How to Bring About Lasting Change with Caitlyn Liao, MSW

This week on the Relational Psych Podcast, Dr. Carly Claney has an in-depth conversation with fellow Relational Psych therapist, Caitlyn Liao, MSW. They take a deep dive into the subject of psychological change - why people desire change, why change can be difficult and complex, and strategies to bring about change. 

Caitlyn provides three central points for change: making the unconscious conscious, reframing the problem, and having a new relational experience. They discuss concepts like the unconscious motivations, desires, fears, self-criticism, conflict avoidance, attachment styles, emotional insights, and therapeutic relationships, and conclude with the power of understanding, compassion, and patience in enacting change.

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Transcript

Carly Claney: 0:00

If you want to learn about psychological growth without getting lost in complicated language, you're in the right place. This is the relational psych podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Carly Claney. Licensed psychologist and the founder and CEO of relational psych. On this show, we learn about the processes and theories behind personal growth. Please keep in mind that this podcast isn't a substitute for therapeutic advice, but we're here to point you in the right direction. And today joining me on the podcast is Caitlyn Liao. Caitlyn earned her bachelor's degree in psychology and early childhood family studies in 2020 from the University of Washington and her master's degree in social work in 2023 from New York University. Caitlin is an employee of Relational Psych and I'm so happy to have you here today. Welcome, Caitlin.

Caitlyn Liao: 1:00

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Carly Claney: 1:02

So today we're going to be talking about the question, what brings about change? And I'm curious as we get started, why you chose to talk about this today?

Caitlyn Liao: 1:11

The concept of change is such an interesting topic because it's what a lot of us are trying to achieve And that's also what brings a lot of people to therapy. People want to be less anxious to be more confident, to resolve an issue, people also make New Year's resolutions to enact change, to go on a diet, or to improve work life balance, to find a relationship, the list goes on and on. And what also interests me is how difficult and complex change is. People often want to change but can't, or they're not sure if they want to make a change or not, or how to even go about it. They might want to stop an unproductive habit, or they might want to get out of a certain relationship dynamic that keeps repeating itself, but find themselves still stuck in the same cycle.

Carly Claney: 2:02

Yeah, I think we see that so much in the work that we do. And I like that you highlighted all those different parts about it, both the strong desire of I need something different here. I need something to be different about myself or my life or my relationships. And then this, the struggle, this ambivalence about what does change mean. Is change going to cost too much? Is it going to be too hard to achieve? Is it going to be too risky to hope for? Yeah, all those different parts are so interesting to, to make sense of.

Caitlyn Liao: 2:37

And, an aspect on top of that is that there's this sort of narrative that's baked into our culture that change should somehow be easy. That as long as I make the decision to, let's say, wake up Early every morning and go on a run. Then I should be able to do that. And if I can't, it means I'm lazy. I'm not motivated enough. I'm not good enough. And all this negative self talk starts to come in. So that's the narrative I see around me. As long as I meditate every day, I'll be happy, or I just have to stop dating the same type of people.

Carly Claney: 3:14

Yeah, this formula of if this, then this, and it's so much more complicated than that, especially when there's that dissonance, that, that challenge of want versus actually being able to enact something or all the things that we don't have control over. But yeah, that meaning making we make out of what a struggle with change means about us, about our identity or about our worth. And even that influence how we're able to engage with change. It's self repeating in some way.

Caitlyn Liao: 3:49

IT's really tied into identity or a deeper part of ourselves. So I think there's so much more to how change works than just thinking for it to happen, which then brings me back to this whole topic of talking about what's really behind change, the mechanisms of change, what brings about it, and also how does change happen in the context of therapy?

Carly Claney: 4:12

Yeah. Yeah. What of that? Like, where do you want to start with all that?

Caitlyn Liao: 4:17

Yeah. I was thinking of three main points. First making the unconscious conscious, second, reframing the problem and third, having a new relational experience. But before we get into it, maybe I should say that there are many different ways to conceptualize this concept of change and many different schools of thought, and these are just my thoughts and opinions that I've gathered from experiences, readings, my studies.

Carly Claney: 4:43

Yeah. That's a great place to start too, and to think about, is there anything that in this conversation today you feel you are particularly drawing from whether it's your own experiences, your own identity, your own place in the world, education, anything that you think is going to influence you talking about this concept versus someone else.

Caitlyn Liao: 5:06

Yeah, I draw mainly from a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic perspective which focuses a lot on The unconscious or looking underneath the surface rather than a more cognitive or behavioral level of change. So I would keep that in mind. And also I say I would draw some from IFS internal family systems and parts work which is also related to the emotional and deeper side of

Carly Claney: 5:37

things. Yeah, I think that's an important distinction to make right here off the bat. I think we'll be talking about change really broadly, but then also specific types of change and the distinction I hear in that more depth oriented change or changing on an unconscious level versus more of a behavioral change is Just that a behavioral change is an emphasis so much on action on what is observable on again, an action or behavior that is different than the one that you did yesterday. And sometimes those changes, in my experience, can be so on the surface, I think of it sometimes like putting on clothes, putting out something on top of who you are on top of what is the body that will be walking around the world. And I hear there's value in that for sure. There's core. Elements of life that will be different if you're able to enact behavioral changes. But I'm also hearing this value of yours to think what is that body that's wearing the clothes? What's happening on more of an intrinsic, either unconscious level or The repetition of just being different, does that capture some of that distinction for you?

Caitlyn Liao: 6:54

Yeah, that's a really great analogy. The clothes and the body because I think what we're talking about is this sort of deep rooted part of yourself and the change that's happening within and not just the actions that you're doing, which are also part of yourself. But, I think a deep rooted change can then spread to other parts of yourself, including your behaviors and your actions.

. Carly Claney: 7:18

Yeah. Yeah. But it's the change that it's I am just different. I'm not just doing something different, but my instinct, my natural response here is coming from a different place than it did before. And sometimes I think we don't even have language for what that change is. We know we're different, but we can't always identify all the things that are different. All the ways that change happened.

Caitlyn Liao: 7:44

The first step of change is being open to the idea that there is more under the surface of the behavior you want to change. Because like we were just saying, so much of what we do and how we operate, how we process is unconscious. We aren't often aware of why we keep self sabotaging, for example, or why we keep choosing to engage in self destructive behavior. And on the surface level, it might not make any sense and that's because there could be a whole set of complex reasons that are unconscious and hidden. Taking my earlier example of the person who wants to wake up early to run every day. Maybe he always stays up late at night watching TV, knowing that this will prevent him from waking up early the next morning, but he can't help it anyway. There could be a lot happening under the surface here, and I would be curious about For example, what watching TV might mean for him, maybe there's a layer of comfort, maybe some self sabotage. I would wonder whose voice is behind telling him to run or telling him that he's lazy. Maybe there's something else that's blocking him from going

Carly Claney: 8:55

out to run. Wow, so it's not even just the action of putting your shoes on, leaving the front door and starting to run, but it's all of these micro moments before or even micro motivations before that influence getting to that moment of Starting to run. I think that's a really helpful example to see that idea of what's happening to even get to sleep and all the feelings, the thoughts about it, the the different, as you said what is it serving that person to stay up and get maybe a need met or Self soothe in some way. And I also, you said this kind of briefly, but it also brings to mind that when we want change to happen and we want to do something like go on a run, where is that coming from? Like, why? Why is that? Is that even a a helpful change to demand of ourself?

Caitlyn Liao: 9:50

Yeah, and if we stay only on the surface level, then we just expect or accept all of these observable things as true, as the fact, like he's watching TV when he quote should be going to sleep so that he could wake up in the morning or he wants to run every day, but he can't. But. We're trying to look beyond what appears on the surface as true because there could be so many other things going on, these micro moments that you're

Carly Claney: 10:22

saying. Yeah. Yeah. And such variability what should be right for someone might be different for someone else in a similar situation, the shoulds and coulds and all of that. You said something like that. And that word feels really important to, to expand upon.

Caitlyn Liao: 10:39

Yeah, everyone has a different experience and has a very unique way of experiencing the world. So everyone would be different. And that's why change can be so complex because it doesn't work the same for one person as it does someone else. But once we can understand what's going on underneath the unconscious underpinnings of behavior, we then have the clarity to change them. Understanding your unconscious creates a kind of insight, which then helps to reframe the relationship you have to your thoughts or to yourself.

Carly Claney: 11:13

Yeah. So you mentioned the unconscious. What are a couple of things that go into the unconscious? What are those things that you can gain awareness about of yourself?

Caitlyn Liao: 11:24

Some examples are your motivations, your desires, your fears, which, Sometimes can be really blurry and it might not seem clear when you might think you're motivated because of getting healthy for example or losing weight, but Maybe there's something else going on

Carly Claney: 11:43

under there. Yeah, like I hear with clients all the time I don't know why I do what I do. There's this confusion about understanding those things, like you said, the motivations and the values, and when we start to pull it apart, it's sometimes it's what we think it is, like that's, we know ourselves, and there's definitely times for that, but In my experience, it's usually more complicated than just that, again, that formula of this means this and it brings to mind what you mentioned about parts work, which is this teasing apart all of the different elements of who we are and how we are informed to be that way. The part of us, we actually did an episode on this earlier this year about multiplicity of self and the part of us that is let's say. Hungry. And then the part of us that is impatient and the part of us that is sleepy. These are physical states, but there's all these different, sometimes competing elements of ourselves that until we really look at and explore and give voice to, we might not know what is again, motivating or the engine behind who we are, what we're doing.

Caitlyn Liao: 12:54

Yeah, and all of these parts can exist together at the same time, which then could just show up as Confusion or I don't know why I want this or I don't know why I don't want this. We can Take the hypothetical guy with the goal of running every day as an example again. And let's say he works out in therapy that There may be a connection to his experiences growing up in which his father put a lot of value on being athletic and physically strong and was always pushing him to be stronger and act, quote, more a man. And he realizes that it could be that his desire to run every day is burdened with this internalized voice of his father that if he doesn't do this, he won't be valued and loved by him. So taking it further, maybe he then connects the act of watching TV as an unconscious way of getting back at or standing up to his father. This is just a simple and quick formulation to give an example. It's usually much more complex, but If this were the case, this insight could free him from being trapped in this cycle of wanting to run, sabotaging his efforts, and then wondering what's wrong with him.

Carly Claney: 14:10

Yeah, and then if it really is about reworking that relationship with his dad, by gaining insight, he's able to do that much more directly. He's not needing to act out or behave indirectly out of that space or feeling or motivation and rather either therapy or maybe even in relationship with his father. He's able to confront all of the feelings. You also brought up the concept of masculinity there. And so that could be another angle that if dad said to be, I think you said to be active or athletic is to be more masculine that then leans in on to the identity piece of what is, for him, if he identifies as masculine, what does that mean for him? What does masculinity hold power over him or is there a way that there's a dissonance there between what's expected of that part of his identity or not? I think you're really illuminating all the different features that would just make it so complicated.

Caitlyn Liao: 15:11

Yeah. And he might think initially what does this have to do with my dad at all? It has nothing to do with it. So yeah, I think it, it takes quite a bit of time and really reflection and questioning and to see these patterns and

Carly Claney: 15:27

relations. Definitely. Yeah, I think that's a really good point that at the surface I think therapists are often thrown under the bus in a way of like, why is it always about my mom? It's always about my dad. And sometimes it's not for sure. But I think what you just said is we're not always seeing all the different layers. But if we're just assuming that it's less complicated, then sometimes we're missing all of these pieces that, by gaining insight and working through, we're actually able to see that longer term change.

Caitlyn Liao: 15:56

Yeah, I think here we can also talk a little bit about a cognitive behavioral change versus this insight. For example, I think a lot of people try to just banish their negative thoughts. But, If you tell someone not to think of something like don't think of a red elephant spinning on an umbrella, you'll think of exactly that. I'm definitely imagining it now in bright red. But also if you're trying to redirect your thoughts, distract yourself, it could be a helpful coping strategy in a moment of, high anxiety, for example, but a redirection of thoughts is only a redirection. It doesn't evaporate the thought, nor does it get to the root of where the thought came from. The anxiety will still be there.

Carly Claney: 16:47

So what would be the alternative, like an insight oriented approach that untangles this? What would that look like? It would look like

Caitlyn Liao: 16:57

exploring eventually the anxiety and where the anxiety is coming from. Not just trying to get rid of the anxiety and when you're understand it you then develop a relationship to it rather than being stuck overwhelmed by it. So you distance yourself and you're able to observe and able to, in a way, speak to it and develop a sort of evolving relationship This anxiety, I see you and you're still there and you still exist, but I'm not overtaken by you.

Carly Claney: 17:32

Yeah, I think a lot about building our capacity around tolerating different emotions, and I like that paired with what you're mentioning about really having this separateness from our feelings or from our thoughts, even to observe it, to witness it, and then to interact with it, like you're saying, relationally, in order to move through it or either tolerate it, or it's sometimes work towards change, too. So I think the first point you're making about making the unconscious conscious I'm not sure if we've moved through to the other points yet, But I just want to check in to see where we're at in your list.

Caitlyn Liao: 18:11

I think it's all connected, so we are getting to reframing the problem which draws a lot from parts work again. So we're looking to reframe the problem from something negative that you want to get rid of to seeing the role it served and how it protected you in some way. So I think we can start with a few examples. The problem could be, let's say, self criticism, or conflict avoidance. You want to be less self critical, or you want to stop shying away from conflict. Typically, you might see these as negative traits to get rid of, and that becomes your goal. But let's see if we can reframe these problems using insight like we just talked about. Maybe growing up you felt like love from your parents was conditional upon your achievements in school, as if they would only accept you if you scored the best of the best. And now you've internalized the external criticism from them, which presents itself now as relentless perfectionism or self criticism. So then we can take the self criticism and explore the role of it. So here it could be to help you achieve a certain level to hold on to your standards that you've learned from childhood of what it means to be lovable. It's really easy for children to internalize feelings of not being good enough or not being lovable because of something they did or didn't do or a certain quality about them such as Like we said earlier, being athletic or not athletic Taking the example of conflict avoidance. Maybe you grew up with a lot of conflict in the home, which always blew up with the parent leaving the house. It was really scary, and maybe you thought they wouldn't come back. And now that shows up as conflict avoidance in your relationship with others. But you can see that the role could be to prevent a similar feeling of being abandoned.

Carly Claney: 20:12

So it sounds like by reframing it or maybe even before you reframe it, you're able to see that by the misplacement of either meaning or feelings or energy behind something, you're acting out something that's no longer serving you or no longer true about your reality. And then what?

Caitlyn Liao: 20:33

I think what I'm trying to get at is that this self criticism or conflict avoidance is not negative in itself. It's not something bad in you. They're just byproducts of the way you as a child learned how to cope in reaction to what was going on around you. So instead of Trying to get rid of this self criticism or get rid of conflict avoidance by saying this is a terrible trait in me, I think the question moves from "how can I be less self critical?" To "why am I so Self critical and how has it helped me cope? And now that I'm no longer in my past How can I change my relationship to it to the self criticism so I can live more productively and free?"

Carly Claney: 21:19

Yeah this was, let's say, adaptive in some way in my past. It helped me survive, it helped me cope, it helped me for what I needed it to, and now that it's no longer serving me, instead of just cutting it out as this is all bad or it makes me bad in some way again, it's that compassion or reorienting of the purpose that it serves.

Caitlyn Liao: 21:44

Which kind of brings me back to the point of banishing negative thoughts It's like I'm trying to just banish my self criticism, which is very difficult to do. So we're using insight and understanding to understand the self criticism and then like you said showing compassion in a genuine way to yourself. When you approach change with understanding and compassion, rather than a, "I want to get rid of this part of me" approach, I think there's a much higher chance of success.

Carly Claney: 22:15

I think that's really important, especially because I think it's so easy to get caught in the all or nothing thinking of it's all good and all bad, or I have to either hold onto this thing or banish it completely. One thing that's helped me in thinking about this is a model from nutritionists or dietitians that rather than just cutting things out that are quote unquote bad for us, let's add some good in. So you can eat a donut, but how about some nutrition in the sense of a side salad or some protein or something that's going to either keep you full or nourished in a different way. And I think of that sometimes and how we relate to ourselves like you're saying, if we just banish this self criticism and try to swing the other way of then there's nothing wrong with me, or I can never be concerned about. I don't know this part of my personality. Instead maybe we can hold the criticism there, but just add in another thought about ourself, add in another truth, add in something that's going to nourish us and our relationship with ourselves to be more holistic, to be more balanced, to have more options readily available to how we're relating to

Caitlyn Liao: 23:28

ourselves. I agree completely. Instead of prohibiting something or taking out something, we're more focused on adding in.

Carly Claney: 23:37

Yeah. When it comes back to change and like that strong desire people have for change or even the urgency around it?" I can't sustain this life like it is. I'm so in pain around the way my life is going or the way that I'm relating to myself." How do we think about that urgency or that desperation and frustration when we're trying to add in compassion or add in stuff that I think takes a while. It takes a while to get to this insight and then it takes a while for any change to start to stick.

Caitlyn Liao: 24:09

I think adding in compassion also requires adding in patience and we really have to remember to be patient with this whole change process because it won't happen overnight and these insights won't just show up suddenly with one therapy session, for example.

Carly Claney: 24:28

Yeah we want it to so bad sometimes. Sometimes there's a use for a band aid, but I think what we're talking about, this is a longer term process. This is something that takes really opening up and then sewing back together versus just that placing on top of a quip of just do this and you'll feel completely different.

Caitlyn Liao: 24:46

Yeah. And as therapists, I think we are accustomed to being on this journey with our clients. And it can be a very slow journey and there can be setbacks and that's completely okay. Because we do recognize that this is a difficult and complicated process and won't just be a quick bandaid

Carly Claney: 25:07

fix, right? It's not comfortable, but it is expected that it'll take that like winding road of a journey. And Have to learn through that experience of trying of trying to enact change or even trying to relate to ourselves differently.

Caitlyn Liao: 25:22

Which kind of brings me to the last point of new relational experience. Since I think a lot of clients or people in general sort of have this question in mind of, "can I even change?" For example, there's a lot of talk about attachment styles. Can attachment styles change? And I think there's a popular misconception that you can't change something like attachment styles. That it's something that stays with you forever. I often hear people say, I have anxious attachment. Or, I'm an avoidant person. Maybe there's some comfort in identifying with this kind of attachment style. But, I think attachment styles are not set in stone. Your interactions and relationships with others throughout your life can update and evolve this working model. Which ties into this idea of having a new relational experience that can help update this working model.

Carly Claney: 26:22

So when you're talking about attachment, I'm thinking about attachment styles being like the way we relate to others in an intimate relationship. It comes from how we were raised and what needs were met and how that dyad was created between us and a caregiver to help either create a secure sense of who we are in relationship to others."Is there a sense of myself and a sense of the other person that are both separate and connected in this way that we can both settle?" Or an anxious attachment where there's a lot of anxiety about that relationship. There's concern that we either are not close enough or the intimacy of the relationship is fragile in some way and I have to keep seeking and keep reaching for it. Or avoidant, which is another main one where there's an avoidant of intimacy out of the fear of getting too connected or fear of what being connected would mean to the self. There's also the disorganized one where it's kind of a crapshoot. There's so much trauma involved, or there's so much inconsistency in the relationships that were formed really early on that there's a lot of unpredictability in relationships. That's a lot of context, but hopefully it was helpful to give this context then for what you're saying. If these things that were formed so early on and are so foundational for how we relate to others in the world, can they change? And I hear you saying, yeah, they can. Can you speak to that more of what that

Caitlyn Liao: 27:53

change could be? Sure this can happen with people outside of therapy. For example, if a child from an abusive home gets adopted in a very patient and loving home, this could update the child's working model of what it means to love and be loved or how to interact with people that should care or should love them. Or if an adult experiences love with a partner in a very different way than they did in past relationships, these new relational experiences can be pivotal to creating a kind of internal change in them.

Carly Claney: 28:33

can change at such a neurological level too. There's a way that brain structures change through these new experiences of being in relationship together.

Caitlyn Liao: 28:43

Your brain is updating new synapses and just updating how it expects the world to work. And one of the major ways that therapy helps to bring about change is through the therapeutic relationship. Since this is a way to provide a new relational experience, in which the therapist holds a stance of non judgment, understanding, mirroring, containing, the therapist will not abandon you and will not retaliate against you. The therapist will see you for who you are and still be there for you.

Carly Claney: 29:18

Even to slow down that list that you just shared, that feels just so valuable because when we're talking about brain structures there's plasticity, which means like it's changeable, it's malleable, and yet the patterns that we sit in for years and years, they do create these like deep grooves that, Yes, they can be changed, but they really take that rerouting if one path is really rooted down, there has to be a new path that's rerouted so that there's, a replacement for it. The list that you shared about what the therapist does in my mind, those are like the moment to moment experience of being in relationship with someone that starts to groove differently. It's groovy. Like the maybe we can just do the two ones that I don't know will be as easily understood by everybody, mirroring and containing. Can you break those down a little bit for us?

Caitlyn Liao: 30:13

Sure. Mirroring what comes to mind is A really young child like a baby who really requires an adult figure to mirror their responses to be sensitively attuned to their affect. So if a child is laughing and looking towards the mom for some kind of reaction, a mirroring response would be for the mom to make eye contact and smile back. And this validates the baby's emotional experience and something that would not be mirroring is if the mom doesn't even look at the baby or acknowledge that the baby is laughing at her. So this can be similarly taken in a relationship as adults. It's where if you are feeling something, then the other person can mirror or reflect back in some way that I understand and I can be sensitively attuned to

Carly Claney: 31:15

you. Yeah I see you, you are seen in this moment. You are validated in that experience and it brings to mind too, it's not that it has to be a hundred percent of the time. We're not living mirrors to each other all the time. And sometimes someone's experience might be. different than ours. My partner might be angry, but I might be sad, or my partner might think something's really funny, and I think it's really cringey. And yet having that moment of still mirroring back that reflection of I see this part of you that's being put out, and I can see that and hold it. Even if I'm different, even if I will hold a different part, which, that's more of a advanced developmental stage, like babies have a harder time tolerating that difference than let's say an adolescent, but it's part of the spectrum and part of the complexity that comes from all those little moments together. How about containing? What does that mean to you?

Caitlyn Liao: 32:14

I think a containing environment could be seen as a place where a lot of emotional affect can be held and contained in a space that is safe. And a space that is safe would be knowing that the therapist won't react poorly or in a scary way or in a way that really makes you feel unsafe in reaction to your emotional experience. So let's say you get angry at your therapist. Something really angers you and you feel you're able to tell your therapist that you're angry at them knowing that the therapist won't get angry back at you. This can be a really containing experience. You feel held and you feel available to feel what you feel without The risk of something exploding or someone leaving or your experience being

Carly Claney: 33:10

invalidated. Yeah, all of those experiences that so many of us have had for so many years. A caregiver or an early attachment relationship, an early person in our life, who didn't respond in that containing holding way, they weren't big enough to allow that space between the two of you and instead maybe they would leave you in that abandon you either emotionally or physically." I'm out the door". Or they would retaliate in anger. Maybe there'd be some kind of emotional manipulation, unconscious or not, where you bring up to them "Oh, I'm really sad about this or you hurt my feelings", and instead it gets twisted in some weird way where the parent then could be like "you hurt my feelings by saying that I hurt your feelings", and it's gross, but this is like a bigger, more expanded way of just tolerating the feelings, tolerating what's happening in the relationship and inviting that space around it and sift through it.

Caitlyn Liao: 34:08

Yeah, I think how I think of containment is really an environment in which you're allowed to be yourself, however you are and however you feel. Yeah, that's

Carly Claney: 34:20

really beautiful. It can be cheesy and cliche, but I just think that when we're talking about these things, it's just really amazing how absolutely life changing these experiences can be when you have a new experience.

Caitlyn Liao: 34:31

Which then reminds me of this idea of internalizing these experiences. How the relationship and everything that we're talking about can become a part that really exists within yourself to create a deep rooted change. And going back to insight, we can think of it as emotional insight versus an intellectual insight or intellectual recognition. We really want to get to a point of emotional insight since that really sits deeper than just thinking about it. Because maybe you get to a point where you intellectually or rationally understand"I'm a good person", but this isn't the same as "I feel I'm a good person". And what we feel is our truth, that's how we operate, a filter of how we experience the world. So we're looking to get to a point of emotional insight, where we feel, where we have a visceral understanding of what is true. And I think when we get to that point, the changes will come naturally.

Carly Claney: 35:35

I think it really gets at that point then of being different and having it come from within us really being different than acting different.

Caitlyn Liao: 35:44

Yeah, and then the narrative that plays in your mind about yourself also changes. So the narrative can move from,"I'm so unhealthy and a mess. I need to wake up early every morning and run every day, but I can't stop watching TV at night. I'm lazy and incapable of change". So that can then move to "I'm an imperfect but also wonderful and capable human being. I want to wake up earlier and I want to make exercise part of my daily routine because I know I have the potential to reach a healthier version of myself." So this isn't just the wording thing, it's an internalization of what is true to you.

Carly Claney: 36:26

And I think about how reinforcing that is on either end, the talking down on yourself so constantly reinforces either those brain grooves again of what you're thinking and feeling, but having this new internalized voice of what's happening so constantly inside of your mind continues then to reinforce a more positive experience of yourself. And I just think of how much power either one would have in that reinforcing something happening forward.

Caitlyn Liao: 36:55

Yeah. And another point is just being able to give voice to some of these parts that you weren't able to give voice to before. Maybe you didn't even know they existed. And part of it is just being heard and being listened to and being understood. Sometimes it takes being truly seen to cause something to shift inside of

Carly Claney: 37:16

you. Yeah, that's really powerful. I'm wondering if we can do just a brief summary. This was just so rich in terms of thinking about change in this way. How would you summarize it for us?

Caitlyn Liao: 37:28

I would summarize it as; change is difficult, but it's possible. IT's possible, but it takes time, and it's an ongoing process, just as introspection and inquiry are everlasting processes. I don't think we ever grow out of that. And I think we have to remember to enjoy the small increments of change and growth. And to remember that it is possible and that you're on your way to

Carly Claney: 37:57

change. I love that point because I think so often people could think, I'm going to change this and then be done. And maybe it's not a conscious way of thinking that, but I like what you said there about it's an ongoing process. So it could just be you change one thing, and then you change another, and then you realize another thing, and it's really unfolding as you do the work.

Caitlyn Liao: 38:18

Yeah, unfolding is really great imagery. Like peeling back layers of an onion or something like that. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think what we're essentially doing is creating meaning in our lives where time change with meaning and when you're able to do that, you're able to relate to it in a different way. You're able to create a relationship to change your relationship to these parts of yourself. And then you'll be able to articulate your feelings and wishes with honesty and clarity. You're able to view yourself in the change process with more patience and compassion. And ultimately, you're able to live life with more meaning, which I think we're all striving

Carly Claney: 38:58

to do. Yeah, absolutely. I know that this can be so hard, but I'm left feeling with a lot of hope about it. That to keep at this is such a meaningful way of living.

Caitlyn Liao: 39:09

Yeah, I think that should be the take home point that there is

Carly Claney: 39:13

hope. Thank you for sharing all this with us. Is there anything that you would encourage anyone who wants to follow this train of thought or train of action if they want to take any action or do anything with these thoughts? Is anything come to mind for you?

Caitlyn Liao: 39:28

Sure. Maybe asking questions to yourself of, "is this really what's going on?" Or maybe there's something more and maybe thinking on how All these parts can work together. And of course, if you want to reach out for therapy, we're available.

Carly Claney: 39:44

Yeah. Having a therapeutic partner to do that with you can be so helpful because sometimes you're so stuck in your own way of thinking, so it's like you're stuck with yourself. And sometimes therapy can be that space of unpacking a way of being with yourself and doing that in a different way.

Caitlyn Liao: 40:00

And maybe it's more tolerable to go on this journey with someone. Yeah,

Carly Claney: 40:06

absolutely. Thank you so much. Caitlin is accepting new clients in Washington. And so if anyone wants to take away from this too, of doing that work with her, you can always reach out to us, but thank you, Caitlin. I think your wisdom around this is beneficial to everyone listening. And even to me, I think it's giving me new ideas of how to support my clients, but also just support myself, be with myself in these ways. And it feels really enriching. Thank you

Caitlyn Liao: 40:39

so much. I really enjoyed being here.

Carly Claney: 40:42

Relational Psych is a mental health group practice providing depth oriented psychotherapy and psychological testing in person in Seattle and online in Washington State. If you're interested in mental health care for yourself or a family member, please reach out. Our website is relationalpsych. group. And that's a wrap on season two. Thanks to Tyson Connor for hosting another great season for us. We'll be back again soon with some more great conversations with me, Dr. Carly Clayney, as your host.