Today we’d like to introduce you to Lulu Liao.
Hi Lulu, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
Hello everyone! I am so thrilled to be a part of Voyage Dallas Magazine’s inspirational stories series! First off, I work as a holistic somatic trauma therapist. What that means is that it’s not “traditional talk therapy,” where we talk about issues and analyze things. Yes, changing belief systems is CRUCIAL to our healing, but I start off with emphasis on the body and nervous system. We call this a “bottom-up” approach to healing. Trauma, from a nervous system lens, is anything that is too much too soon. It dysregulates our nervous system and for lasting change, we must include an embodied approach. Some of these methods include Somatic Experiencing, Breathwork techniques, Psychodrama/Role-Play, Mindfulness Exercises, Therapeutic Yoga, Reiki, and Vibrational Sound Healing.
Ultimately, I hope that my story provides some hope to someone out there! It’s filled with so many details (which I’m saving for my book ☺) but I’ll summarize it by saying it is definitely one of those “From Tragedy To Triumph” tales – I was a soul that really wanted to learn from some tough experiences!
Here is some of my background to share a little bit of my humanness and vulnerability with you. I am the oldest child, born in Taipei, Taiwan, and came to the United States at just a few years old. As immigrants, my parents worked a lot to establish a good foundation for us in the United States. Thus, I was a “latch-key” kid as young as kindergarten and remember being alone a lot. There are always positives and negatives to any experience. On the plus side, I became very independent, responsible, mature, and capable at a young age. I developed “street smarts” and really learned how to be around different people in different environments. Remember, this was a time before technology and social media, where wandering the streets and playing outside with the neighborhood kids WAS the norm. I also knew how to use the stove at age 5 and made the meanest ramen noodle you could imagine! ☺
On the not-so-pleasant side, I probably experienced my first existential crisis at age 5. I have vivid memories of being about 5 or 6 years old and wondering when my parents would come home. There were no cell phones at this time. It would be getting dark, and I would go out into the driveway and stare up at the sky and stars. I felt so small and wondered if they would ever come back. I remember constantly thinking how I was going to be all-alone in this world. I remember turning on all the lights in the house because I was scared. When they finally came home, they were mad because I was wasting electricity.
It’s interesting because as I write this, there are still reminisces in my body of how it felt when I was that 5-year-old girl. I didn’t feel seen, and I was scared and didn’t know how to make sense of it. Our bodies hold all of our life stories, or I like to call them “energetic imprints.” I’ll summarize my childhood as many moments, like I just described, where there was misaligned understanding. Parental attunement is a tough task. Being a parent myself and counseling other parents, I often reiterate that children don’t have the emotional/mental capacity to understand certain concepts. These are baby nervous systems coming into the world. It’s a lot of stimulation, especially now with so much readily accessible information at our fingertips. So, what happens when our bodies don’t know to make sense and/or discharge these energies of fear, discomfort, etc? Or if there isn’t a knowledgeable enough adult or a safe space to do this? Our minds make up a story to try to cope with the experience… and the story that most children make up is “Something is wrong with me.” I guarantee you that every single person has, or has had, a not-good-enough story in their life. It’s a common theme of the human experience. Our minds have been working overtime, but you cannot outthink an emotional experience. Overthinking IS a type of trauma response of not being able to be in the present moment. How many people are walking around like this?? Many.
So, these experiences left me feeling very misunderstood and “lost” growing up. At age 5, I got my first glimpse of how energetic attunement and nervous system awareness would be the key to my healing – except I wouldn’t realize this until 25 years later. I was also acculturating to the “American” style of living. Home life was largely the “Taiwanese way,” and then I went to school and experienced this entire new culture. I learned how to appease my parents and then do my own exploration on the side. It was a very confusing time with lots of conflicting information on “how to be.” But when I started doing drugs in high school… I. Finally. Felt. Free. Of course, I was sent to therapy. The Chinese culture does not look very favorably on therapy, but that is what the school recommended for me. It was there that I learned how much damage lack of multicultural awareness could have on a person’s journey. Again, there was more conflicting information, no work on being present with our bodies, energy, or nervous system regulation.
Hopefully, it’s more understood as fact than cliché, but what happens in our early life really does have a large impact on many issues that happen later in life. Childhood is where we learn (or don’t learn) nervous system regulation and how to feel safe in the world. It is where many of our belief systems form about what is right or wrong, good or bad, what we should or shouldn’t do. Our attachment dynamics with our caregivers play a large role in many adult relationships. Then, if we are lucky enough to “wake up,” we get to spend the later part of our lives possibly unlearning some of this conditioning and programming – that’s where the real fun begins!!!
It’s fascinating because when someone tells me about their childhood, it is a great predictor and gives me a very accurate picture of some of the struggles they may have in life, in relationships, and within themselves. It is very revealing. It is the heart of where the healing journey resides.
Now I am going to fast forward through many many years and say that going through my journey of addiction is what finally opened my eyes and woke me up to the spiritual and healing world. I started my doctorate right after college, but at the time, I didn’t believe in therapy, so I couldn’t pursue something I didn’t believe in. I had spent so many years at this point in therapy, yet the only voices I could hear were extremely critical and self-destructive. Don’t get me wrong; I had great insight, but what good is knowing about all your neurotic behavior and being powerless to change any of it? This is one thing I don’t like about “talk therapy.” Great, we can explain it; now what? It didn’t make sense.
So, the years that followed were filled with a lot of soul searching, meditation, yoga, qi gong, breathwork, other holistic energy practices, and relearning how to be in the world. This is what I get to teach people now. Today, I am full of radical acceptance for myself; I embrace all of my humanness, I live a blessed life of joy and abundance, I’m strongly connected to my authentic self, I get the privilege of walking with others on their path.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has definitely not been a smooth road, but I am so grateful that today, I can 100% say that all of it was fully necessary. I honestly believe that many of our gifts & strengths come from experiences where we were wounded. They are two sides of the same coin. We need experiences to fully gain perspective. Our painful experiences teach us empathy and many times, we wish for others not to feel the pain that we feel. How many people in this world have transformed their experience into something that is used to help others? The suffering IS the portal to our freedom and a life where we are truly living, thriving, and sharing our gifts with the world. Can we choose to see the hidden mercy that exists in our experiences of suffering?
Rumi has a beautiful quote: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” For example, many of the clients I see who are ‘givers’ or ‘empathic’ developed this quality out of a survival mechanism as a child to feel safe. So, their gift IS their ability to relate to people and help others feel better. At the same time, the flip side of that is that giving can turn into people-pleasing. So herein lies the journey of fully embodying your gifts. Can you heal that part of you who was actually the victim at one point and transform the narrative to recognize there is another side to the coin? Not everyone chooses this path, and it IS a miserable life to stay in victimhood. If the wounding that is associated with your gifts isn’t healed, then a person may never feel & fully realize the power of that gift because they will still be acting from a place of injury instead of wholeness.
To give you a glimpse of my journey, here is a summary: At my worst, I was an IV meth/heroin/cocaine user. During my healing journey, I been through 11 treatment centers, 3 psychiatric hospitals, attempted to take my life 7 times, had a near-death experience 3 times, been diagnosed with multiple disorders in the past, medicated with countless prescribed pharmaceuticals, been through every kind of therapy you can imagine, had therapists violate ethical boundaries with me, sat in hundreds of processes groups, physical/sexual/emotional abuse, involved in a plethora of illegal activities, had careers as a Network/Telecom Engineer, Biomedical Researcher, and in Pharmacy prior to this, been arrested multiple times, had multiple lawsuits filed against me, marriage, divorce, same-sex relationships, motherhood times 4, post-partum depression, parental estrangement, cultural conflicts, and more. Like I mentioned earlier, my soul really wanted to learn from experience. Is this enough of a book plug ☺
And today, it all seems like a distant memory because I wake up most mornings feeling so damn grateful for a life I took for granted for many years of my life. It was one day at a time. I remember the last time I tried to take my life, I heard a message from the heavens saying, “You aren’t going to die. You are meant to be here to help others”. And from that day, I just made different choices. It was a real miracle if I really think about it. I lead an entirely different life that most people don’t even believe it. But I can tell you when I am reminded of the past – is when I am sitting in front of a grieving new mom who has postpartum depression and doesn’t know how she is going to make it another day, an abused partner who just wants out but is scared for their life, an alcoholic or addict who cannot stop their drug at the expense of ruining their life and relationships, or someone who has so much anxiety and chest-crushing panic.
I am not saying that a therapist needs to go through the experiences that their clients go through in order to help – but I can tell you that I have a damn good idea of the spectrum of emotions that exist in this human experience. More importantly, I can hold space for all of it so someone can be seen, heard, witnessed, and supported through their experience. That is my blessed journey and what I get to do today as a result of my past wounds. I honestly believe it IS our sacred task in life to transform your suffering into something that can be used to help others.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am so thrilled to be able to tell everyone about my work because I don’t think there are many of us therapists out there that are somatically based. I mentioned above all my “job roles,” but if you’re asking about my specialization, then my answer is that I specialize in energy. As Einstein said, “Everything is energy, and that’s all there is to it.” Some people think of it as a “woo-woo” concept, but there is actually science behind this. Try this concept on: Science has also shown that the energetic charge of a big feeling moves through our body and is released within 90 seconds. Feel it and then flush it.
Why people don’t believe this is we haven’t been taught how to feel and release. What keeps it there is all the thoughts about what everything means, the rumination, complaining to friends, misinterpretation of what’s happening, overthinking, blah blah blah… the mind chatter is endless. Then the energetic charge gets stuck in our tissues, and the issues are literally IN our tissues. Have you ever gotten a massage or bodywork where someone pressed on a point, and tears came out? Now you can start to understand why.
Consciousness is embodied! Our bodies are living libraries record and energetically imprint everything that happens to us throughout our lifetime. When these issues go unresolved, they cause pain and wreak havoc – inserting themselves into the way you think, the way you move, the way you relate to people, and the way you respond to life circumstances. These stagnant energetic blockages hinder our growth, drain our energy, give us brain fog, affect our physical and mental well-being, and can evolve into chronic illness.
So next time you have a big emotion, pay attention to the body sensations without the interpretation or narrative, and it will pass. It sounds easy, but I understand that sometimes it’s not. That’s why I have a job ☺ So the clients I get to help start to learn how to FEEL in a fun and tangible way. I am probably most proud of the fact that I try to make healing fun. It probably is what sets me apart from others too. We can get very serious in our healing journey – and it is serious business – but playfulness, humor, the ability to laugh at our human experience makes the journey so much more fun!
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
There are definitely many lessons to learn from the Covid-19 crisis. I learned how resilient and resourceful we can be in times of crisis. I was working full-time at a treatment center during Covid, so we were essential personnel. We quickly learned to adjust to new protocols in order to serve the patients and keep everyone safe. Another aspect that was amazing was how quickly the recovery community brought meetings online. It was fun to attend meetings in Australia and Hawaii and get to hear what experience, strength, and hope sounds like over there. The takeaway is that when we have a mindset and heart of service, there really is nothing we can’t accomplish.
The Covid crisis also reiterated how much we need human connection. Looking back, I feel fortunate that my life didn’t get turned upside-down because I was working. I got to see my coworkers and patients every day. I had already been using Zoom for various courses and training, so being online wasn’t a huge adjustment for me. I realized that it wasn’t the case for most people and was a huge learning curve for many. Plus, being virtual is definitely a little different. Change is difficult. All my kids never went back to school for 6 months after spring break because everything was online. There was a lot of adjustment for many.
In my practice, I saw how the crisis took a toll on mental health. There was more fear. Nervous systems got hijacked. I know after I got Covid, I had an unusual low-grade anxiety for months to come. Many people were desperate for connection. At the same time, marriages became more hostile, and parents were at their wits end from spending too much time together. There were people who died from this and some who have symptoms of long Covid. I won’t go into how the pandemic brought light to the disparities in who has access to health care, food, education, and other resources.
We are still slowly healing and adjusting from the pandemic. I do believe that we can learn things from any difficult situation, and it’s whether we choose to or not. I hope that people realize they do have choice. Even in the most difficult situations, we always have choice.
Thank you so much again for reaching out and allowing me the space to share a little bit of my practice and journey with you. I hope it has been helpful and hopeful to someone. I am incredibly passionate about helping others skip a few years of the struggles I went through and find the self-acceptance and inner calm that is absolutely possible.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.infinitehearthealing.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/infinite_heart_healing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/infinitehearthealing
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@infinitehearthealing
- Other: https://www.grove-counseling.com/lulu-liao-ms-lpc-associate
