Angela Leong, Registered Clinical Counsellor

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Angela Leong, Registered Clinical Counsellor

Angela Ivy Leong holds a Masters of Arts in Counselling Psychology and is a Registered Clinical Counsellor with a clinical emphasis on intimate relating.

She owns An Elegant Mind Counselling, as Psychedelic S*x Therapy and Couples' Counselling agency.

05/07/2024

Newsletter update from Angela - https://mailchi.mp/8a94f7c9f983/letter-from-angela-ive-returned-from-indonesia-and-aem-updates

05/15/2022

Discovering Bhuddism in France. Did you know that when Thich Nhat Hanh was refused the right to return to Vietnam for his peace promotion work, he settled in France? He established a Bhuddist monastery in Harmeau du Bas, close to Bordeaux, which has become the largest Bhuddic community in Europe?

10/26/2021

I’ve been thinking about taking on an art class. I want to tackle act of making art as a meditation or a portal to connect with the divine (and therefore, your highest self and most creative work).

Lots of people I know are having mood issues and struggling with keeping up with the political tension of vaccines, the fear of getting sick, and other covid-related struggles such as not being as social and vibrant as they once were.

How have I been tackling covid blues?
I’ve been leveling up on my self care: I journal every single night before bed. It’s like a meditation to me. I reflect on the day, muse over any synchronicities and set intentions for my dreams to tell me something I need to know about my life.

I aim to workout twice a day and really feel the movement in my body. And I go for walks around my favourite part of the sea wall. Sometimes while I move I am listening to a podcast or music or talking with a friend, sometimes I am just being with the movement-based activity.

I also take myself on dates to art galleries.

I’m also taking a French language class. It feels so energizing to learn something for the sake of learning something: not for grades or any ulterior motive other than it would help me connect with the world in a different way.

I used to have a lot of issues with self-care. I used to feel guilty about not doing “actual work”.

Now I embrace the activity until I feel INSPIRED to work again.

And when I’m rested and well, I do dive into my tasks with gusto.

So, any recommended art teachers in the Vancouver area you recommend? ✨🌙

10/11/2021

🌞 WHAT IS A HEALING CIRCLE? 🌝

We are building an international Asian community who are ready to share their lived experiences through these trying times and have a space in which to process intergenerational, relational, and racial trauma. This is for those who have felt unseen, unheard, and alone in their lives as Asian individuals living in a western society. Together we define what trauma is, explore early attachment wounds to understand the present, and to remind each other that we’re not alone in our experiences.

🌞 YOUR FACILITATORS 🌝

ANGELA IVY LEONG

Angela is a Registered Clinical Counsellor. She trained at the University of British Columbia Counselling Psychology Master of Arts program, and has post-grad clinical training in EFT, AEDP Psychedelic Integration, & S*x Therapy. Angela is passionate about creating a space for Asians, particularly Chinese migrants to name the discomfort, struggle, or awkwardness of being Asian in a western context, one in which lies the nuanced dialect between aspiring to western ideals of individualism, yet being able to let go of Eastern values.

JOCELYN LEE

Jocelyn is a spiritual guide and life coach. For over a decade, Jocelyn’s been on a journey of reclaiming parts of herself left behind and re-writing her own story of wholeness. One of her greatest joys is walking beside others on their journey home to themselves. Jocelyn believes in the healing and transformative power of sharing lived experiences. Having founded the Women’s Sharing Circle in Copenhagen 3 years ago, she has seen firsthand the positive effect that a community that comes together to be seen, heard, and supported has.

🌞 PROGRAM DETAILS 🌝
• 6 person group
• 6 online sessions every other Sunday, at 9AM PST/6pm CET, for 3hrs:
- October 24, 2021
- November 7, 2021
- November 21, 2021
- December 5, 2021
- December 19, 2021
- January 2, 2022

Location: VIRTUAL (via Zoom)

🌞 REGISTRATION 🌝

Please email asianhealingcircle@gmail.com

09/03/2021

A friend just reminded me that time scarcity is a real thing: when you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else.

You cannot say yes to every single relationship, project, or request that comes your way. You must learn to say no and let go of guilt. It’s not necessary to do anything with your guilt. Of course, we developed and continued to pass on this pro-social tendency as a survival mechanism because it helps us in some ways: e.g. to think out a moral choice and it prevent (the majority) us from killing each other.

But in the context of simply saying no to something that doesn’t serve you, you’re enabling a new path for yourself and the other. Whatever emotions they are experiencing as a result of your No will be their process to work with, learn from and heal with.

By the way, people will challenge you! They’ll overstep your boundaries and try to ni**le themselves in again. And by channeling your truth, you say no again, more, more and loudly until they get the point. Get a restraining order if you need to. Everyone is wired differently. They may never understand your No.

When you notice that a certain relationship is causing you resentment, anxiety or discontent, think about the cost that it’s making on your health.

YES, emotions will affect your health and if you need to be convinced, you can read ‘When The Body Says No’ by

08/15/2021

When you connect with ocean how do you feel?

For me, I feel connected with someone much bigger than me. So then I realize how small my problems actually are, in the grand scheme of the world and beyond.

When I swim in the ocean, I feel like my problems are temporarily suspended, just in the way my body is suspended in the water - just floating with no beginning and no end.

Whenever I am feeling heavy, I swim in the ocean and I always get out feeling better than when I stepped in. It’s my go-to self-care activity, for maintaining peace in my life and for when there’s a crisis.

We are so lucky to be living in Vancouver, a lovely city right next to the Pacific Ocean.

08/12/2021

Talk to me: what does it mean for you to “take a ”?

When you come back home, wherever home is, what is it that you use your post-vacation energy for?

For me, it’s being able to pursue my calling with more enthusiasm, and from a slightly different, more complex perspective.

🏝

08/10/2021

What does it mean to take a vacation?

For me it means to depart from your normal responsibilities for a period of time. Long enough for you to momentarily feel as if your old life was not real or did not exist. A period of time for you to play with a different way of being in the world: one with less stress or less of a certain kind of emotion.

There were times this year where I did not feel like waking up, because the demands of my life were too great. I was trying to take on too much of the world’s grief. I had no intention to commit su***de, but I felt deeply depressed some evenings. (The mornings were always better.)

Going on vacation has allowed me to get away from pushing forward with my nose on the grindstone, so that I can see my things from a birds eye view. And that has been tremendously helpful.

05/19/2021

Channeling sadness and anger can really get you to places you didn’t imagine.

Speaking out against the xenophobia that may have always existed against Asians is something I feel is my social responsibility as an Asian-Canadian.

I’m not just speaking for my and my family’s fears and pains but for the community I serve as well.

Thank you to for this segment. Thank you to for the invitation. Watch the segment on my page!

05/18/2021

What is attachment?

It’s a psychobiological phenomena that persisted through evolution to help our species survive. Babies are born with a motivation to be attached to their mother, as a strive towards survival. Bowlby argued that “the infant’s hunger for mother’s love and presence is as great as its hunger for food.”

Attachment means mother and child are attuned to each other’s emotional world and there is co-regulation which occurs, primarily from mother to child. But we often see the reverse happen (which unfortunately results in the pre-mature parentification of a child).

There are three main attachment patterns we see between mother and child: (1) secure - mother adequately attends to child’s’ needs the vast majority of the time, (2) anxious - child feel threatened by potential inability to access their attachment figure and becoming upset and clingy at any potential threat, (3) avoidant - the child does not feel able to predict their attachment figure’s availability so thereby has decided to shut down any attachment impulses and (4) anxious-avoidance mixed

These early attachment patterns influence the affective, cognitive and social development of a child and will form enduring adult relational patterns, including functions of empathy and mentalization.

What is attachment trauma?

The overwhelming experience of feeling alone in the midst of an unbearable emotional state, or worse yet, the attachment figure is the cause of the overwhelming distress. A traumatizing attachment figure impairs the basic ability to achieve secure attachment. It leads to the expectation that all relationships are dominated by mistrust. Lack of a secure attachment figure gets in the way of the development of the empathy/mentalization skill.

📌You must know and recognize this within yourself before you begin ascribing your situation as being a eastern-western ideology cultural clash. Or a generational cultural clash. 💢

Although attachment is an evolutionary principle that is deeply rooted in phylogeny, some mothers fail to provide this, which results in serious ineptitude in adult psycho-social functioning, it’s not irreversible. You can heal 🤍✨

05/15/2021

COLLECTIVE RACIALIZED TRAUMA

Seeing someone of your ethnic background be the target of violence can be triggering.

It may bring back memories of long-buried incidents long of racial or overt violence.

You become fearful for yourself and your family.

You wonder whether we as a nation have always had this issue of racism or whether it’s re-emerged as a reaction to Trump naming covid-19 the “China flu”.

Mixed that in with memories and realizations that your mom dyed your hair brown, made sure not to pack kimchi in your lunch and changed your name into an Anglo-Saxon name, just to make sure you’d fit into Canada.
You wonder, maybe the problem of was always there, just hidden deep in the recesses of others’ psyche and it never emerged because you have made yourself acceptable enough to be considered .

The continued media stories covering racialized violence keeps your body in fight or flight mode.

You become irritable, angry, and depressed. For what’s happening to your family, your community. You grieve not only for yourself but for the world.
..

I spoke as a on behalf of on our May 2 rally. Making this speech and having my closest friends and family witness it was both incredibly . However, after pouring everything I had into orchestrating this community event and having my mother, in her plain-spoken way, minimize my efforts, was upsetting to say the least. But I have come to accept that she may not have intended to be so hurtful, she just struggles with . On Mother’s Day I had to have a tough conversation with her about how she had hurt me so. My wanted to be recognized but I decided to project myself as a firm and calm adult so that my message would land.

As a result of my , I am now wondering how much of my aloneness as a child and as an adult is caused by the gaps between being both Chinese and Canadian and how much of it is mis-attunement (attachment theory)?

Again, it’s another one of those moments when you realized that maybe you’ve white-washed your intellectual understanding of .

Address

300/1090 Homer Street
Vancouver, BC
V6B2W9

Website

http://anelegantmind.com/

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How it all began...

As a child, one might say that I had precocious sensitivities. My mother would proudly say that I had a mature ability to be considerate of my parent’s need to save money. My parents were immigrants and at an early age, I understood that that my parents were working very hard to put food on the table so I kept quiet about my needs.

When I entered graduate school, I confronted my mother about the emotional experiences I had as a child: an overwhelming amount of bordom, sadness and loneliness. My mother responded defensively to my remark about the prevalent feelings in the home, and at the time, I was in the midst of a emotionally void romantic relationship. Due to culumative stressors, I found myself on my therapists’ couch. Even upon starting therapy, I insisted that things were fine. But the therapist saw past what I was saying and went straight to asking my what I felt in my body. Immediately, the tears started. She saw past my front. I couldn’t pretend to be confident and self-assured anymore. The old saying“fake it til you make it”, just was not working in this case. My true feelings were desperate for an outlet. I cried and I cried for many sessions in a row.

Looking back, I realized I needed to grieve in order to heal. I needed to grieve what I did not get as a child. I needed to grieve the pain that friends, lovers and family members had put me through. I needed to grieve my losses in order for me to find the peices that remained. Then I used those peices to re-define myself.

Seeing another have awe even in my most vulnerable states was profound. It allowed me to start loving myself for all my quirks, flaws and mistakes. Because someone was caring for me, I started caring for myself. Slowly, I gave myself permission to have self-care practices. I started exploring my sense of spirituality, a nascent aspect of my life. More healing happened. I ended relationships that weren’t serving me. I processed those losses too. It’s been a journey. I am now creating conscious relationships of joy, connection and mutual respect. I’m pushing back against societal expectations to create my own happiness.