Press play to listen to the narration using my own voice (by Elevenlabs)

Over 30 years ago, in the early days when I was just starting my private psychiatry practice after ten years of medical, residency, and fellowship training, I met a young woman who came to see me after her suicide attempt.

Like me, she was Asian—a soft-spoken girl in her early twenties. Her diagnosis was depression, and she had been prescribed an antidepressant. We met weekly for psychotherapy.

Like my psychiatry mentor before me, I rented a plain, carpeted room and placed a chair on one end of the room facing the patient, who sat in a chair about 8 or 9 feet across from me.

Also, like my mentor, I tried to keep my face neutral and spoke very little during the session, allowing her to express herself during most of the session.

I don’t even remember her name now. What I do remember is her straight, black hair, worn a little past her shoulders. Her clothes were always of muted colors. She did not call attention to herself with much make-up, flashy fashion, or strong emotions.

She told me that she tried to kill herself because her father was “controlling.” He tried to control every aspect of her life until she no longer had a life to call her own and no longer wanted to live.

I empathized with her situation, but didn’t say much to console her as she spoke; I merely listened. I thought to myself that perhaps many Asian children had fathers whose need for control existed on the farther end of a “control spectrum.”

One day, I asked her to invite her father to one of our sessions. I wanted to hear from him and learn more about his perspective.

He came. During the session, he walked to one side of the room and leaned against the windows along one wall, away from his daughter, lifting one bent leg over the heating vents that ran along its base.

He said, clearly, looking off into the air as if he was reflecting to himself, but saying the words with emphasis and feeling, “I would rather she died than disobey me.”

The stillness after his pronouncement rested in the air like a pale, funereal figure in a coffin.

I cannot hide my feelings easily, despite long years of training to allow my therapeutic expression to remain a “blank slate.” When I heard his words, I understood why his daughter tried to kill herself. My expression must have reflected a combination of shock, disgust, and judgment.

What an asshole. Who could live with such a twisted, evil man?

He visited just once. At some point, the patient stopped meeting with me and moved on with her life. I don’t believe that I said anything remarkably therapeutic or brilliant to help her.

All I know is that I supported and encouraged her ability to live authentically and freely.

A few years passed. One late evening, this patient’s mother called me. At first, I thought maybe the patient was in trouble again. But, to my relief, the mother said that her daughter had thrived after our work together, but now she was calling about her son, who was in the hospital after his suicide attempt.

Would I be willing to help him as well?

He had not told his father about his suicide attempt. They both had some trepidations about how he would respond if he found out.

I was willing to help her son, but she never called back to arrange a follow-up appointment.

Perhaps my recommendation that treatment for her son should be based on honest communication with the father about why it was necessary led to an unfortunate outcome.

Two children. Both attempted suicide. A father who would rather that his children die than disobey him. Three decades and yet, I have never forgotten these children, their suicide attempts, and this father’s need for control.

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In my work with patients, I often encounter my beloved patients choosing to undermine their health.

After being given all the tools they need to improve their health and stay well, they face the most daunting challenge of all: their chronic pattern of self-sabotage.

Subconscious. Powerful. Anti-life. Destructive.

One woman stops taking her supplements and works long hours to cook for the relatives over Passover, leading to a substantial deterioration of her mental health. Another patient engages with pornography even though it fills him with self-loathing and shame.

Like running a knife across their wrists, drawing blood, they inflict quiet, secret, little deaths upon themselves.

We talk about it—with compassion and curiosity—to explore and understand the underlying causes for self-sabotage.

Do you know what I often discover?

It’s like an iceberg. The self-sabotage part of themselves floats above the water, and profound existential issues stretch deep into the depths of the ocean.

One woman, who grew up with a raging, unstable, alcoholic father and a passive, enabling mother who swept family dysfunctions under the rug year after year, developed a facade of professionalism and perfection, like a white, marble statue on a pedestal that everyone could admire.

She created it out of fear. Fear of anger. Fear of punishment. Fear of offending others.

One man was raised by a single mother who demanded that her son become everything and everyone that she needed, controlling him through threats, guilt, and anger. He became the vessel for her projected self-hatred, powerlessness, and shame. His acts of self-sabotage triggered the same overwhelming feelings she made him experience throughout his life.

The road to wellness comes through self-acceptance and living authentically. To live a life someone else chose for you, or forced upon you, is not living. It is dying.

To live an anti-life is to be dead to oneself while going through the superficial actions of living. The more of one’s authentic self one has buried, the more anti-life fills one’s outward persona.

The ultimate endpoint is an unveiling of reality—an early death. One stops pretending to be alive and becomes the real death existing within.

A person may stop working and isolate from the rest of the world. Another may lose their sanity and sleep. Some may choose a way out through suicide.

How do we embrace life and clear away those parts of us that are anti-life?

I’ve been working on a healing path as a holistic psychiatrist for my patients using energy medicine techniques I learned over the years. Energy techniques are generally fairly easy to apply, but it requires acceptance of a different paradigm for healing, i.e., the quantum physics of healing.

With the tools I share openly on my website, holisticpsychiatrist.com, I help patients shift their energy/subconscious patterns and emerge with greater freedom from their suffering and death.

You may know other paths to heal from anti-life. The key to thriving is to be yourself courageously, honestly, and lovingly.

We may work towards that goal all our lives and never be able to achieve it. That’s okay. The attempt itself is being courageous, honest, and loving towards ourselves.

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Listen below for the audio version:

Over the years, I had become more independent in just about every aspect of my life.

I had left the religious community I inherited from my parents that constantly reinforced homemaking as my God-given role as a woman, a ball-and-chain marriage that left me feeling alone and unsupported, and a conventional psychiatric approach that assigned me the role of a drug pusher rather than healer.

I lived in a state of freedom that few women could ever achieve.

After years of poverty as a child and financial hardships during medical training, I now had money in the bank. My holistic practice allowed me to earn a good living while having free time to enjoy my life. I lived in integrity with my spiritual beliefs and had genuine friends, not those assigned to me by my church community.

I thought I was doing pretty well in life. I felt contented and self-satisfied.

About two years ago, while I was in the midst of selling my house, Life decided to teach me a valuable lesson—an expensive lesson—about the limits of my freedom.

It began with my computer going nuts on me. It made loud alarm sounds like it was about to disintegrate. A sign popped up for me to call Microsoft to immediately deal with a software issue.

My confidence about electronic problems, especially when it came to computers, was nil.

During my marriage, my requests for help with computer problems often led to denigrating experiences as my (now) ex-husband used the opportunity to reinforce his superiority and my inadequacies. For many years, I stayed in that marriage out of fear that I wouldn’t be able to manage computer problems on my own.

As the computer flashed warnings and made weird alarm sounds, fear overwhelmed me, and I reached for the first lifeline I had: the phone number for Microsoft on the screen.

A man answered and had me do something with the computer that led to some other information coming up on the screen, which stopped the alarm sounds.

Next, I was directed to my bank. I called another number and another man answered the phone. Each man had an Indian accent but had an American name like Winston or John.

The man told me that my bank account had become compromised. There was a new charge from a pornographic website, and I had to remove money from my account immediately to avoid losing all the money in my account.

I felt horrified and terrified. Again, fear overwhelmed me.

My conditioned response of trusting authority figures to tell me what to do took over. I didn’t even look at my bank account. I just followed the man’s directions.

I had to go to the bank, remove money in cash, and deposit it into a sketchy-looking Bitcoin machine. When I questioned this approach, the man on the phone calmly explained to me the rationale behind it.

I followed the man’s directions—trip after trip, day after day, until my account was nearly empty.

I was directed not to contact anyone by phone or computer because people may be monitoring my activity.

I felt isolated and alone, fearful and dependent, grateful to be told what to do.

All the years of saying yes to my parents, to the church, and to medicine made me the perfect candidate for following directions and letting others tell me how, when, what, and where to be.

Then, after a few days of this, I decided that even if I can’t call anyone by phone, I could drive to my financial advisor, meet in person, and discuss this situation with him.

After I described what happened, he gravely responded that he thought it was a scam.

“It can’t be,” I said.

I pointed out all the things these people said that felt sincere and honest. They must be telling me the truth.

Finally, I checked my bank account and realized no pornographic website had removed money from my account.

I was the only one taking money from my account—emptying it day after day, until it was almost down to nothing.

I notified the FBI and police. They said that the scam had been elaborate and complicated.

However, the money, nearly $ 40,000.00, was gone. I would not be getting it back.

I had never been scammed before. It was a shocking experience for me.

However, I have experienced countless betrayals.

I had been conditioned to suppress my own misgivings and judgment and trained to remain devoted and loyal to authority for much of my life.

Of course I would let fear govern me and follow directions, as I always did when I felt helpless, uncertain, and vulnerable.

I forgave myself for being fooled again.

In answer to my “why?” an intuitive understanding came to me.

I understood that for scammers who live within a criminal community, choosing an honest living may result in being killed. The man who sniffled and sounded stuffy when I was driving to the Bitcoin machine—I had asked about his health, and he said that he had a cold—the thought occurred that he may have been crying, and perhaps remorseful.

I found compassion for them and a way to let go of my anger.

Then, I reflected on what I could learn from my experience…

That week, after all the hullabaloo, the psychic whom I had become dependent on called me to have our usual weekly session. For the second time, I gave her every opportunity to demonstrate some psychic insights about me and provide some helpful advice.

I wanted her to be psychic. I wanted her to be reliable. I even asked her if she had any advice about money issues.

Her advice that day was for me to “be love.”

“You want me to be loving?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “ Not loving. Be love.”

After her less-than-helpful, but very specific advice, I shared my experiences over the past week and a half with her. I told her that she lacked psychic insight.

“I knew it had to do with something legal!” she responded.

I felt sad that I had trusted her intuition to guide my life and told her that I would no longer be meeting with her.

She had provided some degree of confidence for me when facing the unknown. Now, I must face the future alone with just the ingenuity between my own two ears.

The psychic was another sign of my lack of confidence in my own opinions, judgments, and insights. Increasingly, over the years, she had become more like the mother that I wished I had, guiding me with confident advice. Now, I am, once again, an orphan in spirit if not in reality.

How many ways had I relinquished my freedoms and choices because I did not believe that I was good enough?

How long have I turned my back on living my life and allowed someone else to live it through me?

I faced my cowardice and decided to live more courageously.

After the scam, I temporarily patched together some money by borrowing from an untouched HELOC loan before I sold my house. With the profit from the sale, I paid off the HELOC loan and repaired my finances.

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Two tax seasons have come and gone since the scam. Since then, I have run across several other clever scams that I managed to avoid with my heightened scam-detecting skills.

The scammers are still scamming people out there somewhere, relying on lies to rob people. It’s a painful, nightmarish way to live. I am grateful to have real skills that I can rely on to restore my finances through honest labor.

My finances are fine now, in fact better than they were before the scam. But I realize that money can disappear in an instant through my own foolishness or external circumstances. I try not to attach my self-worth to those numbers, but to remain appreciative.

I never consulted with a psychic since, though I still wish life wouldn’t have so many uncertainties and be so hard to control.

I just try to accept that entropy, uncertainty, and chaos are a part of my spiritual training program. I am here to bear their burdens every day and to grow stronger through them.

And most importantly, I now choose to trust in being enough for the challenges in life, not because I know how to handle everything perfectly, but because I’m okay with learning from my mistakes when I make them.

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Restack if this story resonates with you or if you feel someone you know will benefit from it today. Thank you for reading and sharing it with others!

When I was a teenager, I liked a boy at school. My father didn’t. This song expresses the part of me that once yearned for someone. When I shut down the poignant, bittersweet part of me that yearned deeply for someone, I shut down a part of me that was real and became less whole and complete. This song is to remind me of that feeling and help me back to myself. Feelings are precious and should never be discarded like a worthless piece of garbage. Here are the lyrics to the song.

Say You’ll Come Along

If you’ll flipperdoodle me,
I will flipperwoodle you.
I promise to.
Behind the lapper-flapper, stintlesnapper,
heck, anywhere with you.

I know that you can see,
how you’re jazzer-crashing me.
Flingflamdropping, hellapottering,
I can’t stop the sinpantfoddering,
so just say you’ll agree.

Won’t you come with me?
I’ve waited so womperstoodle long.
The sun is dropping,
The birds are stopping,
Everyone is pondersnoddering.
Say you’ll come along.

When I see your eyes,
I feel my fellafrimple rise.
You’re solarpropping, wonderclocking,
benderstopping, feeler-meteorize.

My words may not flooze right.
They wobblestutter, splintermutter,
I know I’m a no good dringersnotter,
but I am yours tonight.

That is why.

Won’t you come with me?
I’ve waited so womperstoodle long.
The sun is dropping,
The birds are stopping,
Everyone is pondersnoddering.
Say you’ll come along.

by Alice W. Lee, Music by Suno

See the original poem called Anywhere With You on my website: holisticpsychiatrist.com

Remember to restack and share if you like it!

Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.

During medical school, I had to study day and night with barely any time to exist beyond the tombs of medical textbooks (when I could afford them). I had never felt more abandoned and desperate, sinking daily deeper into a mind-numbing morass of information. I felt a part of my very being disintegrating.

One night, after long hours of studying, I decided to visit the Arboretum near the Medical Towers, two high-rise apartments near the medical school. I walked along the dim paths, despairing.

I was alone, but then I experienced a moment of profound union with a divine presence that created a sacred space for life, light, sensitivity, and creativity.

The Garden Where Everything Matters

It’s too late now to see color at the Arboretum,
only the moonlight in a dark and silent world
of trees, sage, flowers, stream, grass, and mulch.
I walk among the labeled specimens, a shadow of myself.

I have been studying all day, all week, all month,
then tested and retested, until I am filled with fear and loathing.
Anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, immunology.
Information: I am buried beneath it.

Medical training is the line that drags me, gags me, tags me,
like a fish caught on a hook, gasping on the dock.
I have been running—a duck among leopards—
straining to keep up, my wings forgotten.

What has become of me?
I have died and no one cares.
But tonight I return to pay my respects,
to the tender part of me that is gone.

I knew this garden once when it glowed in the sunlight,
and breezes blew through cherry blossoms and rippled the stream.
I watched the bright koi swim among the clouds reflected in the water,
and the rhythm of my heart felt as tranquil as my breath.

Can the dead recreate life’s tapestry with just one thread?
I am wasting my time. This doesn’t matter.
Then a thought arrived as if it were my own:
Everything matters.

A bolus of awareness fills me, and i vanish.
I become this Presence and am its knowing.
It lifts me and the moment out of space-time
and illuminates my soul with solace and peace.

Over time, the rigors of training transform
many doe-eyed healers into tin soldiers,
marching smartly in line, doing what they’re told,
stoic under stress and numb to feeling.

I visit the garden to wander through who I am.
Its fragrance, beauty, and peace shelter me
and nurture the sacred within my soul,
where sensitivity and creativity grow.

Decades pass, and yet I cherish still
the space the arboretum saved for me:
a place where everything matters,
and the invisibles flourish and flower.

By Alice W. Lee

Poem selected and performed to music by the Rose Theater in Glen Echo Park, Maryland (April 29, 2025).

Over the past few months, I’ve been reading Substack articles by Dean Blundell, Shola Richards, Paul Krugman, Ryosuke, Science and Soul, Adam Mastroianni, and Open Letters by Mersault. There are also many other brilliant articles on poetry, politics, writing, and positivity. After being impressed by these talented, courageous, trailblazing writers, I found myself wondering why I should bother to write anything at all.

What more can be said? The answer, it seemed to me, was nothing.

As a child, Twain, Bronte, and Dostoevsky inspired me to want to be a writer like them. However, they were dead and not adding to their prodigious collection.—unlike Substack’s writers who are very much alive, productive, and so damn awesome.

I suppose many writers and perhaps most of humanity face the same daunting self-evaluation that boils down to low self-worth.

If I were a plumber or handyman, I could build my self-esteem one fix at a time. I don’t need to be original, inventive, or highly creative. A block? No problem. I can fix that and pat myself on the back for a job well done.

Not long ago, I fixed a wobbly toilet paper holder that had been annoying me for months and felt delighted by my accomplishment. Now, every time I use that toilet, I feel a sense of satisfaction at how firmly the handle holds the toilet paper.

But writers face a mountain of previous writers’ combined creative output over the centuries and are supposed to add something original and worthwhile to THAT. In addition, they are expected to avoid clichés. And passive verbs. And incomplete sentences.

A few days ago, as my writing got to this point, I suddenly went into a narcissistic tangent. My inner twelve-year-old suddenly took over. First, I sank into a narcissistic pit of “I’m so worthless even God would ignore me.” Then I swung up to write about my hopes for how wonderful my writing would be, i.e., even Dostoevsky would be flabbergasted, and everyone would adore me.

Of course, I knew that part of me still has an unhealthy relationship with writing. I call it “prostituting” my creativity for attention and monetary gain. However, right in the middle of writing this article, it was as if I ran right into my old self.

Initially, I thought I was funny. Then, I thought what I expressed was more odd than funny. Later, I realized the truth behind the words and felt sad and pathetic. So, I deleted it.

For a few days, I stopped writing this article. Instead, I cried a bit and felt relieved. I saw myself as I was, felt my feelings, and gave myself a belated dose of compassion.

Finally, after 45 years, I realized how deeply lonely, small, and unworthy I felt. Unseen, misunderstood, and powerless, I reached for words as one drowning would reach for a rope thrown from shore. Those reasons built the flimsy foundation of my drive to be a writer as a youngster, and what I encountered again as I wrote this article.

However, to be honest, being a writer is a poor—literally—way to make a living. Most writers are ignored. One can self-publish now, which leads to a glut of writers vying for attention and financial compensation. My childhood fantasies of becoming an acclaimed writer are more likely than not to fail, and I would remain caught reliving the experiences I yearned to shed as a child.

I don’t blame a child for not knowing what was lacking or what would fill that lack. A child’s deepest yearnings exist before words. They don’t reveal themselves easily like sailboats skimming the surface of a sunny lake. Instead, they are buried like inky octopuses between boulders on the murky ocean floor.

That was my story. But it’s been evolving. I chose a good profession (holistic psychiatry) for healing—myself. Thankfully, though I still carry my childhood wounds, I have become more than a child filled with wounds.

Had I successfully fulfilled my childhood fantasy of becoming a rich and famous writer, it would have led me to a banquet of sawdust. Fame and riches aren’t love and acceptance.

Though I have written and healed, healed and written, like the ebb and flow of the tide, I am neither the writer nor the psychiatrist. Rather, I am simply a part of the eternal, evolving creative process, creating a life.

It’s time for me to let myself flow, let go of the past, and be able to witness who I am and accept myself without all the labels.

I like where I am now.

As a holistic psychiatrist, I use words to re-create, restore, and rewrite people’s lives. I help people taper off their medications and restore their health and freedom. As they heal, I am healing with them.

I have learned the value of witnessing people as they are, and I love them because they are authentic and honest, not mannequins of perfection. I want to be just as authentic and honest as people have been with me.

I guess what I’m saying is that my journey has led me to the freedom to be me. I don’t need to be a great, rich, and famous writer to be me. I can celebrate Substack’s many amazing writers and still appreciate myself for being authentic and human.

Thanks, Substack, for this platform for me and the rest of humanity. Let’s keep in touch.

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This week in my holistic psychiatry practice, a similar theme appeared in one patient after another. Each person had a similar root problem that made them perpetually vulnerable to misery. Their “symptom,” if I can even call it that, was characterized by an insatiable need to fill an emotional hole that could never be satisfied.

One man needed to be liked—by everyone. He was liked by just about everyone, but it was never enough. If he were to do anything less than likable, he would beat himself up and suffer for many days.

He grew up in a divorced family where his mother groomed him through guilt and fear to please her. As a child, she used him to protect her from lascivious adult men she brought to their home. If he didn’t please her, she would threaten to ruin his relationships with others or to abandon him. Because she likes him to sing to her, he sang her favorite songs.

Another woman needed to be perfect, but never felt she was perfect enough in her roles as a wife and mother. She always felt as if she fell short of her own expectations, such as being patient with her young children. She had so many things she needed to do to meet her perfectionistic standards that just the thought of all the tasks ahead of her felt exhausting and paralyzing.

What is the root of both their problems that naturally occur during almost everyone’s childhood?

The egocentric belief that one has control over access to love from caregivers (through attention, approval, and nurture).

Egocentric isn’t the same as selfish. Egocentricity is natural for children because they assume the world revolves around them.

What does a child value most in life? It’s love. Love is food for the soul. Without love, children die, even if their physical needs are met.

However, long before the use of words, children learn to manipulate their environment and the amount of love and attention they receive through their behaviors. After all, didn’t the caregiver come when they cried loudly enough?

It’s just another small half-step to conclude that more of “X” would lead to more of “Y.” In other words, more “__ behavior” would lead to more “nurturing, loving responses.”

Soon, a Pavlovian, life-long cycle of “earning” love through repetitive performance ensues—a conditioned response linked to conditional love—the greatest reward of all.

Once that foundation is formed, the level of need often parallels the child’s lack of love during their early development. Some children develop in a metaphorical Valley of Milk and Honey where love is abundant and overflowing. Some are born in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

If a child develops in the Mojave Desert of Love, that child will experience powerful pressure to perform at a consistently high level to fill their little cup with a bit of life-sustaining love.

When I meet people with an intense drive to earn love and yet never feel satiated, I wonder about their developmental desert. How much was neglect or abuse a part of their early years?

We know the root of the problem: the belief that love can be earned.

We know the condition it creates: intense need to perform in a particular way to feel loved (or its equivalent, such as approval).

But what can be done to resolve this?

First, the answer is to trash all the false assumptions and start with a clean slate of truths:

True love is unconditional.

Unconditional love is free. It is also easily accessible.

One does not need to “earn” it through achievement or performance.

How, then, can we access this “unconditional love?”

Here’s where the quantum aspect of my humble holistic psychiatric practice comes in, since I work with energy in different forms.

The truth is that love is an energy.

It is part of the life energy within us and around us.

We can tune into a loving source of life energy through our thoughts and intentions.

When we use the mind to access a loving source of life energy, we become stronger—literally and physically.

There is a way to test and see if people become stronger after they use their mind to connect with the energy they need, and invariably, they test as being physically stronger after they do simple energy psychology techniques.

During my sessions, I like using an energy psychology technique that is called Empower Energy Technique, or simply EET.

EET uses the mind through intentions, words, and the idea of a perfect source of loving energy to heal a person’s energy system. The energy system is foundational to every aspect of life, physically and emotionally. So, helping the energy system leads to improving other aspects of the person’s well-being.

I used the following EETs to help the two patients I mentioned earlier:

The patient uses intention and repeats the following scripted phrase three times:

Empower Energy Technique (EET) On Healing the Need to Be Perfect

I now choose to be one with Loving Life Energy as a wave is one with the ocean or as a sunbeam is one with the sun and be empowered to ___.

1. Heal, clear, and release the false belief that I’m not good enough until I’m perfect.

2. Heal, clear, and release feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed by all the unrealistic expectations I place on myself.

3. Strengthen, support, and create the ability to have greater compassion, patience, and acceptance of my human limitations as I do my best.

4. Strengthen, support, and create the understanding that not being perfect all the time in fulfilling my roles is normal and human.

5. Strengthen, support, and create the ability to treat myself as I would treat friends or acquaintances, and be able to see my goodness easily and naturally.

I completely and gratefully accept healing energy at all levels of being and through space and time from this infinite source of Loving Life Energy to create and achieve this healing process. I embrace the positive shifts that occur as I heal my beliefs, emotions, fears, pain, habits, traumas, injuries, negative spiritual influences, brainwashing, and other blockages that prevent me from receiving all the helpful energy and support I need to heal and empower this healing process, at all levels of being, now and through space and time.

I used this EET for the man’s need to be liked:

Empower Energy Technique (EET) On Healing From the Need to Be Liked

I now choose to be one with Loving Life Energy as a wave is one with the ocean or as a sunbeam is one with the sun and be empowered to ___.

1. Heal, clear, and release my need to be liked by others in order to feel safe, good, calm, and acceptable.

2. Strengthen, support, and create the ability to compassionately and fully like myself as I am.

3. Strengthen, support, and create greater unconditional love and acceptance of myself despite my ignorance, shortcomings, mistakes, and weaknesses.

I completely and gratefully accept healing energy at all levels of being and through space and time from this infinite source of Loving Life Energy to create and achieve this healing process. I embrace the positive shifts that occur as I heal my beliefs, emotions, fears, pain, habits, traumas, injuries, negative spiritual influences, brainwashing, and other blockages that prevent me from receiving all the helpful energy and support I need to heal and empower this healing process, at all levels of being, now and through space and time.

After the energy “work,” each patient tested stronger when they connected to the energy being treated. Repetition can be helpful if doing it three times helped, but not as completely as one wanted.

If you want to learn more about holistic psychiatry, feel free to explore this on my website: holisticpsychiatrist.com.There is a section on my website specifically dedicated to the Empower Energy Technique (EET). Click here to find it: Empower Energy Technique.

Have fun using these techniques and see if you find them helpful. There are other energy psychology techniques I’ve learned in the past, such as Ask and Receive, Tappas Accupressure Technique, Emotional Freedom Technique, and Logosynthesis. But I like using EET because it doesn’t require tapping the meridian points, and because it is, in my opinion, the most efficient way to create a shift in one’s energy state.

If you found this article helpful, please like it at the bottom, subscribe to my Substack, restack it, and support my writing as a paid subscriber. Your contribution to my success as a writer means the world to me!

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I know that I have neither the interest nor talent many medical doctors have for memorization and biology. Instead, my strengths lie in my imagination, creativity, and abstract thinking. Since childhood, I had as much interest in learning about chemistry and biology as I had in banging my head against a cactus—with lots of big, sharp spines.

Throughout my life, I have wondered why someone so unsuited for medicine would choose to be a psychiatrist. I came up with many reasons, all of which didn’t seem to fully explain why a duck like me would decide to run with a bunch of leopards and remain in their field all these years—even after I discovered my wings.

To be clear, I am not your typical psychiatrist. I am a “holistic” psychiatrist, i.e., I focus on helping patients come off, not get on, psychiatric medications. However, my work still revolves around an inordinate amount of psychopharmacology, biochemistry, physiology, and neurobiology. None of which makes me go, “Oh, yay!”

As a child, I worked hard to be a good writer. Though I didn’t know a word of English when I came to the U. S. at the age of seven, by the time I was 16, I was a promising young writer in Utah and had been accepted to U. C. Berkeley—the top university in creative writing at the time.

But something happened, or rather, didn’t happen, near the end of high school that caused me to pivot and change my life goals.

This past week, I finally put all the pieces together and understood the subconscious root behind my decision to be a psychiatrist and have the endurance and desire to remain in this field.

There were two immediate reasons why I turned away from writing and decided to be a psychiatrist when I was 16.

First, though I didn’t know it, I was in need of one.

And, Second, because no one could help me, I prayed for divine guidance and had a five-second spiritual experience, which showed me the bliss that came through serving others.

I experienced myself helping a little old lady across the street and was overwhelmed by a euphoric, blissful state that exceeded any joy that I had ever experienced. Until then, I was a typical, self-centered teenager.

Why did I need a psychiatrist at the time? Because my father (Ph.D. in economics), who had drummed into me the desire to attend a prestigious university, was completely unprepared when U. C. Berkeley actually accepted me. I thought he would be so proud and excited when I showed him the acceptance letter. But, no. Both of my parents ignored the matter and left me to gradually grapple with their betrayal and abandonment of my hopes and aspirations.

My parents lived through four to five major wars and were political refugees who fled from China to Taiwan during the Communist Revolution. After that, they immigrated to Utah when they were in their mid-30’s. They were courageous, hard-working, and brilliant people. However, warm and fuzzy, attentive and loving, sensitive and insightful, they were not.

There would be no freedom from my parents for the next four years. I continued to live at home and took a bus to the University of Utah. I knew just how Jacob felt about Laban (Old Testament Bible) when he woke up next to Leah after his wedding and had to work another seven more years before he could marry his true love, Rachel.

Without Berkeley, I lost faith in obtaining a premier creative writing training program. So I decided to be a psychiatrist and finance my future writing career through a new profession, hoping that I could become both a healer and a writer, which, by the way, I’m doing right now. It would take more work and time than my 16-year-old self appreciated, but that was my plan, and I stuck with it.

Up until this past week, this was the best I could do to patch together an analysis of my motivations for being a psychiatrist—all intellectualized and logical.

What was missing was the heart of the matter.

This past week, I attended a bridal shower. My youngest aunt was there. The bride was her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. We sat together and caught up with things that needed to be expressed face-to-face. Afterward, something shifted in me, and I felt the urge to write about my aunt and maternal grandmother. As I wrote, I remembered. As I remembered, I realized. As I realized, I healed.

My grandmother essentially raised me from birth until I was nearly two years old. My parents lived in another city and would visit over the weekends. This was Taipei, Taiwan, in the 1960’s. My parents were trying to establish some financial stability after fleeing China’s Communist Revolution. I imagine this was the best childcare option that they could manage at the time.

However, like a duckling, I imprinted all my love and adoration on my grandmother and none on my parents. My grandmother had a calm, loving demeanor that was easy to love. On the other hand, my aunts told me that I spurned my mother when she came to visit. When my brother was born, my parents decided to remove me from my grandmother and my aunts to live with them full-time. I was not pleased.

Shortly after my parents took me back to live with them, my maternal grandfather suddenly died in a factory explosion. I was around two or three years old, and my youngest aunt was around five or six at the time. After this catastrophe, my parents moved in with my grandmother to support her for a few months, then they returned to their home. Soon after they left my grandmother to care for her three young daughters, she had a “nervous breakdown” and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a long time—perhaps for a year or more.

Google Gemini described my grandmother’s life experiences—a woman born in Hupei, China, in the 1920’s—as follows:

“A person born in Hupei (Hubei), China, in 1920 who later fled to Taipei during the Nationalist retreat would live through a staggering succession of conflicts. Assuming an average modern lifetime spanning into the late 20th or early 21st century, this individual would directly experience at least 4 to 5 major wars and massive military crises, depending on how closely they were swept up in the frontline actions. Their life story would essentially be a map of 20th-century East Asian geopolitical trauma.”

Then, after surviving all those wars and fleeing to Taipei, her husband suddenly dies and leaves her with three little girls. She had no job and could barely walk on her half-bound feet (she had not completed the entire feet-binding process as a child).

Her psychiatric symptoms, as described by my aunts, were suggestive of a psychotic disorder. While she was in the hospital, my parents moved in with my three aunts, and the seven of us lived together as an extended family. That was how my youngest aunt became another beloved sister.

We often played together. Once, we pretended to be weathering the harsh world as refugees, fleeing from a war-torn country, as we scurried from the house’s back concrete courtyard to the front garden courtyard, pretending to be shivering from the cold (in our humid, subtropical climate). One summer, my aunt agreed to do my assigned homework partway through the break, writing the Chinese characters three times faster than I could. On starting school, the teacher easily noticed the difference between my handwriting and my aunt’s handwriting. My efficient, creative approach to completing homework did not impress her.

When the hospital finally discharged my grandmother back home to us, she was not completely well. I witnessed her fly into severe rages aimed at others, often with little provocation. Her anger was never directed towards me, which helped me maintain my love for her. However, I was deeply troubled by her emotionally and physically abusive behavior towards my youngest aunt, whom I loved just as completely.

I was around four or five at the time, but I found ways to comfort my aunt and divert my grandmother’s irrational fits of rage away from her. My aunt said that when my grandmother got angry, I would blame my brother for whatever irritated her. She never punished him for anything.

However, I wasn’t always able to protect my aunt from my grandmother’s heavy blows. I can still recall the whooshing sound as the duster handle flew through the air and landed on my aunt’s small body. I remember kneeling beside my aunt and putting my arm around her trembling shoulders as she cried quietly afterward, kneeling by a bed. At least she was not alone when I knelt beside her. For my grandmother, I brought chrysanthemum tea as she sat with her head resting in her hand, frowning unhappily.

You can imagine how small my acts of kindness towards my aunt and grandmother were at the time. What can a six-year-old do when facing such unfathomable circumstances? How can love grapple with such cruelty and suffering? Yet, my aunt remembers, and her continued deep gratitude and love for me seem to be more than I deserve.

There were many reasons for me to become a psychiatrist. But now, I realize that I became a psychiatrist out of compassion for my grandmother, aunt, and myself.

When I was suffering, I turned to an idea I valued—the idea of someone who would have the power to help those who suffer emotionally and mentally. I needed such a person when my writing achievements failed to save me, raise me, or free me. My grandmother and aunt had desperately needed such a person in their lives. I pivoted my life around the idea of empowerment—the ability to remedy what I witnessed and experienced. I am an imperfect version of that ideal, but at least I understand the importance of being that presence.

As I was writing, I thought of the little old lady in my spiritual vision, whom I helped across the street. In life, I have never actually helped an old lady across a street. But perhaps the woman in my vision represented my grandmother crossing the street of life. And the joy I felt in my vision represented all the joy I would one day feel as I help others to cross their streets of life.

Becoming a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist took ten long years of medical training. Becoming a holistic psychiatrist was even more difficult. The amount of suffering, betrayal, anguish, and debility I have witnessed and experienced is nearly incomprehensible. But the reason I have the power to endure being present for those who suffer, despite experiencing many challenges and heartbreaks, is ultimately because of compassion. I had no idea that love could be so strong and lasting. I never suspected that the child, forgotten for so long, could have had such an impact on my healing journey.

Hello and welcome to my attic window seat. I love it here, and I’m sitting by the window writing to you. This attic used to be a dark, dirty, brown, wooden storage space when I moved to Stamford in October, 2025. However, I have always imagined writing in an attic like Jo March, since reading Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. So I refinished it before moving in, and now here I am writing, just as I imagined doing when I was 12.

As an integrative psychiatrist for the past 24 years whose life has revolved around and evolved from healing people’s minds and lives and getting them off their medications, I thought I would put my credentials to good use and write about an under-appreciated, extraordinary attitude that led to extraordinary outcomes, at least in my life.

I use “extraordinary” loosely here. Actually, I consider this attitude rather mundane and take it for granted, as I do when I wake up each morning and can see when I open my eyes. I don’t exclaim, “How extraordinary that I can see this morning!” However, I call this attitude “extraordinary” because ordinarily, people don’t value, rely on, or have it. So, if you do have this attitude, I would not be surprised if you often feel alone on this planet of 8.3 billion people.

The attitude that I am referring to is what I would describe as an open, questioning, teachable, curious attitude about new possibilities. Perhaps you appreciate other important attitudes from your own life experiences and might want to share your insights in the comment section. Please feel free to do so.

I may be stretching it a bit to call this “an attitude” rather than a bunch of different attitudes, but I am lumping these qualities together because my medical training tried to assault this attitude right out of other physicians and me. After many years of memorizing “facts” and public shaming if we didn’t know the “right” answers, it’s easy for us physicians to become fearful of exploring outside of our assigned boxes. We were made to believe that we are supposed to know all the answers in our medical field—even if our field has been hijacked by pharmaceutical companies for decades.

Embracing such an attitude is rare because it’s challenging and uncomfortable to question things for many people. Before we have a question, we have to acknowledge a state of ignorance. Then, we need to have the openness and desire to be informed and grow beyond our ignorance. For many, “I don’t know” has become an unforgivable, shameful, and mortifying experience, especially in demanding professions. In addition, the curiosity and desire to learn beyond what is required have often been exhausted through years of force-fed data.

When I was in medical school, I was forced to battle the dark side of questions and new possibilities through countless multiple-choice tests. I blame my lackluster performance on multiple-choice questions on my innate openness to new possibilities. Each multiple-choice question revealed my penchant for creative, out-of-the-box thinking. I had difficulty picking the right answer from the wrong ones and got confused by what was possible.

I encountered this problem as early as first grade. The question was, “What do you use to breathe?” The multiple-choice options included both a nose and a mouth. I struggled with that question and remember my dilemma to this day. For, obviously, we can breathe with both. If you’ve ever gotten a stuffy nose, I’m sure you appreciate this alternative form of respiration and take for granted that a stuffy nose doesn’t lead to asphyxiation. On the other hand, I may remember that experience to mollify the pain of being a poor multiple-choice test taker.

Being willing to ask questions opens us up to potential embarrassment, sometimes on both sides simultaneously. When I was six, I remember nervously waiting for our family’s two visiting Mormon missionaries to ask them, “What is the meaning of life?” They walked past and ignored me. Maybe they didn’t understand my question. Instead, I assumed that my questioning and the question were both beneath their consideration. Had they understood my question, they probably wouldn’t have known the answer either.

During my child and adolescent fellowship program at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., I asked, “How do you withdraw from this medication?” I got a blank look, a short pause, and then a brusque response, “You do it slowly.” The real answer should have been, “I don’t know.”

Despite life experiences that would undermine and suppress an open, questioning, teachable, curious attitude about new possibilities, I look back over the course of my life and realize that such an attitude was the key to my accomplishments as a psychiatrist. Without it, I would never have become a holistic psychiatrist and learned how to help my patients reduce their medications.

In 2002, I began using a nutritional supplement called E. M. Power, a chelated multivitamin/mineral supplement that claimed it could alleviate bipolar disorder, because I had come to question conventional psychiatry’s approach to the condition. I was amazed by the way my patients responded to the supplement, and my experiences eventually led me to get board-certified in integrative medicine. Then, in 2003, I was introduced to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which was a pill-free, energy psychology technique that is now used in the military and all over the world to help alleviate PTSD. Interweaving functional and energy medicine allowed me to gain new tools to support my patients’ desires to come off their medications—a feat that is still considered nearly impossible.

Being stuck in a box also closes us off to new possibilities, which interferes with innovative approaches. In 2023, I published a case report on a patient who safely tapered off six psychiatric medications in a year and remained well. The article described the methods used and illustrates how extraordinary results can arise from an open attitude. Yes, it’s obvious that the outcome required a psychiatrist who was open to new approaches, but, in addition to that, the article described a criteria-based energy testing technique for gathering data from energy fields that also required an open, curious, questioning attitude. Assumptions and prejudices would merely bias this useful data-gathering approach.

Society may discourage and disparage an open, questioning, teachable, curious attitude about new possibilities, but what I’ve found is that such an attitude is well worth the trouble of protecting because it can remove barriers to life-saving, extraordinary outcomes. Whatever profession you are in—whether you are a doctor, a scientist, a farmer, or an artist—nurturing an open, questioning, teachable, curious attitude about new possibilities can lead you to extraordinary experiences beyond the limitations and imagination of those who choose to feel that they already have all the answers.

When I read the news, I see psychotic symptoms within politics and society. What is social and political psychosis? I would define it as a socially agreed-upon phenomenon based on delusions, paranoia, disorganized rationalization, bizarre behaviors, and hallucinations (experiencing sensory information that doesn’t exist). When a person is psychotic, the world is turned upside-down by lies and delusions (holding firm, false beliefs, often paranoid in nature). When a political system and its social network are psychotic, the world is similarly turned upside-down by lies and delusions.

In 1955, Eric Fromm wrote The Sane Society, in which he described symptoms of psychosis within society. So, our past and current social and political milieu isn’t new; it’s merely experienced through different groups and leaders. The reason why reason makes no difference in modifying false political beliefs is that those beliefs are psychotic in nature. Reason does not resolve a psychotic condition. You have to heal the underlying causes, not just numb its symptoms with chemicals (like going on a shopping spree or getting a paycheck from a job one detests).

The only way I can describe those political leaders who rise above the nonsense is that they are sane. They make sense. They are not driven by their desperate need for power and profit to leave morality and reason behind in their chase after social standing. They are selfless in their efforts to serve others, not because of a need for power or profit, but because they are generous, service-oriented, and abhor abuse. I see them coming to the forefront of political races, each with their unique gifts and talents, and it gives me hope. I hope they will win in their political races and move forward with a brighter agenda for our country than either the Democratic or Republican parties have achieved in the past.

There is another state of mind that rots society from within, and it’s the attitude of us vs. them. The dualistic mindset is outdated and limiting. This black and white thinking, and the society that encourages it, creates conflict, separation, and paranoia. This dualism is found in our political system, which generates division, paranoia, and conflict within our country.

As a psychiatrist, I have encountered many people. One killed his father with an ax. However, when I come to understand someone at their core, I inevitably feel compassion. I only want what is best for that person. The more distant I am from understanding a person or group of people, the more I can dehumanize them or excuse their cruelty. Empathy (along with good judgment) allows us to work together whether we live in Montana or Moscow.

The silver lining behind the egregious, psychotic, nonsensical political milieu is that we are forced out of our complacency and are organizing ourselves against further deterioration of a sane social fabric. We are unifying. We are setting aside our false labels and looking for common ground. We are rejecting the movement toward more separation, paranoia, and lies. We are realizing that we need to resist an Orwellian outcome of a young democratic nation and take responsibility for ridding it of its pus-filled acne.

Today is No Kings Day. People will be marching together—gathering in mutual solidarity to support freedom. Like a gathering storm cloud, the numbers who gather will be sending a political message: we, the people, are united. It is a scary message for those who seek to divide and conquer society through bribes, lies, and force.

“I’m no king!” The president responds.

But the response is strong, “We see you. We know you.”

We keep attending, marching, and joining together. Together, perhaps this psychotic regime can become a creative trigger for a better nation. Let’s hope for something new and wonderful to flourish from this rot.

As you may have read from my last article, From Words to Worlds, I came to Utah from Taipei when I was seven years old. I was placed in Mrs. Nash’s first-grade class after the Christmas holiday, and the children in the classroom and I got along beautifully. Second grade continued just as smoothly. Red-headed Ricky Thomas became good friends with my brother and me, and he liked to tease me by calling me “Fleabag,” which I took as a term of endearment. I think he liked me, and I liked his carroty hair, freckles, and wide smile.

Unfortunately, I progressed a little too well in class. The following year, instead of entering third grade, I was placed in fourth grade. I assumed that my parents wanted me to be placed in a grade that matched my age sooner than later. They never mentioned it to me, but I read the underscored words, “on trial,” on my report card.

I lost all my friends, of course. But one can always make new friends. What made fourth grade a miserable experience for me was the cliquishness and the “Mean Girls” I had to endure. I felt their disdain for me like a cement wall that isolated me from their friendships. I was the only non-caucasian student in class. Did it matter? Not in second grade, but by the fourth grade? I was different in many ways, and being different was the kiss of death.

The fourth-grade teacher liked to rearrange desks in class. One day, we came to class to find desks arranged in groups. The girls quickly created two groups: the popular mean-girl group and the average mean-girl group. Both groups wanted me to join them. Why? Well, it wasn’t because they liked me. It turned out that they wanted to use me to help them with their classwork. Imagine that.

I decided to sit with the popular girls’ group—four girls named Ann, Ginger, Patricia, and Debbie. Ann was beautiful with golden highlights in her long, brown hair; a high-bridged, haughty nose; and a tall, Scandinavian physique. However, she was the worst. During recess, she humiliated me during tetherball with gusto because she was nearly two feet taller. Another student saw her kick her mother in front of the teacher as they were talking in the school lobby.

Although I helped these girls with their in-class assignments, during recess, they treated me like I was lice, not Alice. I’ve forgotten all the indignities I suffered—their verbal denigrations and sneers. I just remember that I had to buy some books on how to respond to bullying with clever comebacks, like “double-ick.”

After a few weeks, I chose to join the average mean-girls group. Again, I prostituted my intellect to help them with school work for a few scraps of acceptance. One day, there was a discussion about the best shampoo for hair. Apparently, everyone used Johnson’s baby shampoo. I didn’t know the name of my shampoo, so I told them that I also used the same shampoo. One girl questioned me about the color, and everyone laughed at me when I said that it was green. It turned out that my shampoo was Prell.

I went to the teacher and told her that I was tired of all the girls picking on me and laughing at me, and burst into tears. She looked grim and asked me to wait outside the classroom while she talked to the class. For ten to 15 minutes, I waited and paced outside, wondering how the teacher could save me from these mean girls.

When I walked into the classroom, everyone just stared at me. I don’t know what the teacher said, but the girls apologized to me. After that, things improved. They were never real friends, but at least they stopped being mean.

The next year, a boy named Marco bullied me with racist insults. He was from another class, but whenever he saw me, he would ridicule me for being Asian. Sometimes, he would rudely shove me when walking past in the hallways. One winter day, I was next in line to play four-square when Marco “got out.” He looked angry. As he walked past me, he wiped his dirty, wet hands on my brown winter coat. He smiled as he stared at me with narrowed eyes. He enjoyed insulting me.

“Hey, stop that,” I said.

“What are you going to do? Make me?” He said as he pushed me in the chest with his hands.

I pushed back, “Yeah,” I said.

Things quickly escalated. Enraged, he attacked me, and soon we were wrestling on the playground with him on top of me. I was pulling his hair, and he was trying his best to stay on top. My glasses got knocked off my face, and my brother picked them up, begging me to stop fighting.

Soon, a teacher came over, broke up the fight, and marched us to the principal’s office. A lot of hair came off in my hands when I ran my fingers through my head as we walked back inside the building. I guess he was pulling my hair as I was pulling his.

Marco let me know that he was going to get together with his friends to beat me up after school. I shared my fate with a few other students in the cafeteria after the fight. We were all volunteering in the cafeteria, helping the staff prepare lunch for the rest of the students. Two huge Tongan girls told me not to worry. They would be happy to beat up Marco and his friends for me.

After school, Marco and a couple of other boys marched towards me. When they saw the two smiling Tongan girls slapping their fists against their palms, they turned around and got back on their school bus. My brother was nowhere around. I guess he heard about the fight after school, too.

A few days later, as I was walking down the school hallway, I saw Marco heading towards me. He threatened to beat me up again.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I said, looking him in the eyes.

He didn’t say anything, just sneered and walked away. I never saw him again. I moved to another house and school a few months afterward.

Was I still afraid of Marco? Of course I was. But was I going to tolerate his bullying? No. Not anymore. He knew that, and he stopped picking on me because he knew the consequences would cost him more hair and another trip to the principal’s office.

There were other bullies I dealt with in grade school. In one instance, I went up to a girl during recess who was several grades older and many inches taller than me, who had repeatedly bullied me verbally, and kicked her in the shins. When she and her friend found me hiding in the girls’ bathroom, she demanded to know why I kicked her. I told her that I kicked her for picking on me and calling me names. She got embarrassed and left. She never bullied me again.

I learned a lot of lessons from my experiences with bullies in grade school. The most valuable lesson is empathy and compassion for the social pariahs who are rejected and cast out because they don’t fit in.

Bullies share common patterns:

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Flux is a wonderful word. As a child, I found this word while perusing all the F words in the dictionary and loved it. It became my favorite word.

I’d say, “Life is a flux,” and felt quite smart while using it. The word means: a continuous moving on or passing by (as of a stream), or a continued flow.

It has become more and more apparent to me that the most valuable “things” in life can’t be reduced to a two-dimensional, static state of being. They can only be reduced to a flow of experiences through time. For example, love is a flux, a verb, an ever-changing, transformative, and transforming experience. To say, “I love you,” without being loving is like holding up a poster with the word “water” written on it while standing in front of a thirsty person. It just isn’t the same thing.

The way life flows can often be an unpredictable, chaotic, and often otherworldly, process. One’s course in life can suddenly shift unexpectedly and inexplicably in mere seconds because of a spiritual experience or a profound “dream.” What seems inevitable one day can be gone the next. While this truth can sometimes feel daunting, it can also give us hope and embolden us to make a positive difference.

If you believed that history’s course can be influenced as easily as the beating of butterfly wings, wouldn’t you be more willing to put your toe in the water and test your ability to influence the currents of life?

I can meander through many past personal experiences, but I want to focus on what’s happening now in America. The day I suddenly decided to start writing in my Substack began shortly after I read The New Yorker article posted on February 16, 2026, called, The Epstein Files Reveal What Trump Knew. This article was the “cherry on top” of all the news on President Donald Trump and his cabinet’s influences on every aspect of our lives today.

Before reading the article, I had been procrastinating on posting anything on Substack because I thought it would be too complicated for me to learn how to post on this platform. However, I had been reading and listening to a lot of wonderful, intelligent people on the platform and wishing that I could be like them. After reading the article, my complacency and passivity shifted to “I’ve got to do something besides just read about Trump and Epstein.” I needed a platform to express my opinions on what’s going on. Thus, Substack, and this article you are reading.

The flux of the matter with Epstein and Trump is that, like so many rich, white men, they may appear powerful and larger than life during brief periods of their lives. For those who value or fear social power, money, or fame, such men might seem like hovering tidal waves while the rest of humanity seem like mere flecks of froth on top. It’s easy to forget that waves inevitably move through their arcs, crash down, and are dragged away beneath the churning tides.

Among various interests, I admit that I have a small fascination with evil men, for example, Jeffrey Dahmer, the alcoholic cannibal and serial killer. It’s small because I have read only one book about Jeffrey Dahmer and was too squeamish to watch the Netflix crime drama series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, released in 2022. Of course, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump aren’t in the same league as Dahmer. They are greedier, richer, and more pampered to be reduced to cooking and eating human hearts. But they devour hearts in other ways, don’t they.

“Evil” is the reverse of “live” in more ways than spelling. In Epstein’s case, it ended in a very real, unpleasant demise. While Trump, whose friendship with Epstein exemplifies how “birds of a feather flock together,” has probably been working hard every day to avoid his own noose.

In addition to the underlying chronic stress of living backwards, the innate nature of such men makes their power, money, and fame worthless, for no matter how much they may surround, gobble up, or smear themselves with those things, they can never translate the superficial, two-dimensional symbols of power, money, and fame into four-dimensional experiences.

Taking responsibility is the essential quality of power, gratitude the essential quality of abundance, and compassionate self-acceptance the essential quality of fame. Without these essential qualities, all superficial substitutes or symbols—money, prestige, and fame—satisfy as fleetingly as heroin for an addict’s cravings.

When we read about Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and other calloused individuals who abuse power, hurt people, and assume that they are above the law, remember that life is a flux, and the most valuable things in life cannot be reduced to static symbols. They must be experienced through their true essence. Water written on a poster cannot quench one’s thirst. It’s impossible. And what seems so indomitable and invincible today can be less than a memory tomorrow.

As Helen Keller so aptly showed and wrote, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.”

I had left my grandmother, aunts, and uncles in Taipei, Taiwan, a subtropical climate of palm trees and walled residences, afraid that I would not be able to return to my extended family before my beloved grandmother died of old age. She was 50 and had survived the Communist Revolution, lost her wealth, and started anew in Taipei as an immigrant. My grandfather had died in a factory explosion when I was two and left her alone with four daughters and two sons. To me, her deeply lined face and half-bound feet seemed ancient and frail. She promised me that she would buy “long-life pills,” live to 100, and wait for my return.

Because I didn’t know the language, I began school in Utah by attending first grade at Lowell Elementary School, like my younger brother, rather than second grade. Mrs. Nash, my teacher, was playing “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar” when I entered her classroom. She helped me to feel welcomed and comfortable. She had the class applaud when I finished the math problems so quickly that she thought I neglected to do the problems on the other side of the page.

I don’t remember feeling ashamed about not knowing how to speak English. In fact, after a few weeks, Mrs. Nash told my mother that I was talking too much and was disrupting the class. It was probably because I found all the children beautiful, delightful, and fascinating. I had never experienced such variety in eye and hair color, and what different noses the children had!

My brother and I received additional ESOL tutoring to help us learn new words. Purple was particularly hard for me to pronounce at that time, and that flash card came up repeatedly during our sessions. As immigrants, we were poor, but words and library books were free. I read with a dictionary in my lap and gathered new words and checked out books as if each added a dollar to my piggy bank.

Unfortunately, sometimes I didn’t bother to check on new words in the dictionary. One of the words I knew the meaning of and assumed I knew how to pronounce was “melancholy.” As you can imagine, few people use this word in modern, daily speech. In fact, I had never heard a single person speak that word out loud before, when one day I spoke it aloud in the middle of a sentence. I soon learned that it was not pronounced meLANcholy, with a “ch” like the word “choke.” The other person found it amusing, while I felt embarrassed and wished I had been more consistent at using the dictionary.

Once, I was standing at a street corner with a stranger, a middle-aged man. He used the word “affluent” during our short conversation, and I asked him what the word meant. He grimaced and made a comment about how uneducated students were not to know what “affluent” meant. I remember his expression of disdain. I felt stupid and ignorant. It must have deeply affected me because I was still in middle school, and I have never forgotten his reaction to a simple question about the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

In my youth, my deepest desire was to become “an author," because I loved words and books and wanted to create more books of my own. Through perseverance and effort, I won some writing contests, became the English Sterling Scholar Finalist in Utah, and was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley because of my creative writing and grades. The greatest disappointment in my life was when I realized that I would not be able to attend Berkeley because my parents didn’t have the means to support it.

In reaction to ruined dreams, I decided to become a psychiatrist even though I didn’t have a bone of talent in my body for biology. If I had not been so heartbroken and convinced of my inadequacies as a writer without training at Berkeley, I would never have turned my back on becoming a writer and decided to be a psychiatrist. However, in time, due to my creative and innovative efforts as a psychiatrist, my practice transformed from its dependency on pharmaceuticals that profited from patients’ dependency on medications to a holistic approach that served patients in their quest for safe medication withdrawal. Along the way, I wrote hundreds of articles, created a podcast called The Holistic Psychiatrist, and published pioneering approaches to psychiatric medication withdrawal.

The theme that runs throughout my life is creative freedom through self-expression, whether it is in my personal life or facilitating creative freedom in the lives of my patients.

Unbelievably, as a holistic psychiatrist, I routinely use words and thoughts through energy medicine techniques to help patients heal from mental illness and support medication withdrawal. These energy-based approaches that depend on words and thoughts help my patients recover when diet and nutritional supplements fall short of meeting the patients’ healing needs. In essence, I have witnessed the creative power of words and thoughts in establishing function and restoring health at the biological level.

Currently, social forces are forcibly and illegally suppressing our freedom to read, write, and express ourselves if our views differ from the current political establishment. Before this movement becomes so powerful that we become powerless to stop it, we each have unique talents to form new paths that can strengthen creative freedom in our society, hopefully with greater integrity and devotion to freedom than ever before.

Last night, I highlighted a passage from a book called Fluke, Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klass. By the way, he has a Substack platform called The Garden of Forking Paths, which I would recommend to you. He wrote these profound words:

“Motivational posters tell you that if you set your mind to it, you can change the world. I’ve got some good news for you: you already have. Congratulations! You’re changing it right now because your brain is adjusting slightly just by reading the words I’ve written for you. If you hadn’t read this sentence, the world would be different. I mean that literally. Your neural networks have now been altered, and it will—in the most imperceptible, minute way—adjust your behavior slightly over the remainder of your lifetime. Who knows what the ripple effects will be. But in an intertwined system, nothing is meaningless. Everything matters.” p 159

Years ago, I wrote a poem that was published and performed in Maryland by the Rose Theater called The Garden Where Everything Matters. In this poem, I wrote about my experience walking through Red Butte Arboretum at night and a spiritual experience I had there. I heard, “Everything matters,” and experienced profound solace in response to my despondent reflections that I was wasting my time. That night mattered.

Everything matters. We all matter.

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Hello and Welcome to my new Holistic Psychiatrist Substack Platform!

Today, I’m taking my first step in voicing my candid reflections and opinions on current social, political, and cultural issues as a holistic psychiatrist.

Recently, I attended a comedy show by Trevor Noah in Stamford, CT, where he emphasized that we are living through history. One day, what we are experiencing now will be written in the history books as a pivotal moment in American history. He said that his experience of being in the U.S. is heightened by the thought that it may not be around in the future.

People laughed.

But I understood his meaning, and though I found his comment amusing because he said it with such an innocent smile, I did not laugh. He made me wonder, “What can I, a single person, do in the face of a possible, impending demise of democracy?”

I needed to do something more than the vote I’d been given. I needed a platform for my voice to make a difference. That is why I’m starting this Substack platform—and joining some of the best, most courageous, inspiring thought-leaders of today.

What do I wish to write about? My analyses, perspectives, and opinions about life and how people think and feel under various social and political circumstances. I want to write about my personal struggles and feelings about the political issues I read in the news.

Perhaps I will only write what you have read a thousand times before, or maybe from among my words, you will find a fresh new way to see people, view their choices, and find renewed strength to live your best for another day, week, year.

I have kept a journal since I was 12 years old. I have made so many secret entries that my journal volumes fill many bins. I am used to having many opinions and writing down my perspectives, but I have kept them to myself. You’ll get a taste of them here on my Substack. This is where I share my personal, secret, unfiltered opinions and beliefs that don’t go into my holistic psychiatrist articles and will not be about safe, psychiatric medication withdrawal.

Come and join me in my new adventure here on Substack. Even better, come and join me as a paid subscriber and receive special articles written just for you!

Alice W. Lee, MD

Subscribe now

Hello and Welcome to my new Holistic Psychiatrist Substack Platform!

Today, I’m taking my first step in voicing my candid reflections and opinions on current social, political, and cultural issues as a holistic psychiatrist.

Recently, I attended a comedy show by Trevor Noah in Stamford, CT, where he emphasized that we are living through history. One day, what we are experiencing now will be written in the history books as a pivotal moment in American history. He said that his experience of being in the U.S. is heightened by the thought that it may not be around in the future.

People laughed.

But I understood his meaning, and though I found his comment amusing because he said it with such an innocent smile, I did not laugh. He made me wonder, “What can I, a single person, do in the face of a possible, impending demise of democracy?”

I needed to do something more than the vote I’d been given. I needed a platform for my voice to make a difference. That is why I’m starting this Substack platform—and joining some of the best, most courageous, inspiring thought-leaders of today.

What do I wish to write about? My analyses, perspectives, and opinions about life and how people think and feel under various social and political circumstances. I want to write about my personal struggles and feelings about the political issues I read in the news.

Perhaps I will only write what you have read a thousand times before, or maybe from among my words, you will find a fresh new way to see people, view their choices, and find renewed strength to live your best for another day, week, year.

I have kept a journal since I was 12 years old. I have made so many secret entries that my journal volumes fill many bins. I am used to having many opinions and writing down my perspectives, but I have kept them to myself. You’ll get a taste of them here on my Substack. This is where I share my personal, secret, unfiltered opinions and beliefs that don’t go into my holistic psychiatrist articles and will not be about safe, psychiatric medication withdrawal.

Come and join me in my new adventure here on Substack. Even better, come and join me as a paid subscriber and receive special articles written just for you!

Alice W. Lee, MD