Kaizen Blueprint

Aldosius Chandra (00:00)
if you have to make this big change but you have been told always that you're not good enough.

that if you fail, it's gonna be a really big deal, right? It's gonna be harder to push through, right? It's gonna be harder to convince yourself that it's worth it to try. And that's where the kind of self -compassion part weaves into this dialogue too. Got it. Which is right, like I have to have that emotional safety to push through because change is already gonna be uncomfortable.

Welcome to the Kaizen Blueprint podcast, where we explore topics for continuous personal growth and improvement.

Ashley, welcome to the show. So good to be here. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Well, I'm glad that you're here. We're going to have a lot to talk about. But first, let's just put this out the door. What's the difference between physical therapy, occupational therapists, and psychologists? Great question. I am an occupational therapist. Well, I'll start with the definition of occupational therapy, and I'll talk a little bit about how it differs from the other professions you mentioned. Occupational therapy is based on the

of occupations, which we define as anything that occupies your time. Really different than what we usually think of occupations, which is jobs. So when you think about things that occupy your time, it's anything we do in a day. So that can be from brushing your teeth, to cleaning your house, to going to work, to raising your family, or having a partner. Everything that we do with our time is considered an occupation.

And the profession of occupational therapy is about how do we help people to feel satisfied with how they're doing their occupations. The reason why you ask is it similar to counseling or physical therapy is because the answer is kind of yes. Like people have all sorts of barriers at times to doing their occupations. Sometimes they can be physical barriers.

when you've fallen and broken your leg or when you have a medical condition, those things can be barriers sometimes to doing the occupations, the things that you want to or need to be able to do throughout your life. And in those situations, when occupational therapists are addressing those barriers, can sometimes look more similar to physical therapy, right? It will lean a little bit in that direction. Got it. At the same time, lot of times barriers to doing your occupations are based in

mental health.

or based in things like trauma or experiences that we've had. And when occupational therapists are addressing those barriers, it might lean in to look a little bit more like counseling or therapy, right? Because the barriers are different. The difference with occupational therapy though is that our lens is always on occupations. It's always on function. How is this person functioning in their life? And really what are the things that they want to do? And how can we support that? Got it. So it seems like they're all intertwined with each other just because of the fact

that we do these things on a daily basis, whether that's physical activities or maybe mental health struggles that we go through, such as trauma, resilience, which we'll be covering in this show as well. I read in your website that my interest in mental health was sparked while working on clinical rotations for refugees and asylum seekers. Can you tell us more about your story there? Yeah, sure. So all occupational therapy students have to go on three -month placements.

two, three month placements where we're working full time in a setting. And because I had an interest in mental health, I applied to work in a setting in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they're working with the International Rescue Committee and an organization at the time was called Utah Health and Human Rights. And in that organization, we were working with people who had newly come to the country and were adjusting to how they do their occupations here. People who

unfamiliar, maybe they didn't have a kitchen that looks like our kitchens and they're trying to figure out how to cook or how to navigate a different public transportation system than what they had. So all these kinds of adjustments to being new in the country and also coming with a trauma background from having to leave their home. So our task was to support them to do the things that they wanted to be able to do here. Got it. Did you have to learn another language to speak with?

Refusion? That's a great question. No, I didn't learn another language. It was a relatively short placement at three months. Some of our clients that we worked with did have some English skills or had someone in their family who had English skills who was able to translate, but some did not. And sometimes we were working with people without a translator. language. Motioning and...

Yeah, and it's surprising you can you can get a lot from someone you can somehow communicate a lot through your like emotions Like through your kind of like vibe and your empathy that you're giving off and that they give back to you. Yeah, I mean the verbal Communication is just a small part of like the whole you know body language aspect So just having conversation with using your body and perhaps, you know your mood your face expressions your overall body language speaks much more than just a verbal

communications we have with each other. That's awesome. What do you see in them in terms of navigating through that trauma and how do they fight through the barriers of going through, know, being in a new world is difficult. Like I myself as an immigrant and I remember coming here, my mom don't know a lick of English except for I, you and maybe thank you. But what do you see in these refugees and asylum seekers going through

tough times, what trauma have you seen and perhaps how did they fight through them? Yeah, a lot of our work was on creating joy in the population that we that we had. I worked with one family whose children hadn't really had the opportunity to play. And a lot of our work was just around coming in and playing, like creating play with the children and with the parents. I think we did. I'm trying to remember back because it was like 10 years ago. We made

Play -doh with them like scented play -doh with like glitter and colors and and like we just sat around and like made it together and you know, it's it smells good and it's tactile and you know that we have Those sorts of experiences and to have fine moments to laugh with them I think one family we taught them the Macarena and we like sat in the living room and danced the Macarena so fun just like things that were kind of Creating moments in their life where you could just be human,

because there has been so much hardship in that transition and there's so much heaviness in trying to have to figure out a whole new life. And so a lot of our work kind of starts there, starts with like how do we just form a connection first? Got it. And outside of play, I mean it seems like play can be somewhat temporary and that joy can be temporary, but what about in their internal self

trying to figure out like, how can I live this life here? Having that mental struggle continuously. Yeah, it's a lot about figuring each individual person what they need at the moment. And that can look really different for different people. I had one client who was having a really hard time with sleep.

And she was, she had survived torture in her home country. And she couldn't sleep at night. Like if she closed her eyes, she saw really hard, hard memories. And one of the things that she told me when we were talking about her sleep was that she had had this pillow at home that she made because they grew cotton where she lived. And she had made the cotton pillow and she felt that that was a really important part of her sleep. But in the States, most

are made of some sort of artificial filling. And she had this memory, like a positive memory of growing cotton and pulling it. She was telling me about how you separate the seeds from the bowl and how it worked. And we ended up ordering like a box of, like cotton before you pick it off comes in like a shell. And we ended up ordering a box of cotton with the shells on it. And part of her work

that we would sit and pull the cotton apart. And it was to make this pillow. We made a pillow together for her. But part of the healing process was kind of like re -associating with something that felt like home, but something that felt good about home and familiar and healing. And that was also linked to her sleep, which had been really hard at the time. Wow. So try and figure out what stuff that, you know, remind them of their happy kind of life back home and transfer them here and

them kind of somewhat for like a better term play with it or you know just mesmerize with it can help them with that trauma. Yeah and I think you know trauma so tricky in the sense of like you don't want to numb it right the idea is not to replace something negative with something positive or to sugarcoat what happened right but sometimes when the trauma is so acute like it was for that population to go into it to to

What it felt like at the time is too hard right now there needs to be a level of safety first Before they can access the pain of it which is an important step It is an important step to get to the point where you can feel the pain of what happened You can remember the things that were hard so that you can process them But if you don't have enough safety first, that's not a safe thing to do yet Yeah, and so a lot of the work with that more acute population was creating

Yeah, absolutely. think when you meet people, for example, everyone is always on defense mode. Like you always worry about your safety, what's going on behind your back. And I think to get to know someone, especially patients, right, you want them to feel vulnerable. You want them to feel open so then you can touch their hearts and change their lives. Exactly. And it's physical safety, but also emotional safety. Right. I have to feel like I can try, like I can breathe again.

Like I can feel, like the same thing I was saying, like joy again, before I can feel like I have a stable enough foundation to go into something that's emotionally painful. That's awesome. Now, after we have this vulnerability, after we open up ourselves, especially your clients, maybe they open up to you.

What are the next steps into fighting resilience, or not necessarily fighting resilience, but getting the urge to want to become better or maybe associate ourselves with this new community in America? for the refugee population. For the refugees, yeah, yeah. I think...

It's again, it's very person by person, but I think if you can build a stable enough foundation of safety, emotional safety here, physical safety and emotional safety, which will take time, a team approach is probably best there. So having someone there who's able to process the trauma with them, maybe verbally, maybe not, maybe through other modalities, which is fine. Where I worked in Utah, they had a team of

A lot of had massage therapists. used to touch and feeling safe with touch and foundation. People who were able to support with jobs, which is really important. How am going to make money now that I'm here? Those like practical skills that you're like, we can't just play the whole time. We have to live. So having kind of like that team approach to kind of who's going to process the trauma, who's going to help with safety, who's going to help with

things like jobs, right, having all those people on board. Got it, okay. Let's shift gears here and I wanted to talk about just the general populations. I know we talked briefly about the refugees, but how does your approach as an occupational therapist differ from like a traditional therapy of people, let's say, go to better help, right? And I want to look up therapy, but what's the difference between your practice when it comes to helping people make meaningful changes in their lives? Yeah, great question.

So it really does differ depending on the client, but I'll kind of give a general response. When you think about someone who's like kind of not in acute trauma phase, maybe they're kind of in a more functional phase in life. They're going to work, they're kind of living their life, but they're like, I want a little extra help to do these things.

Those sorts of clients, I usually will say, have two approaches that we can take. We can take either a top -down or a bottom -up approach. With a top -down approach, it's more centered around, this is the occupation I want to do. Can we come up with strategies, suggestions, things that I can try to help me do that occupation? So maybe it's, want to be more organized with my schoolwork, and we're gonna think about things like, okay, let's work together.

to think about in your lifestyle for you what approaches would work. Is it about color coding? Is it about timers? Is it about

Right, like what are these kinds of like external strategies that we can employ and one thing that I'll do with those clients is kind of be a partner with them to think about how would this work for you? Let's talk through your life and how we can align it. Got it. So that's one approach the other approach that I take which is more of a bottom -up approach is to say what's at the root here? What's going on? That's creating this challenge, right? Why is organization in particular?

difficult right now. A lot of times we can kind of trace that back to earlier experiences. And when I talked before about safety, why doesn't this activity feel safe right now? Like emotionally, why is this hard? Why is this overwhelming me? Why does this feel particularly fraught right now? And if we can kind of look at those experiences and think about like what's going on, what's the bigger picture here? We can start to process what happened.

develop an awareness and an understanding of why and what's going on and then start to heal from it. Yeah, absolutely. So the top -down approach is more like external like hey I want this to happen for me whether that's being organized or having a better sense of time, time management and you have a particular goal that you want to reach and then you kind of work backwards from that. Yeah. As opposed to the bottom -up approach it's more internal you're trying to figure out like why are you doing a

that you're doing, more like what is that, is there a trauma inside you that's making you avoid to do the certain things? I think that's very important. This is kind of off the subject here, but I'm in like accountability group. And one thing that we started doing in our meetings is to avoid giving advice. And when we go through our accountability, we have a certain criteria

Like last week I committed to X or my top three goals are X and next week I'm committing to X. And then after they've done their segments, we let them talk for about four to five minutes. At the end, we just ask questions. And the reason why that why we just ask questions is if we give advice, then you might just take it with a grain of salt and you might not want to do it. if you ask questions and it can't be like a leading questions, hey, maybe you should do this. Like it's not a leading question.

more like, why are you doing this? Did you do that because what?

And that is more impactful and we just started doing this because you start asking yourselves like, I make that decision because of this. I was scared to do this because of that. And it is important. And I think the bottom up approach is more permanent in my opinion. Yes, it is. And I think you bring up a really good point, which is that we have to come to our own understanding about who we are and what we want and how we want to get it. No one can

another person how they should live their life. Absolutely. And so this idea about advice and I'm totally on board with you about that. I also don't give my clients direct advice. Yeah. Because I want them to come up with the answer that feels right for them. My answer isn't gonna be right for everyone. Right? Even if just because it was right for me doesn't make it right for you. Yeah. Absolutely. And so helping them to reflect and you mentioned by asking questions but also kind of by reflecting back what their experience has been to them.

That's another big tool that I use. know, kind of saying it back, saying it over, trying to understand it more, right? And helping them kind of like hear it in someone else's words and then reflect more on it. Yeah. It's really impactful. Absolutely. Asking questions is so important. And sometimes I have a therapist as well and we worked together for the past year and sometimes I have like the intentions of going to that meeting and finding answers from her, like some sort

like a mentor or a coach, but then at the end of the session, she just keep asking questions. And I'm saying the answers in my head, I'm like, I already know the answer, but great therapists such as yourself, you ask great questions. It's absurd. like, I wanted answers. I wanted answers, but it seems like you guys asked the questions and we answered ourselves. And it's

I think we're dumb. No, not at all. It's to harness your own inner wisdom. we all have. I wanted to go over resilience. I have a quote here from Tim Grover. Do you know Tim Grover? No. Tim Grover, he's a performance coach for the likes of basketball players such as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant. He wrote a book as well about resilience and

his coaching with these athletes and he says, resilience is a daily issue. We all have insecurity and a fear of failure, but winners don't let them hold back. Don't allow your fear to escalate into uncontrollable doubt. What are your thoughts on that and on that quote? You know,

It's interesting when we talk about resilience and I kind of almost want to hear the quote again. But I think one of the things that sticks out to me about this quote is the idea that being resilient doesn't mean we're not afraid.

Right. think a common thing that people think about resilience is like, if I'm resilient, that means that something happened and I don't think about it anymore. Like I'm over it. I can turn it into something positive. And that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes things happen in our lives that should make us feel they should make us feel sad. They should make us feel afraid. They should make us feel disappointed. Right. Like all of those feelings are real. And part of

human spectrum is being able to experience all of them. Yeah. And I think the truth about resilience is it's not that we don't feel scared or sad or any of those things. Resilience is our ability to feel those things, to allow them to hit us, to feel the full extent of them and then to move through them. To allow ourselves to experience it without panicking. Yeah. And then come out on the other side and know

I think in that quote he says it's a daily issue. Because those fears and those emotions might come up over and over and over again. And it's okay.

and to kind of make it in our mind safe to say, am allowed to feel. I'm allowed to feel scared. That doesn't mean that I let that fear stop me, but it does mean that I might need a minute to sit in that fear and allow myself to feel afraid. Yeah, absolutely. So what do you think that people have, especially like, I don't really fight, but I go to a Muay Thai gym and

we talk about like UFC, like these bigger fighters and it always comes up as they're super confident. They're like really strong, like, hey, I will beat the other person up. And it shows a lot of confidence. But I feel as though deep down, sometimes they feel fear inside of them. And this is somewhat of a defense mechanism that like, hey, I'm gonna beat you up or I'm gonna win this fight or whatever, but...

What do you think about those people that just having some sort of cover behind them, but knowing that deep inside, I'm really scared. I'm gonna die. We all have coping skills that we use to get through. And I think it's a pretty common coping skill to try to say, I'm gonna pretend like this emotion isn't here, and I'm gonna replace it with something else that looks like confidence. But that's not the same

as really allowing ourselves to fully feel the extent of our emotions. I think there's kind of a stigma in our culture about feelings being weak. Yes. So that if you see feelings, it means you're weak. And I think that that's part of the issue is how do we start to change that stigma to say, it's actually not weak to be afraid. Yes. Right? It can be strong. Yes. It can be a sign of strength to say, look, you can sit there in your fear and not let it rule you, but also not try to hide it or mask it.

something else. Yeah, absolutely. think for most guys too, we are brought up, right? As male, we're brought up to be strong. We're brought up to be like you have to, know, what do you call it? You have to fight through whatever it is that you fight through. Emotions are weak. So with that in mind, how do you think guys

be vulnerable and express their feelings. Women are really good at this, so you guys have like... I think you bring up such a good point because it is, and I do see that in my practice with my clients, where it is very hard for men who are brought up, so many men in our culture, say you're not allowed to feel. Or like you see like that common trope about, you know, a boy falls on the playground and then you say, like, be a man, don't cry.

Yeah, right and how do we start to re -embrace this idea that like it's okay to cry. It's okay to feel right And I think for men they have to they have to want that right for men who have grown up with that stigma It's about recognizing that it's a stigma and wanting to change it as soon as you want it Yeah, you can you can find the resources and the help to start to learn how to feel again how to access that but it's about Knowing that you can

and wanting to. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. have this statistics here. More females with AMI, which is any mental issue, 51 .7 % and serious mental issues, 67 .6 % receive mental health services compared to males, which is 40 and 61. So it's a lot of females, they know that when they are in emotional distress or have some sort of issue, they know when to seek out for help.

For guys, it's the opposite. I know we just talked about, know, guys don't really show their feelings, but do you see a trend with guys not seeking any mental health? Personally, not in my practice. I have a pretty even kind of male -female ratio. Got it.

But the statistic doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that if there's stigma around feelings, there's definitely stigma around getting help. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely, I mean, there's so much help now, especially where we live now in a first world country. There's so much resources that we could seek out, even the ones that unpaid. There's people who are just willing to help just because you're going through some stuff. Yes. yeah, absolutely. How do you help your clients identify

and prioritize activities that align with their values. Especially when they're feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated. And I just want to preface this in today's society where it's always production. It's always being productive. It's always like, you gotta go, go, go, go, go. And there isn't no stop, stop, stop and plan. But how do you deal through that without being like burnout?

A lot of it is based in relationship first. So when my clients come in, the first and most important thing is that we feel comfortable with one another, right? That they feel like they can trust me. I trust them. I know who they are. Right. We have a solid foundation and I find that once we can build that really solid foundation, we're able to start to slow down and figure out what it is that they really want. It gives them almost what you're describing is like, we don't have the space a lot of times to think about what do we want?

or how do we want to prioritize? And that work serves to give them that space, to give them that room to slow down. I'm safe here. I can spend the time here to really observe myself and learn about what I want. Even if they're safe in their environment, but why do people nowadays felt like they're always being left back? Meaning that I feel like I should try for something, but I'm not good enough.

for like that imposter syndrome. Yeah, it's so common right now. Our society is hard, right? I think I've thrown around the word trauma a couple of times so far as we've been talking. And I think we think of trauma a lot of times. People think of what we call Big T Trauma. Big T Trauma. OK. T Trauma means like a singular or really large, impactful event. Right. We think about a lot of times like people who have survived war, like veterans as a common population.

of us having trauma, People have survived sexual abuse, right? We think of them as trauma survivors. But the truth is, is that all of us experience trauma in different ways. And the smaller, kind of like less violent traumas, we call little t trauma. And little t trauma are these little things that make our lives challenging all the time, right? Sometimes it's like the state of the world can

that, right? The pressures of our society can cause that, right? Just growing up as a kid, right, and can cause that, right? And we all carry those little T traumas around to some extent. Got it. And so I think this idea of being able to create safety is being able to look at not just do I have this large singular trauma, big trauma, big T, right? But like, what are these other small moments or small things

have happened in my life and how can I look at them and see their significance and understand that even though they don't present as what I typically think of as trauma, they can still impact us. Can a little T trauma be interpret into a big T? There is some information that says that lots of little T trauma can add up to a same impact as one as a singular big T trauma. Got it.

Why does people have those little tea trauma? Is it because consumption? Like for example, you mentioned about things that's going on in the world. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of bad things that are happening all around us, but sometimes we just look at the news and just feel completely terrible when whatever is on the news have completely no effect on us. Yes, I know. think you're correct. think consumption is part of it. Access to this, right? Little kids from a

young age now have access to these really big adult topics. Before their brains are developmentally ready to know about them or understand about them. And yes, think that is part of, I don't think it's the only thing that can constitute little t -trauma, but it is something that certainly can impact that. Got it. Well, yeah, mean, the consumption of news and social media have significant amount of effect on the younger crowds.

fact that they're given access into these media outlets, they may have some sort of opinion or maybe their brain isn't really connected in a way so they have all the proper information. How do you think we should fight through that as a young person? What a question.

lot of it comes down to boundaries from caretakers.

Part of our job as adults is to help protect our children from things until they're ready. Children's brains need a lot of time and space to develop before they can process or handle high level information, like some of the things that we're seeing on the news. So part of the role of parents is to help kind of sift out what is my child able to handle right now? What is developmentally appropriate for them and how do I set

around access to things that are not yet developmentally appropriate, but also help them process and understand the things that are. Not necessarily shield them from anything scary Kind of like a filter, right? Yes. But that's even difficult too as a parent. If you filter them too much, then your child can be a rebel.

And you kind of see that with parents who are so restricting on their kids that their kids will try to find a way to get out of it or maybe fight through it or maybe just leave altogether, just escape that home. How do you think a parent should, is there like a balance in between that? And even so, if the parents does filter the whatever access the child has in terms of consumptions or maybe friends,

child's friends or their environment that they're in can also affect that as well. yeah, for sure. Parenting is so hard, first of all, to all the parents, right? Every parent out there doing the best they can, it is a hard, hard job. Yeah. Right? And there is no perfect or one way to do it or to get it perfectly right. Yeah. I think aside from doing your best to kind of help your child receive information that's the most developmentally appropriate, which you're

is not always possible in this world, right? Setting a foundation of knowing that you're able to communicate with your child about what's going on in a way that helps them feel seen and heard, right? So say something scary is happening in the news and they want to talk to their child about it, or their child is going to find out about it, even if they don't think it's developmentally appropriate yet. Same thing like you were talking about before with how do we raise men to have

or to allow themselves to feel emotions. We start with children, right? How do we create space to share this news with a child and then to hold space for whatever it is they feel in reaction to that? And to show them that we see that, that yes, this is scary. Yes, it's okay to cry. Yes, it's okay to ask questions, right? Whatever it is that they need right now to allow them to have that. Yeah, it is important raising a child, especially when they're still young and they're so vulnerable.

into traumatic experiences. And that's what I found out in my own personal therapy sessions is that as we grow older, especially now that you're either in relationship with a partner and you have

and behaviors and for you, because it's yourself, it seems very normal. It's like, I'm already doing this. These are in the daily habits, I'm already doing it. But then when you share that with a partner, they have different circumstances of how they were raised and compared to you. And sometimes how you to their daily habits can affect that. And sometimes you could lash out. Sometimes you have these feelings and I think those come from when you were younger.

you know, how you were parent, like how your parents were, and the type of environment we're in, whether that you're in middle class or lower class can have a significant impact on your relationships down the line.

I talk a lot with my clients about the concept of empathy and being able to see where someone is coming from. And especially when you're in a relationship or an intimate relationship with someone else, to be able to hold the foundational belief that this person is good. Yeah, I've chosen to be with this person because they are a good person who I value. And so if I see them doing something where I'm like, are they doing that? I have to be able to take a step back and think,

What's going on for them? Because it's not that they're bad. It's not that they're trying to hurt me or hurt themselves in some way. There must be a reason why they're making the decision that they're making right now. And my job as an empathetic partner is to try to see that. Even if I can't see exactly what the reason is, to hold and believe that there is a reason. Absolutely. Speaking of empathy, how do you...

Obviously, you know how a muscle work, especially when we work out. How do you work out empathy, right? Because when you're in a verge of the moment, just a quick second, and you kind of lashed out or you get angry over just a little things, maybe to your partner, maybe to someone else. How do you continue to practice empathy when you're in that moment? It is the hardest time to be empathetic, isn't it? When you're like fired up and upset. Yeah. I think

Again, with our kind of like top down and bottom up approach, I there's a long term and a short term solution for that. Right. So like, I think in the short term, when you're kind of in that fired up state and you're like, I can't get to my empathy. It's what do I need right now to slow myself down? Right. Do I need to step away? Do I need to take a walk? Do I need to take a breath? Like, how do I get myself refocused and calmer? Right. How do I self regulate? But I think long term and I talked, I work with occupational therapy students and I talk about this all the time.

of empathy in our work and a lot of times they'll ask me how do I build empathy? Like where does that come from? Right? And it comes from building it for ourselves first, right? So I have to be able to understand my story first, understand what I've been through, how are the things that I've lived through impacting me in order to have a stable enough foundation to understand and be willing to look at someone else. Got it. Yeah. And not just to understand myself but to be able to have a lot of compassion for.

it.

Does that translate into resilience? Yes. the relationship with yourself and your self -awareness? Yes, because I think it's in that same category of how do I make room for what I've lived through, my feelings about my experiences, allow myself to have them so that I can process them and feel ready to be out in the world interacting with other people doing the things I want. Got it. So it all starts off with that self -awareness, understanding yourself. Yes. And

after you do that, you can't never fully understand yourself. I don't think so. It's an ongoing process. then once you understand that and then you start building like skill sets to help maintain that and then it can translate over your relationship with other people. Yes, to understand yourself and to have compassion for yourself. you said before, people are really hard on themselves a lot of the time. People kind of blame themselves if something's hard for them or something's challenging.

like what's wrong with me? Why can't I do this? Like I must be broken in some way or there must be something wrong. And for us to be able to understand our story and why something is hard is one thing. And then to be able to give ourself the compassion to say like it's not because there's something wrong with me. It's because probably I lived through something that shaped this in some way. And how can I believe that that's true and own my whole story so that I don't blame myself.

Absolutely that self communication that that voice in your head plays a role I guess that's like a full like a better term your mindset that little voice in your head and you know coming from an Asian parent it is It is like that for me that my parents they don't they only see you know of the highest accomplishments They only compare yourself with this guy who is like an astronaut a physicist and like a lawyer at the same time and When you're on a come

or when you're growing up and your parents always trying to compare to you to other people have a significant role in that kind of like in your mind of, you're not good enough. Yes. So it is a mental struggle. It is. It is one. And it's really hard to almost sometimes I use the phrase of my with my clients, like re -parenting. Reparenting. Like how do I now know that I'm the one who gets to say if it's good enough or not good enough? You don't have to look to my parents anymore. I have that judgment.

And how am I gonna be a kind caretaker to myself now? Right, how am I gonna let myself know that even though I don't feel good or I want to do better that I am good enough as I am. Would you consider self -love? Yes. Okay. Yes, I think that's a great word for Yeah, yeah, that's something that me, me and one friend, we were talking about self -love and what is the definition. Actually, he's the second guest on this podcast, Silliman Daniels. He talks about self -love, caring about yourself and saying,

that it's okay. Just because you didn't go to the gym today, it doesn't mean that you're a complete failure. Yes. And how do you sue the part of you that feels like a failure in that moment? How do you understand how the way you had been parented makes sense that you might feel that way at that moment? It's okay that you feel that way, but how do you also sue that and say, it doesn't mean that that is true. It doesn't mean that that's the only truth here. Yeah, absolutely.

I like to say that's not necessarily a failure, but more of a lesson. okay, maybe I failed that way, but then this is what I've learned. And maybe for the next one, something good will happen just because of that experience and I'm able to kind of fight through that. Let you learn from everything you go through. Yeah, yeah. And your doctoral work, motivation and resiliency, what was the most surprising finding that influenced your practice? Great question.

I studied a lot about the concept of ambivalence in my work. The definition of ambivalence in this scenario being I want something and I don't want something at the same time. Ambi. And I think a lot of times when we're talking about motivation, we can kind of black and white it. Like I want it or I don't want it. Right. Like I want to go to the gym. So if I didn't go to the gym, then it means I'm not motivated.

I don't have it, right? But really, most humans feel ambivalent about any sort of behavioral change or hard thing that we're trying to do. Meaning a part of you wants to go to the gym, right? A part of you knows that going to the gym will help you feel stronger mentally and physically and that you'll be glad that you did it. And a part of you doesn't want to go to the gym. A part of you maybe wants to watch Netflix or hang out on the

or doesn't feel like you want to go to the gym right now. And so we have this ambivalence where a part of you wants it and a part of you doesn't. Why is that? Could get into a lot of science about that. Our brains are sort of wired to have...

to do something that feels familiar over and over again. So when we do something that feels familiar, when we do something that we've done many times before, our brain builds what's called like a neural connection, right? That our neurons connect to each other and they build a chain that gets really strong. This is our habits, basically, right? and the more we do something over and over again, the stronger and stronger that chain gets. And when we're trying to do something that's sort of outside of our norm, or we're trying to make a habit, a habitual change,

have a strong of a neural pathway built for those things yet. And so it's really normal for the brain to kind of want to build it, but also it's not easy to do. And so we have this kind of push pull of like, I might want it and I might look forward to it, but my brain isn't really ready for it. Or my brain might see it as really hard to get there because I don't have this really strong pathway built for it. Got it. It's it's it's like somewhat of a must.

Yes, it is. Somewhat of a muscle. have this psychological kind of limit, but then if you want to make a change, have... This is what being uncomfortable is, right? When you... For example, your example is going to the gym. I want to make a change of my body, whether that's losing fat, gaining muscles, or some sort of a cardio ability that I'm trying to achieve. A part of me, it's like, no, you're okay with a minimum amount of

at the gym or a minimum amount of miles per week that you run, you're okay with that, but then you're like, I want

be much better, be uncomfortable. Is that kind of that motivation and resilience and ambivalence? Change is uncomfortable, right? Change is really hard for the reasons I just described. Like our brain wants to keep doing the same thing. We're kind of wired that way, right? And so when we think about making these changes, there is going to be some level of discomfort in making the change. And I think part of when we we've been talking a lot about creating emotional safety. So if you have to make this

change but you have been told always that you're not good enough or that if you fail it's gonna be a really big deal right it's gonna be harder to push through right it's gonna be harder to convince yourself that it's worth it to try

And that's where the kind of self -compassion part weaves into this dialogue too. Got it. Which is right, like I have to have that emotional safety to push through because change is already gonna be uncomfortable. So why does some people have stronger, for lack of a better word, resilience versus other people? Why do people change even more and they wanna do more things versus there's other people that's kind of like laid back?

It's a great question. think we're all on a different place on our journey. know, I think

Depending on what we've lived through depending on the supports that we've had depending on where we're at in our life We might be more or less ready to make change and I don't believe that it's static I don't believe that just because we're not making change right now means that we'll never want to or we'll never be ready But I think each person has to decide for themselves when they're ready. Mm -hmm when they want it. Do you think change is an synonymous with growth? That I was using it like

Okay, yeah. Like when I want to grow, when I wanna push myself. Got it, yeah, yeah. I think change is super, super important for many people, especially in growth. And it is subjective too, right? What is your definition of change? It could be changing your environment, changing yourself. In your practice for the younger crowd,

shift gears into the younger between maybe 18 or maybe it's slightly younger. Why do you think that we want to change so fast? And what I mean by that is like, there's kind of like an ADHD, right? We're like, hey, we wanna do this or maybe we wanna do that. But for the older folks, in my personal experience, they change.

They're more like static. They're like just slow growth. But for me, I'm surrounded by, for example, like young entrepreneurs who want to make a huge impact. But we are always chasing this shiny, shiny, shiny syndrome like this shiny object syndrome that we want to change into many different either investments or many different business or different ventures or different people. What do you think that is? Or have you seen that in especially the younger

folks. I could see it in the sense of like, when we're young, there's so much energy and excitement over change. Right? Like I think what you're describing this kind of like, young entrepreneur population, I would guess that there's a lot of like, they're they have these ideals and they want to realize them. Right. And they have the energy to put forth to that and to try. And I think what you're describing is they want so many changes at once that it's almost overwhelming. Yeah. And I think that as

as you kind of grow into who you are and what you believe, you kind of narrow, right, into how do I want to make, what do want my impact to be, right? How am I gonna do this in a way that aligns with who I am and what my values are? And maybe that's the difference that you're seeing there. Yeah, yeah, just understanding what your values and why you wanna do that change. That is very important. And you mentioned in occupational

It's all about the daily things that you're doing on everyday basis. And that is important, whether that's through physical or that is through psychological or mental health.

What are some practical strategies that you recommend on a daily basis that could improve people's life through maybe like organization skills or time management? I'm not a huge fan of giving like a generic answer to that. Okay. I think that like people could easily say like I love this app or you know get this calendar. But I think the truth is is that it is extremely individualized and part of my work is helping people

these things to themselves. And so I would say for me it's more about like...

My practical advice would be if you decide that you want to commit to this, commit to yourself. Commit to understanding yourself and figuring out how do I find the things that will work for me uniquely. Because what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. Got it. Yeah. So everyone have their own methodology of how to stay productive, of how to do the things that they're doing on a daily basis. Yeah. Yeah.

How do you help perhaps the younger professionals navigate through adulthood, through their mental health? That is often a difficult thing to do, especially...

the colleagues that I had, graduating college, where everything is kind of handed to them. Obviously when you go to college, you kind of live with yourself in a dormitory, but you're still surrounding yourself by other people. And I've seen that once you're out of college, the younger people tend to have difficulties, you know, maybe trying to find a job or struggling with,

kind of figure out their degree, like perhaps I want to get this degree because my parents wanted me to, now I'm in a real world, now I'm like completely struggling, or doesn't pursue the degree, doesn't pursue the job that you just graduated for.

What a hard world it is to be a young person, right? Like with our economy and our system and all of the challenges there, right? I think the biggest thing with the young people that I work with, again, is creating the space to say, it's okay to feel however you feel about this right now. Right, that it's not necessarily, like if you come out and you just had this expensive degree and now it's hard to find a job, right? Which is a very common experience of the young people that I

with.

It's okay to kind of have some feelings about that. Right. It's okay to feel disappointed. It's okay to feel disillusioned. Right. That those feelings are real and don't necessarily need to be solved or fixed. But sometimes it's about kind of slowing it down and being like I need to sit and feel disillusioned for a minute or feel disappointed for a minute and allow myself to feel that and process it before I ready to now think clearly about what my next step is going to be. And that's a lot of the

that I do is kind of create the space to just be like, it's normal what you're feeling. It's okay to not be okay. Yeah, right. It's okay to have this be really hard. It doesn't mean that you messed up. It doesn't mean that you did this wrong. It means that the world is kind of challenging. And if the world is throwing challenges your way, how do you not turn that into blame on yourself, but allow yourself to move through the feelings? What if they just blame it on the world? Like, hey, I can't find a job right now. Right then.

It's okay to kind of sit for a minute and say, I can't find a job right now. The world is

And how long do they have to wait until the actions are taken? I think that that's the thing is there's there's faith in that process. I have a lot of faith in that process. So if you can sit with the emotion and you can give yourself time, you will figure you will come to the solution. Right. It will allow yourself to have the more clear headed thought to think about what to do next. But when we're overwhelmed by that emotion and we aren't creating the space to have that emotion, our

can't get to the clear logical thought about what to do next and how to do that from a place of calm rather than from a place of fear or panic. When we act out of fear, we get a lot very different results than when we act from a place of calm and steadfastness and readiness. Got it. What are your thoughts on journaling? I love it. You love it? Yeah, I think journaling is a great way for us to kind of explore who we are and what we think. Yeah. The reason why I asked that is that

especially for me now where I'm doing a lot of things at the same time. Journaling, especially in the morning and at night, help a ton. Because once you're going on on your day to day, you're so in that tunnel vision. You're like, OK, I'm doing things. I feel productive. I'm executing on many different tasks. But sometimes you need to step back, look at a 10 ,000 world view of, OK, why am I doing the things that I'm doing?

and journaling, therapy helps a lot because now you're thinking as someone who is on your life, like, okay, this is the reason why I'm doing this. And then that continually striving to kind of break things down even further. Yeah, you're describing like taking the time for self -reflection. And for a lot of people, journaling is a great way to take the time for that, right? Or going to therapy or meditating is a time when people do that, right?

But making sure that you kind of step out of your day -to -day where we're in it and then reflect on what we're doing. that is important. And reflecting on the wins on a day two can set you up for a better day for tomorrow. sure. Give yourself some credit. Yeah, yeah. Any tips on the younger crowd for managing stress or going through tough times right now? I think remember

the world is challenging and that when we face challenges, it's okay to feel the weight of that. And it's okay to kind of take a moment and then regroup and then re -allow yourself to start from a place of knowing I'm allowed to feel upset by this and then how can I start to make change once I've allowed room for that. Got it. That definitely hits deep here.

hard thing to do because I think when we want answers and even what you're describing is like but but what's the solution? I'm just gonna sit here and feel upset all the time right and I think that's kind of our culture is like action I want the next step I want the next phase and I do value that I do I want all of my clients my end goal with all of my clients is to do the thing that they want or need to do right it's an occupation focused profession right the goal the out it were outcomes right how do I get the

you want. But I think there's this irony that in order to get the outcome, I have to be able to slow down the process. And I think that's a really challenging thing for a lot of people to do when they're outcome driven. Got it. Yeah, when we're outcome driven, we're just doing stuff for the sake of it. And speaking about doing stuff, what about not doing things? What are your tips on

kind of removing the bad habits. Say more. Like if we're, for example, if we are eating junk food or we're watching Netflix where it's, for us, it's somewhat normal. And I think for most people, especially in the workforce, right, we wake up, we have to wake up early, get ready. Maybe if we have kids, we have to take care of our kids. Then we go to work, it's eight hours workday and we come back home and we just watch Netflix or have

these bad consumptions or maybe like social media. These are terrible habits to have. And as you mentioned, the more times that you're doing it, the more likely that you're avoiding change to avoid those bad habits. So how do you kind of avoid the bad habits? I think first to kind of distinguish between like a bad habit versus like self -care. Like sometimes it's good self -care to come home and be like, I don't have it right now.

on the sofa and watch my favorite TV series for the next hour, right? And like sometimes that's okay. And how do we create the space to kind of allow that to be okay, right, for a moment? I think what you're describing is like when we overdo it, right? Like when does it get to be too far where like I don't feel like I'm in control over it. I feel like I don't want to be watching my social media right now but three hours have passed and I have and I think that's a different story. So I think

In that situation, I think we've been talking a lot about how do I self -reflect, right? And I think one of the things here is what am I numbing by doing that, right? When I reach for my social media or whatever it is that that coping skill is, what am I trying not to feel in that moment? And why does it feel so hard to allow myself to feel that thing?

Like almost like what am I running from here? Right? That bottom up approach. Yes. And I think with those sorts of things that requires a lot of kind of stepping back and really thinking about what's going on. think though you're right. It is that bottom up approach. And if clients are looking for more of a top down approach I think there are ways to work around that right with timers and with right schedulers and things like that if that's the sort of thing that they are looking

Got it. Okay, that's awesome. Well, thanks for the tips there. I asked this question to all of our guests at the end of the show and the reason I named it Kaizen, it's a Japanese term, means continuous improvement. I want to ask you, Dr. Ashley,

is the things that you're doing on a daily basis, whether that's habits, whether that's systems or tools that you're doing that benefits you on a daily basis that could benefit other people. I love that question. Thank you for asking that. Time for self -reflection. I also journal. I really like journaling. I...

carve out time in my week that's dedicated to the things that I do to feel good for my body. I take dance class. That's one of my passions and joys. That time is set in my week. No one gets to touch it. That is set aside for me and my self -care. I also go to therapy and I really believe in the importance of being able to talk through what's going on and work through and understand who I am and where I came from.

and how that impacts me.

I spend time doing the things that rejuvenate me. love to cook. I love to spend time with my neighbors, my community, my dog, my partner. Is your dog name Water watermelon? Watermelon. My dog is named Watermelon. That's so awesome. Yeah. And I think just kind of creating an environment where I have built in things, built in ways to be kind to myself is really important to me.

understand myself and take care of myself and I know that because my profession is so focused on taking care of other people that if I don't put that into my week into my day I won't be able to give what I can give to others. Wow that's awesome. When it comes to the journaling aspect how structured are you or is it just a free -flowing like journal writing?

Sometimes I write to myself, like I write like letters to myself or notes to myself, like especially when like a part of me is going through a hard time. Like if I feel sad or I feel scared or I feel some of those really hard emotions that we've been talking about today, I'll write like, what would I want to hear someone else say to me to let me know that it's OK when I'm in those moments? And I'll write those things to myself. Like, how would I want someone to help me? And can I now

the help and give that to myself. Wow, that is deep because how I write for myself is like my future self. like, this is how I live my life for you. It's like I'm going through this tough time and this is what I want to say for myself. It's very different.

that's awesome. Where can people find more about you? they can check out my website. My practice is called Mental Health Matters. My website is www .mhmatters .org. Got it. Awesome. And any final tips for somebody that's either going through mental health or want to seek out occupational therapy? There's no shame in getting support. I think we have a lot of stigma in our culture like we've been talking about. to know that you deserve

support and it's out there. Awesome. Well, thank you Ashley for being on the show. Thanks so much for having me. Awesome.