Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Amy Wong (Wong is my middle name and I prefer to show it) Hope. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Amy, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
As a Chinese-American woman who was acculturated to be the hard-working productive worker, I know well what it is to perform rather than “be.” Luckily I have had the opportunity and privilege in my life to learn more about how to “be” and undo the expectations and conditions that made me feel I had to perform as an efficient, productive, useful, unreachable perfect ideal (which doesn’t exist). Much like undoing layers of lacquered polish, this has taken a painstaking solidarity with mindfulness and affirmation of my own self-worth, and integrating this awareness. The imposter syndrome, since it springs from shame, is not ever going to be go away or be eliminated. Identifying where I perform as myself, rather than “being” myself was the start. As I have gotten older, I have learned how to make this moment-to-moment mindfulness part of my lens; and to commit to my authentic self rather than my performative self. In doing so I am more discerning about my work and personal relationships, contexts, and how I move through the world. This commitment to pause, disengage, or engage in the right contexts is essential to building a safe container for authenticity over the imposter syndrome.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
In 2024, Chronicle Books will publish a book, Small Doses of Awareness: A Microdosing Companion that I co-authored with friend and colleague, Shin Yu Pai. When Shin Yu asked me to co-author a book on microdosing psychedelics in 2022, I had a healthy dose of self-doubt as I am a full-time Clinical Social Worker in private practice with a full caseload. I also felt wary about professional collaborations as a professional project where I had given three years of my life did not move forward. As we wrote that book, I discovered a part of myself that wanted to express itself, and share the clinical and life knowledge I had experienced in a guided journal format. It probably took me eight attempts before I found my “introducing me” chapter in the introduction. which I wrote it last. I found that grounding into my mission and purpose in the writing was what I had to do first, so I wrote other chapters first.
Which was really a big realization for me! Rather than focus on my self-definition, the work, my mission, became the definition.
This summer (July 2023), I started creating a Psychedelic Studies community education program at the New Earth Institute at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Southwestern College is a master/doctoral level counseling program and is known for a transformational and experiential learning approach. When the founders of that college asked me to create the program, I had a lot of self-doubt. Who, me? (I thought again). But also a mission emerged for me to take all of my clinical knowledge as a trauma-informed therapist and to use this to curate information, discussions, speakers, and dialogues that would foster learning and critical, ethical thinking and practice. There are so many exciting parts of this new psychedelic-assisted therapy landscape, and so many paradoxes and ethical dilemmas too. I want temperance and multidisciplinary connection; I want to support the promise of psychedelics while also being practical.
This is a new technology that is entering the mainstream, and I want it to be around for humanity in a way that actually promotes humanity!
Which brings me to my why. Why do I do all of this? Since I was a kid, nature was my peak, mystical experience. I realize as I get older that I feel my way into knowing rather than just thinking my way into knowing. When a teenager, I wrote about experiences being on a river in the Canyons of Lodore, and only realized one year later when reading the Tao of Pooh as a 16-year old that what I observed on the river was Taoism. In my undergraduate degree, I studied English Literature and Comparative Religion and became focused on the study of phenomenology, which is the study of what the meaning (of anything) is to the meaning-maker, the beholder. It took me many years of being my conditioned self in the corporate world as an editor and writer (I was 36) before I realized that phenomenology was calling me back–which is why I became a Social Worker–understanding the person in their many overlapping systems. What I’m ultimately interested in, in my life, is how, when, why people decide to awaken and when they do so, I wanted to support, facilitate, make space for that person to open into their life, guided by their own authentic self, soul, spirit. This is why in my late 30s I left a successful career in technology as an editor to become a psychotherapist (and now an author, and now a clinician educator).
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Self-compassion, and by this I mean practical self-compassion. Simply saying “I’m worthy” when I’m feeling shame doesn’t work for me; a more practical path to self-compassion was for me to say, “It’s understandable I’m feeling shame due to (insert past incident where the shame belief was reinforced by my own meaning making), and then reminding myself, the past is not the present, but an opportunity to re-pattern, re-think, reinforce a new belief structure. The second is boundary-setting with others and with my own anxious thoughts and self-doubt. By doing so, I affirm my self worth. Lastly, I recently realized that humility that is born out of feeling unworthy or inadequate is not humility, but shame and self-doubt. In that vulnerable state, I have to discern and speak to those in my trusted council.
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
Self-acceptance. Over the past 12 months I have faced new challenges and been in the process of transformation. In that process of transformation I faced old wounds, patterns, and beliefs. One of those that I faced was self-doubt and anxiety. Instead of fighting it, distracting away from it, I accepted that it was present most days. I realized the terror of anxiety that I had felt throughout childhood and my teenage years. In witnessing my own terror of my own anxiety and self-doubt, I found that accepting that this part was present and honoring the experience of it allowed it to express itself, and in doing so, it diminished. It’s not gone, but we are in an ongoing conversation now. It’s not so extreme. Acceptance through self-compassion was the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.resilientwithin.com
- Instagram: @amywonghope
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awonghope/
- Other: TikTok: amywonghope
