We recently had the chance to connect with Hai-Duong (Hais) Lindeman and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Hai-Duong (Hais), thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What is a normal day like for you right now?
As an owner of a psychotherapy private practice with two young children, my normal day is a whirlwind of activities. It usually starts bright and early before 7am with a strong cup of coffee, lunches to pack, children to ready, school drop offs, then my day begins. Since I scarcely have time to read for pleasure, I sneak in books whenever I can, so an audible book is a must while I get ready for my workday (I recently finished By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult, highly recommend). I am usually in session from 10am – 4pm, then it’s school pick ups, various after school extracurriculars (divided and conquered between my husband and me), family dinner, baths, bedtime stories and lights out by 8:30pm. Lather, rinse, repeat. It sounds really exhausting, and it is, but I am eternally grateful for the privilege of creating my own work hours, doing the job that I love while being present for my children during their formative years. Additionally, as a woman who has experienced years of painful infertility and pregnancy losses, there was a time that I never thought my house would be filled with this buzzing exhausting normalcy. I do not take it for granted.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I was born in Saigon, Vietnam and immigrated to the US in 1989 with my family as Vietnamese refugees. I have grown up in San Diego all my life (give and take a 6-month stint in Florida in my 20’s) and have now created my roots here. I graduated from Scripps Ranch High School and earned my Bachelor of Arts at UC San Diego. Coincidentally, after completing my graduate degree in Counseling Psychology, my clinical training was also at UC San Diego where I learned to work with co-occurring disorders population, people who struggled with severe addictions and mental illness simultaneously. I have been in practice since 2007 and became licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in 2011.
When I opened my private practice in 2016, I had a specific vision, offering equitable, science based and culturally responsive therapy to those who have treatment-resistant mental health conditions. While at UC San Diego, I was trained on the gold standard evidence-based models of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing and to lesser extent Mentalization Based Therapy and Motivational Interview. In 2017, I began my Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) training, completing a 3 year core-training and subsequently advanced training. Discovering ISTDP has not only changed my clinical conceptualization but it has immensely changed my life. The concept is about confronting our own defenses that have both kept us safe and created barriers in life. Until we are aware of personal defenses, their function, costs to our lives, and our readiness to face our complex feelings, we will struggle to face reality or the truth. This professional and personal experience has inspired me to expand my work to the monolingual Vietnamese communities who are shrouded in mental health taboos and do not have adequate access to care. I am currently conducting a study offering pro-bono therapy for monolingual Vietnamese individuals in an effort to improve the mental health system of care locally and nationwide.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who taught you the most about work?
My mother grew up having never worked and spent the first 14 years of marriage at home with her children. She married my father, who was a family physician in Vietnam prior to the fall of Saigon. Since resettling in the states, my father could not regain his medical license, and due to several medical illnesses, he did not return to work. My mother suddenly found herself in a foreign country with a foreign language and needing to provide for her family of seven. She worked multiple jobs while earning her college degree, all the while caring for her sick husband, elderly father-in-law, and 4 young children. Her perseverance was a powerful force in my life. Currently, in her golden years, she has opted to retire so she can provide childcare to her grandchildren out of the kindness of her heart.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
The traumas I experienced early in life taught me that hiding my physical or emotional pain meant no one else could hurt me. If they don’t see me, they can’t hurt me. It worked well when I was a child but the problem was that it stopped working as I got older, and worse, my pain started hurting me from the inside. By hiding my pain, I suffered in silence, I was lonely, I was stuck in an endless spiral of anxiety and depression. By the time I started graduate school, my need for change outgrew the stagnant comfort of silence and I began my personal psychotherapy journey. I learned that hiding my pain was a defensive mechanism, it had its function of protecting me, but it cost me a life worth living, and I was ready to face the reality of my past and present. By coming out of hiding, the pain was transformed into a wisdom that allowed me to heal and know I am not alone. More importantly, it led me to the path of helping others. As long as I cultivate connection with others, the pain still hurts but it cannot make me suffer.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
As a psychotherapist I get a lot of, “are you ‘therapizing’ me?” during interactions with others. The short answer is no, never. Conducting therapy requires a lot of work. It requires the close attunement to my clients in a non-distracting environment. I am continuously noting what they say, making connections from one session to the next while hypothesizing and conceptualizing their verbal and non-verbal cues pulling from my 20-year bank of clinical knowledge. My responses are deliberate and methodical in order to facilitate a therapeutic alliance in problem solving.
In my private life, that is a lot of mental work to jump through with friends, family, even strangers. Outside of work, I do not feel responsible to help other’s problems, unless asked, and I do not conceptualize each interaction in order to have a well thought out clinical response. This would make my relationships very tedious, robotic, and inauthentic. I am as clumsy as anyone else when it comes to emotional interactions. Academic Brene Brown said, “[a]uthenticy is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” Although my brain will always be wired to make connections, I strive to let go of what I know in order to experience my life in the moment.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
Legacy is an interesting, albeit sometimes narcissistic, concept for me. Legacy does not exist in a vacuum, it is not something I created from scratch. Who I am today, professionally and personally, was created and influenced by those who came before me and I am the current steward of this body of knowledge. My life’s goal is to ethically add on to the collective consciousness then share and relinquish this knowledge on to the next generation of professionals, family members or loved ones. If people could tell that story of me, I would be satisfied when I’m gone.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.lindemanitc.com/about-1.html
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/integratedtreatmentconsulting/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IntegratedTreatmentConsulting/about
Image Credits
All photos copyright by Hais Lindeman
