. It's not just about your net profit. It's also about the fact that my team members feel such a strong culture and that they reached out to me that they wanted to.
work with me because they knew how authentic and transparent and open and honest I am, or that the clients that we have, they know who they're dealing with. They have trust. They are learning. They are taken care of. We're collaborating together. I honor and respect them and everything that they've built. And so when I say that entrepreneurship is the greatest personal development course you could sign up for, there's so many different facets of it.
And I want to let in that happiness. I went out to lunch with my partner's best friend and you know, my partner and I have been together for the last three and a half years and his friend and I have gone out to lunch. We've tried to make it a monthly thing. He's a very, very successful entrepreneur himself. And when I mentioned the fact that I shared some of these elements that I'm sharing in the podcast now about the different facets of trauma that I've experienced and the different things that have happened.
Judy Tsuei (11:56.014)
in the divorce or he's also divorced with a former partner who has a personality similar to my ex -husband. And so we have a lot of shared understandings. And when I said that over the last few years, working with a therapist, especially that I've learned to let in the goodness, because he did ask, like, do you let in the positive things that happen? Do you stand there and understand how much you've accomplished? And I mentioned how I've started doing it more and more and he affirmed that.
He's seen it in me. He's seen me grow. I was on a podcast interview with a man who lives in Ireland and he was saying that in Ireland, because I was sharing that the EMDR training, the co -founder of the company had let me know that Ireland is leading the way in trauma -informed care. Cork, the city, is aiming to be a trauma -informed city on all levels. And when I was talking to him, he said, oh yeah, like, you know, I'm from Ireland, grew up in the States or grew up.
in other different places, but now he lives in Ireland with his wife. And he said that in Ireland with all the trauma that they've experienced historically, and even in current affairs, that with the heavy religious aspect of things as well, that they always felt, he always felt like he was doing something wrong. And he said, but when I talk to people who come from your cultural background, it's different. There's shame instead of guilt.
And the shame is that I am something wrong. And so my therapist said that in situations when you don't have control, you blame yourself because it creates an illusion of control. So I just wanted to share with you that if you are a smart, accomplished, caring, sensitive, bold, brave individual, and that you are still working through things,
to heal intergenerational trauma, to heal yourself through the missteps or learning lessons that you've embarked on in your own life, and that you're continually seeking to do right, to be good, to make an impact, to make a positive impact in the world, especially in your close circle of friends and family and your community, then I commend you. It is not easy, and you are not alone in having doubt.
Judy Tsuei (14:19.502)
and feeling overwhelmed and wondering, you know, is it all going to make a difference at all with the way that the world is moving? And I hope that podcasts like this, storytelling like this, bringing on voices that of the people who I interview, that you will know that that authenticity and creating meaningful connections and experiencing your life fully are all of the things that life is about.
and that you will find your way like I am finding mine. And that one day, hopefully we'll be able to look back and see like, what a wonderful story that we've written. What a beautiful narrative. So with that, I am off to spend time in Utah at Arches with my daughter for her spring break. And I'm hoping that the time in nature and this beautiful change of scenery will be an opportunity for me to refresh.
and reconnect with myself and with my daughter and come back even more renewed. So I hope that you enjoy this episode. If you have any feedback whatsoever or you want to connect with me or my team and work together in any way, just send a message to Judy at wildheartedwords .com and I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support me and this show, please go to iTunes and leave your review. It means so much to me and it'll help others find this podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode. And if you'd like to stay in touch between now and then, please visit wildheartedwords .com and sign up for my weekly newsletter. I've had people share with me that it's the best thing to arrive in their inbox all week. Aloha.
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Keywords: F*ck Saving Face podcast, mental health, emotional health, Asian Americans, voices of color, taboo topics, therapy sessions, mental health support, cultural background, Yellow Chair Collective, cultural nuance, authoritarian parents, children of immigrants, parentified child, therapy sessions count, timeline, writing a book, optimal physical shape, trainer for the mind, EMDR training, trauma, trauma-informed care, innovation in mental health, compassion, empathy, authenticity, transparency, branding, content marketing, entrepreneurship, personal development, divorced parents, business owner, team members, culture, boundaries, success metrics, positive impact, intergenerational trauma, storytelling, meaningful connections, renewal, spring break, nature retreat, Arches, Utah
