Amy Tran is wise beyond her years and absolutely CRUSHES this interview! She covers the "little t" trauma. Believes in normalizing men asking for help and checking in, … Helps us sort out our inner core beliefs. Her steps become aware of what we are thinking, identify the patterns, see our core beliefs… and change (err... heal!) "Awareness is the first step towards healing,"
Administrative: (See episode transcript below)
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Transcript:
0:00:05.8 Mischa Z: Welcome back, everybody to the Tools For a Good Life Summit, and I would like to welcome Amy Tran, MA... Welcome, Amy.
0:00:16.7 Amy Tran: Thank you, thank you for having me. Hello, everyone.
0:00:21.2 Mischa Z: Awesome. And quick I'm gonna read your bio and then we'll get down to the fun. Okay?
0:00:28.5 Amy Tran: Mm-hmm.
0:00:29.9 Mischa Z: Fantastic. So Amy is a doctoral student studying clinical psychology in Ontario, Canada, she has received intensive training to provide therapy as well as diagnose mental health disorders and autism in children and adolescents, she has trained in community mental health centers, hospitals and private practices across Ontario. You are also involved in research that examines how the use of smartphones and tablets by young children and parents may disrupt the healthy development of children. Before committing to become a psychologist, you studied visual and creative arts and your Instagram account @doodledwellness, @doodlewellness is where your passion for mental health and art come together, and I do wanna say that your Instagram account is freaking awesome, I just... Brings a smile to my face. And I love everything about it, and it was one of the ways I tracked you down. But let me continue before we get to that.
0:01:42.1 Amy Tran: Thank you.
0:01:44.4 Mischa Z: Indeed. You draw doodles on social media and create workbooks to make mental health resources and information more accessible to everyone. You're very successful at that. Amy's goal is to raise awareness about mental illness, combat stigma, share helpful coping skills, invite you to practice mindfulness and brighten your social media feed with a daily pick me up, and you will be completing your residency in Toronto next year. Correct?
0:02:17.7 Amy Tran: Yes. Well, next year academic year, but this year, September 2021, I'll be off the internship. Yay! [chuckle] Gotta check my pulse.
[laughter]
0:02:30.9 Mischa Z: And then once you graduate, you hope to continue working with youth integrating mindfulness into mental health treatment and advocating for more accessible mental health treatment.
0:02:44.8 Amy Tran: Mm-hmm.
0:02:45.9 Mischa Z: Alright, again, welcome to the Summit. And when I look over here, everybody, I'm just looking at your Instagram feed again, @doodledwellness, and you have managed to compile 154,000 followers. Does that surprise you?
[chuckle]
0:03:04.7 Amy Tran: It really does. I mean, even just hearing you say that number out loud, it's like, "What? Really? Like my account?" So it is surprising. Yeah.
0:03:14.0 Mischa Z: Yeah, I think what's really cool about it too, is there's a humbleness within it, there's a humbleness within your doodledwellness.com, your main web page, so I love that. I think there's so much stuff to talk about there, I like your most recent post, childhood trauma. Again, I'm just looking over here, so I apologize. Yes, childhood trauma can also be dot dot dot... And being in my young 50s and perhaps earlier in my 40s, being an A-type male, like a hard charger and all this, if I heard the word trauma, my brain would think, I don't have trauma or that's only this over here, but that's not true, it turns out. Maybe you could speak to that for a second.
0:04:10.8 Amy Tran: Yeah, No, I'd love to... I agree, I think most people, when they think about trauma, they think about what do we call, big T trauma, right? Catastrophic accident, natural disaster, abuse or neglect, and of course, those things are very, very traumatic, but I think also love is something that all humans want and crave and need, and especially as a child, right? When you're in that vulnerable stage, who do you depend on to receive love and to have your needs met? Well, the answer typically would be your parents, your mom and dad. But you can have an amazing relationship with mom and dad, they can provide you with food, shelter, warmth, but when there are certain dynamics that play out where you feel like you can't express how you're feeling, you can't share your thoughts, you have to be a certain way to gain approval, love or validation, then that's traumatizing because you are betraying who you really are. And when we're younger, we don't have the mature brain to be able to say, "Well, maybe mom and dad are just having a bad day, or maybe mom and dad were never modeled how to cope with my emotional needs."
0:05:38.2 Amy Tran: Instead, the small infant brain is like, "There's something wrong with me." And that core belief gets internalized and carries on throughout adulthood and that's traumatizing, right? To feel like we don't deserve love or cannot receive love unless we're certain people.
0:06:02.5 Mischa Z: Yeah, it is traumatizing. And yeah, so hiding your true self by fear of disapproval and to carry that habit into adulthood, right? Denying your needs to be strong for your family. When you say that, denying your needs to be strong for your family... Tell me that.
0:06:23.7 Amy Tran: Yeah. Yeah, so let me give you an example. So let's say you are the only male in the home and something's going on with your siblings, so maybe they have special needs or maybe they developed a drug habit or a serious mental health condition, and everyone starts to work together to help this person through, or maybe someone gets cancer, let's say.
0:06:50.8 Mischa Z: Okay.
0:06:52.8 Amy Tran: And as the young man, you're like, "Well, my dad is so occupied, he's not able to provide for the family because he's dealing with this or this, so I'm gonna be strong for the family. I'm not gonna talk about how scared I am, how worried I am, what I need." And you suppress that, "Oh, what? I'm fine, I'm totally fine. Let's talk about you, don't worry about me."
0:07:14.1 Mischa Z: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah and then perhaps you develop the habit of... I know I did [chuckle] of not learning how to communicate perhaps, or feeling that it was okay to be stressed out, or I guess to communicate that in a healthy manner, right?
0:07:33.8 Amy Tran: Right, totally.
0:07:36.1 Mischa Z: Yeah, another post that you have that again, I'm looking at over here is it's normalized men, and I love that, and it again, resonated with me being in my 40s, fortunately, I was like, I need to start figuring out how to express my emotions, how to cry, how to check in with another, how to ask for help. That's so hard. So maybe talk to that for a minute, normalized men...
0:08:07.6 Amy Tran: Yeah. The post, it says, Normalize men asking for help, checking in on each other, crying, sharing their feelings, practicing self-care and having fears and doubts. So I think that it again, it comes back to just, who are we? We're just human beings, right? So this concept of men having to hide their emotions, be strong, that vulnerability is a weakness, those are all just societal constructs that we've taken on, but they're really harmful because we're social beings and we need each other, and we ask each other for help. Checking in on each other that makes you feel like you're wanted, like you belong. Crying, this one is a really interesting one because crying is an emotional release, and in fact, when we cry, there is research to suggest that it can actually help your body bounce back into a place of equilibrium, but we suppress that, right? Sharing feelings, same thing.
0:09:14.8 Amy Tran: So having fears and doubts, like if you don't talk about that, then nobody really can reach out to you to help, maybe it gets to the point where you're suppressing it so much that you don't even realize it yourself, so it's just... I think that as someone who identifies as female, I'm very grateful that I have the space with other females to talk about feelings and to share insecurities. And with men, a lot of times, I don't see that, and I think it can be be very detrimental for your mental health because you have no one to talk to and emotions needs somewhere to go, but they're all suppressed in, or it comes out in other ways, like working too much, drinking, gambling, shopping, performance, right? Or...
0:10:12.0 Mischa Z: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Good. [chuckle] Yes, thank you for that.
0:10:13.8 Amy Tran: So you're like, "Oh, I can resonate with that." Is that what you're... Yeah.
0:10:18.9 Mischa Z: Yeah, I think and my sort of the arc for me was, I've been lucky to, a good portion of my life to be on a growth trajectory, let's say, but I definitely think at some point as a male, I was taking in more emotions than I was letting out, so I was building for that pop, and then at some point I was... It leveled out, so I was taking in as much as I was letting out, but I still had a whole bunch of pent-up emotions for a lifetime of these seemingly non-traumatic things. And so when I hit my 40s, it was like divorce, both my parents died in rapid succession, career upheaval, and then I had another failed relationship and just... It was like the...
[vocalization]
0:11:18.6 Mischa Z: Right?
0:11:18.9 Amy Tran: Right, right. Yeah.
0:11:22.3 Mischa Z: And yeah, and so I spent a lot of time, I would say, I just say by the grace of God, finding healthy ways to cry, finding that safe space to... I found a community where it was okay as a male to cry and cry a lot, and so that really saved me and then started asking for help, and I think that can be hard as an A-type male it can be hard to ask for help so...
0:11:49.3 Amy Tran: Yeah, totally.
0:11:51.1 Mischa Z: Yeah, I don't mean to take this over, but I think that that leads us to a great point, if you've got a guy like me who's in his 40s, let's say, and I go through a divorce and one of my kids is like not acting like I want, which can be stressor and that can feel traumatic. Both my parents died and the financial stress and more failed relationships and it became evident to me that my... Like work my way through it, find more success, earn more money, whatever it was, was no longer gonna work. I needed different tools. I needed new tools. So given that scenario, my question to you is thinking of technology as a tool, 'cause you're clearly in tune with that. There we go. I know there's an app you recommend called Mooditude, right?
0:12:48.2 Amy Tran: Yes, yes.
0:12:49.1 Mischa Z: And then, I think you're also proficient in some CBT, some cognitive behavioral therapy?
0:12:55.5 Amy Tran: That's right, yeah.
0:12:56.7 Mischa Z: So, thinking of those sorts of modalities, what are the exact next steps you would offer someone like me? So I knew... Well, I would be headed in the new right direction that I would have positive momentum towards getting my life back on track.
0:13:15.8 Amy Tran: Wow, so, such a great question, but also such a loaded question, 'cause I just have so much to say.
0:13:23.9 Mischa Z: [chuckle] Good.
0:13:24.6 Amy Tran: So I don't even know where to start. [chuckle] Yeah. So how about we talk about, basically, how our inner core beliefs are created? So we kind of touched on this before, where we were talking about how our relationship with the people that we grow up with, like our parents, they form certain core beliefs that we have. So there are many more than this, but there's three main ones that I see and that are taught in the CBT framework. So the first one is that I'm unlovable. The second one is that I'm worthless. And the third one is that I'm helpless. So this is all operating on a subconscious level. So we all have some of these core beliefs. We have one or multiple, and then there's other one, right?
0:14:19.9 Amy Tran: So as a human, you develop compensatory strategy, so for example, one of my core beliefs is that I'm worthless. So I grew up around parents who were quite invalidating, they were Asian immigrants, just cold, never really praised me or told me they loved me. So me as a young girl, I'm like, "I'm unlovable and I'm worthless." So what did I do? I achieved so much, I just tried so hard, because that's how I got approval from my parents, not just, "Good morning, Amy. Love y
