Isabella, Hsieh

FOUNDER OF Meet Ur Therapy

I am a licensed Counselling Psychologist from Taiwan and a clinical psychotherapist registered with PACFA and a member of Australian Psychological Society in Australia. I am based in Melbourne, Australia, Prior to settling in Australia, I had been working as a therapist in the United States and Taiwan for 10 years after earning my master degree.

I have accumulated with excessive clinical experience and training to work with individuals with rich and diverse cultural experiences and ethnical backgrounds to cope with a wide range of mental health issues such as depression, general anxiety disorder, complex trauma, relationship-related issues, life transitions and cultural adjustment, as well as couples with issues causing conflict and a great extent of emotional and mental distress in the relationship.

HELLO

Both my life and professional experience have trained me to be skilled at working work with individuals navigating their life outside their own culture and custom.

Whether you are international students pursuing high quality education, highly skilled foreign expats seeking better work and life balance experience, immigrants coming with your original families or partners living in a new country for your beloved half, I can understand starting a new chapter of your life in a new place can be exciting but daunting at the same time. I can definitely relate to most of the common difficulties and unique challenges you may go through while adapting this new transition in life as an individual, a couple or as a family regardlessly.

Therefore, in addition to providing individual counseling, I am passionate to work with couples, no matter you are intercultural, cross-racial, same-sex, or couples with relatively similar cultural backgrounds. My aim is to help you transit through different life stages and coming out of the storms closer and stronger not just as an individual but also together as a couple. I hope that I can help you understand yourself individually first and work toward better support each other. With more mutual understanding to your differences, consideration to each other’s feelings, emotions and needs, and more gentleness and kindness in the day to day life, we can improve the degree of satisfaction and happiness in the relationship via reducing the tension and distress and nourishing love.

My ultimate goal for the couple is to empower you to reach what you truly long for and desire in the intimate relationship; for the individual is to help you understand yourself and your emotional needs more clearly. Then we move toward assisting you to articulate and communicate to your partners in a way that repairs the past wounds and reestablishes bonding experiences that increase a sense of safety and security and closeness with each other.

BILINGUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES

As a bilingual therapist, I have years of experience providing individual and couples counselling to Mandarin and English speaking clients coming from the United States, Canada, China, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, France, Spain, Honduras, etc. Wherever you are, I am passionate to assist you if you think my life and professional experiences can help you.
When the storms of life strike you unexpectedly and seem to overpower you, I invite you to take a leap of faith and let us explore together and assist you in your journey of life, in a caring and nonjudgmental way and in a safe environment, so that you can be strengthened and thrive and have a happy and fulfilling life.

CLINICAL FOCUS

  • GENERAL MENTAL HEALTH & PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES

  • COUPLE RELATIONSHIP & MARITAL ISSUES

PSYCHOTHERAPY

  • I think counselling itself is an adventurous healing process. It is a very delicate relationship: a professional relationship, a therapeutic relationship, a cooperative relationship but also an interpersonal relationship. All changes unfold through this special relationship when you feel secure, safe, accepted and emotionally validated. While it sounds so simple and easy, it is a process takes courage to be emotionally prepared to face some unpleasant emotions such as pain, sorrow, loss, resentment, anger, agony or remorse repressed within from some very unhappy and painful incidents or events in our life. The process could be scary and cause a great deal of resistance that makes us want to run away and escape, but maybe we can only change our own history when we address what the problem really is underneath within ourselves.

    Indeed, changes can be slow and not feeling an instant improvement could be very frustrating and discouraging. However, the fact you do not feel it does not mean it is not working; just like the fact that we do not feel we are aging everyday does not make us forever 25.

    Hopefully, every nuance of positive shift encourages you and bring you more confidence and strength, so you could find your own voice and have a different life experience that you feel happier and fulfilling.

COUPLES THERAPY

  • One of my counselling interests is working with partners and couples, especially bilingual intercultural and racial couples. So out of hundreds of hours of my work with couples are with couples with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Relationship itself is a mystery. It is something we often underestimate the value of it but found ourselves being troubled by it the most. The extent of emotional distress it could cause to an individual and a couple is enormous; the same as the degree of satisfaction and happiness it could bring to people’s life is profoundly great. The deepest desire for many couples is to feel loved, safe, secure and intimate with their partners, but it will not happen if trust does not exist in the relationship.

    While breakup and divorce seem so common and to be an easy way out, losing all emotional connection could be even more panicky, painful and unbearable.

    Although the process of repairing a broken bond and trust could be painful and difficult, if you choose to take this path, it could also be an opportunity that bring you and your partner much more intimate and stronger than ever before.

    Hopefully, this journey can not only help you heal what has been broken between each other but also within each of you individually.

Meet Ur Therpay | Bilingual Counselling & psychology

English and Mandarin Counselling

Use the language you are most familiar with; with a professional practitioner knows your cultural backgrounds and customs to assist you in your journey of life.

My VISON

My vision of establishing Meet Ur Therapy is to enhance the diversity and better support the multilingual and multicultural ethnic groups in the community in the professional field of Counselling and Psychology in Australia. So that people from multiple cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds can find the counselling and psychological services that better suit their needs. As a native Mandarin speaker with experiencing studying, working and living in a third cultural environment using a second language, I understand that this life experience has shaped and enriched us in an unique way. Although we feel the differences in many ways from people in our own country, still we are profoundly influenced in a very similar way by the familial and cultural environments we grow up with and live within. Eventually we may find that the ones we feel the most close with are with people who have similar life experiences and share the same language, culture, customs and values in life.

  • Australia is a home to many immigrants, whether it is for work, study, or a better living environment. Better education and career development and living in a relatively safe, stable and peaceful environment are often the biggest reasons why people from all over the world choose to go to another country and emigrate. While this new change is exciting, thrilling and hopeful, adapting to a new language and learning and working styles, establishing a new friendship, relationship and career, or even adjusting to a marriage and family life could all be very daunting and stressful.

    Talking to a health professional and seeking counselling about your mental health issues and personal problems is a step already needs courage. I hope I can reduce that stress by providing an outlet where these groups of people can speak effortlessly in their native languages and cooperate with professionals having similar cultural and life experiences and who understand their collective values. Psychological counselling and relationship and marriage therapy is a professional field that are strongly related to one’s culture, language, ethnicity, race, upbringing familial background, and the collective values influenced in the society. A therapist who can easily understand, feel and relate to a client’s upbringing and life experience could better empathize the clients’ feelings, understand their inner struggles, emotional entanglement and pain and provide validation, understanding and emotional support in a way that suits them. My vision is to provide a psychological professional service that serves the need of the vast number of ethnic groups in the community.

    I hope Meet Ur therapy can be a sanctuary where both practical and emotional support, help and care are provided; as well as peace, quietness and safeness is felt for your mind, spirit and soul.

  • ■ Individual Counselling/Psychotherapy-General Clinical Mental Health Issues

    ■Complex Trauma & PTSD

    ■ Couple Therapy and Marriage Counselling/Inter-Racial and Cultural Relationship Issues

    ■ Multicultural Counselling/Competency to see clients from diverse ethnicities and cultural backgrounds

    ■ International Students and Immigrant Adjustment Issues

  • ■ Licensed Counseling Psychologist in Taiwan, R.O.C.

    ■ Clinical Psychotherapist and Counsellor Registered with The Psychotherapy and Counseling Federation of Australia

  • ■ Person-centered, Psychodynamics and Cognitive Behavioral Based Integrative Therapy

    ■ Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples

  • ■ Bilingual Counselling Psychologist in Outpatient Clinics in Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

    ■ Full-time Counselling Psychologist in the University Counselling Center, Taiwan, R.O.C.

    ■ Psychotherapist in the outpatient Psychiatric Clinic, Pennsylvania, USA

  • ■ Bachelor of Psychological Science (Honours), Australia.

    ■ M.S. Counseling with a focus on Mental Health Counselling, USA