YEE LIU (YIYI LIU)

YEE LIU (YIYI LIU)

In 2018, I just graduated from university. After breaking up with my boyfriend, I returned to the so-called “home”, that I had left since I was 10 years old, confused and anxious.

Standing on the streets of the city I no longer knew, the city my parents told me is my home, I felt like a man who had lost all his memories. Like a ghost, I was wandering everywhere. Often time, often in the night, an immense loneliness would swallow me. Waking up and looking out of the window, the magnificent buildings, the flashing neon, how flashy everything was, and it had nothing to do with me.

I can disappear at any time, and no one would find out, on one would feel sorry for me. I felt like I don’t exist anymore. Until one day, I randomly grabbed a book about Carl Rogers, named “Carl Rogers Psychotherapy”, then I found “The Essence of Carl Rogers ‘Writings” I was completely blown away by how a client attacked the therapist and yet the therapist was still faithfully empathizing with the client’s anger.

By that time, I had decided that I wanted to become a therapist. After reading this book, I decided that I wanted to become a person-centered therapist.

I soon organized an encounter group in my local LGBT community.

Eight of us, no one had taught us, and I was the only one who had read the book of “Carl Rogers on Encounter Group” but had never been in any group.

ing on, and I don’t know where I’ll go next. But I have gained enough trust in myself to take PCA and go where I belong. I have learned that I have some connection to this world and that I matter to some people.

We stumbled along until one day, a Lesbian was in tears and told us that her girlfriend just died by suicide a few months earlier. We were all silent, no one spoke, no one looked at each other, and yet I suddenly felt a deeper-than-life connection pass between us. Another day, I had some conflict with one of the group members, and I sincerely expressed my anger at him, something I had never dared to do. We had some uncomfortable discussion but at the end, we hugged each other tightly with deep warmth and blessings. I came home that night and for the first time I felt that loneliness melted away.

Without any training yet, I started a hotline for LGBT people. When someone called in, I would just listen, I would just feel, I would just try to understand the other person with my most loving effort. One day, a person thanked me tearfully over the phone, for so deeply understanding him. After that, I looked out of my window again and for me, those same views began to have meaning.

I also tried to communicate with my father, who hadn’t spoken to me in a long time, and who up until then still thought I would be straight, even I had come out to him for seven years.

One evening, I got up the courage and sat down at the dinner table, and said to him:
“Dad, please, please. I really want you to know me, to know the real me. I’m Gay and I will never change. Dad, let me get to know the real you too! “And for the first time, he talked to me, about his own story, not just two or three words of greetings.

Then I went on to become a professional psychotherapist. I took courses, I went to graduate school, I drop out from graduate school because of the toxic environment and discrimination against PCA, I met Antonio and Will, I never forget person-centered approach.

My story is go