YT25 | How she overcame addiction and became emotional intelligence expert 

Meet Cindy Tien, an EQ Maven who unlocks the key to your personality and behaviour, revealing the underlying causes of burnout, overwhelm and disempowering habits.

We talked about emotional resilience, overcoming addiction, and crafting a life you desire. Cindy opens up about her journey from a challenging childhood to battling addictions, highlighting the profound impact of childhood trauma. Join us as we explore the path to self-discovery, healing, and building emotional intelligence!

Discussion Topics: How she overcame addiction and became emotional intelligence expert

• Introducing Cindy Tien, an EQ Maven
• Cindy’s Difficult Childhood: Growing up in Singapore with a large family and feeling neglected.
• Cindy’s Struggle with Addiction: Starting with cigarettes at 11 and evolving into more serious issues with alcohol and sleeping pills.
• Turning Point: Hair Loss and Health Issues: Facing severe health issues, including hair loss and degenerated hip joints, leading to a moment of realisation.
• Journey to Self-Love: Reconnecting with her spirituality, and learning to accept and love herself despite her imperfections.
• Ugly Parts and Self-Awareness: Acknowledging and working on the “ugly” parts within oneself, emphasising self-awareness as a starter for change.
• Emotional Intelligence Tips: Practical tips on how to master emotional intelligence.
• Future Self Reflection: Cindy emphasises the importance of clarity about the person you want to become.

Transcript: How she overcame addiction and became emotional intelligence expert

Yana Fry: Welcome to YanaTV. Today our guest is Cindy Tien and we are going to speak about emotional resilience, overcoming addiction, and how you can build a life that you truly want. Cindy, thank you for joining us in the studio today.

Cindy Tien: Hello, I’m so happy to be here finally. Yeah. See you again after a long time.

Yana Fry: Yes, indeed. And when I look at you, I see a gorgeous woman, very well dressed, who is radiating with happiness and light and self care. And I know for a fact, this is not how your story began. So please, so that people get some understanding, share with us a little bit, starting maybe from your childhood.

Cindy Tien: So I’m born and bred in Singapore. Yeah I’m in my 40s right now And I came from a family background where when I was really young we had 20 people living in the same household. So that was a lot to take at that time.

But in short, I’m born and bred in Singapore. I’ve studied here. My very first job was a flight attendant with an airline. and it’s been a total of I would say 20 years of working and I think as I get older, I started to realise and as I reflect back and I learn more about this topic of emotional resilience, I started to realise that, hey, there are certain reasons as to why I did the things I did.

So everything is unravelling as I’m reflecting, I’m learning, I’m growing older, I’m teaching, I’m speaking on this subject.

Yana Fry: Okay, so what happens? Now? We really wanna know What happened? 

Cindy Tien: I struggled with a lot of addictions. From the time I was in my teenage years, all the way to my adulthood. I think the addiction started as young as when I was 11 years old and I picked up my first cigarette and I remembered hiding a packet of cigarettes in my bag and bringing it back home. My father found the packet of cigarettes in my bag and he cried after that.

He’s Oh no, my little girl of 11 years old. So I think the addiction started at that age, but what a lot of people don’t know is, I’m sure you’ve heard about this person called Dr. Gabriel Mate, right? Yes. Yes. Phenomenal physician and he’s well known in his work about childhood trauma as well as addictions.

I think a lot of people don’t realise that addiction is a response to suffering. And it’s really interesting that even at that age, I did not know I was suffering.

Yana Fry: And I believe very strongly that it’s because of the fact that when I was really young, when I was born, at that time, both my parents were working and they had their full time jobs.

Cindy Tien: My father used to be a flight attendant as well. So it’s travelling around the world a lot and my mother had a full time job as a secretary So they were busy and they were doing the best that they can and during that time and in Asia It’s very common for people to put their children with nannies and neighbours So I was one of those children that unfortunately had to be taken care of by different nannies and different neighbours And as a result of that, I think I grew to I, I grew to a point whereby I didn’t know who to be attached to.

And some of these caregivers, they were not really very nice to me. I wouldn’t even use the word abuse there. There was none of that. But I think a lot of them didn’t give me the love and attention that I needed as an infant when that was the most important time. 

Yana Fry: So where The baby actually forms the concept of trust towards the world. They say in the first year of life, this is what the baby is actually experiencing, right? So when the baby is surrounded by love and care, then a human being fundamentally in the core learns that I can trust the world. I can trust people. If the baby is not receiving care, then the opposite.

I cannot trust people. I cannot trust the world.

Cindy Tien: And that’s spot on. So I remember I was staying with this neighbour and we’ll just call her aunt Nina. And Aunt Nina had her own children as well, so I was brought in as a fourth child to be taken care of by her. And I remember that I would, used to fight with her kids, we were kids, right?

We would fight and, but I was the only one who got punished. And I remember being punished and I had to kneel in, at the kitchen and just pull my ears and I would cry and say, Aunt Nina, can I now stand up? And she would not let me get up until she was pleased.

Yana Fry: And I remember every night I would have to soothe myself by singing to myself to sleep so that was my way of You know making myself feel a little bit more comforted Because you’re in this house where people are not necessarily really nice to you.

Cindy Tien: You don’t feel love and You don’t feel wanted, so I grew up with this mindset that hey, you have to fend for yourself. You need to take care of yourself. And there is no place for you to feel emotions because you just have to numb all of that away.

The pain. Yeah, numb the pain away, internalise the pain and just carry on with life.

So I think that was really the beginning of me starting to ignore how I feel.

Yana Fry: And by ignoring how you felt, and there was like a lack of, I guess you felt lack of love, lack of support from the family that led you to what you say, addictions.

Can we specify just addictions? What do we mean? Cigarettes, alcohol?

Cindy Tien: It started with me being really young, right?

So I struggled with some small things, it all started out of fun, right? So we started with, Oh, let’s have a cigarette with friends. And then from the cigarette, it became a little bit of alcohol. And then when I joined the airline, I think it became worse because the lifestyle was complicated.

And then, it was a culture where people were competitive and catty. Yeah, so I already feel like I’m low in self esteem. I didn’t quite believe in myself, didn’t quite love and respect myself. And having to deal with that, I started turning to alcohol. Initially, I thought that it was because of fun.

But I then realised that, hey, I have got no pleasure in life other than when I’m drunk. So it started from an innocent beer to one beer to three beers. It was three beers to a bottle of wine, a bottle of wine to a bottle of whiskey. And at one point it became so bad that I couldn’t sleep unless

I drank something.

And I knew it went into an addiction and because I was so afraid of telling anyone and I needed to sleep. Gosh, it is so horrible when you can’t sleep. Then the alcohol didn’t even help me to sleep. So I ended up taking sleeping pills with alcohol. And I think it came to a point whereby my highest dose was I took eight sleeping pills and I probably drank that with half a bottle of whiskey. 

Yana Fry: I’m glad you’re doing well. 

Yeah. You could have not woken up from this. How many years, like in total, you feel you have been just going through this addiction journey?

Cindy Tien: So I think this addiction journey and I think that a lot of us, we are addicted to different things.

It might not be alcohol. It could be other things. I think I struggled with a lot of issues on shopping as well. I was always turning towards something to escape from my pain. Yeah. So when it comes to the alcohol addictions and the sleeping pill addiction, I think that probably took me from my teens all the way to my twenties, probably at least seven years.

Okay. 7 to 8 years and it got really bad when the sleeping pills came into the picture and because I felt really sick and that’s when I realised about it. 

Yana Fry: And I just want to clarify here, so when we talk also about addiction, like often it has a Very like a negative connotation. And people usually think it would be alcohol or drugs or shopping or food, maybe, or gambling that people think usually under addiction. But actually, I have a lot of friends, including a lot of therapy, psychotherapy.

therapist who talks a lot about what addiction is. And according to them in the modern world, pretty much any human being is addicted to something,

Exactly. So It’s a coping mechanism. So the other form of more socially acceptable addictions would be for example, work. Especially in Asia, people work so much, that’s also considered from a psychology point of view to be a form of addiction when you just spend all your time on one activity more than you probably should for your well being.

it becomes compensation for something else which they don’t have in their life, right? So I think fundamentally when we look about addiction, it’s either when we’re trying to run away from pain or we’re trying Compensate or overcompensate something so we’re trying to numb something and so fundamentally just not dealing with whatever it is I find it’s also important to change the narrative of the description of the word, right?

So it’s so that’s why your story, I find it so interesting because you found tools to deal with that.

So you said in your case it just became really bad like with pills and alcohol and I just assume I guess you realise that You were close to a really bad state, right?

Exactly. This is, and it’s also what I often hear from people who have, especially those typical addictions that you can’t really save a person unless the person reaches the rock bottom.

So It has to almost become so bad, then something, something opens up in the mind and in the body, and then the human being realises, okay, I have to do something about it. It looks like you had this experience, so what did you do? Yeah,

Cindy Tien: Yeah.

So I was turning to the addictions all the time and it came to a point of my life where I felt really sick and it started with my hair starting to fall out. And that was scary and I remember that there was one time I was in the hotel at Taipei and, at those times when we had to bun your hair because we go for flights and our bun was so huge and we’ll put so much hairspray and I remember going to the toilet to wash my hair to lather my hair and I was lathering.

I suddenly pulled out one big bunch of hair and I’m looking at it like, Oh my God, this freaking nightmare. Yeah, scary and then continued lathering, another bunch came out. Yeah, so this happened to me and I called my mom, I screamed so loudly, my hair is falling out! And she’s just hair!

No, it’s not just hair, this is my life! So it happened a number of times. I became almost half bald. Thankfully not fully bald. And I managed to take medication for it to recover again. So that was the first one. So actually the one before that was I struggled with sleeping. So that was like a bodily symptom, right?

Downfall was the inability to sleep. I realised I had to do something about it because I would go to the doctors and I would fight with the doctors, say, can I get pills and he would not be able to give me. So that was one, then after that my hair started falling out, so that was part two. And then just as I thought that everything is going to be recovered because now I’m taking medication, I’m stopping my drinking quite a little bit already I started feeling pain in my legs.

Yeah, so and at that time I was running quite a lot because I used to be obsessed about being skinny. That was another addiction that I had. Yeah, and I went to see a doctor. The pain lasted for a couple of months.

Eventually, I went for a CT scan and they found out that I was in my 20s at that time and both my hip joints had totally degenerated sitting in the toe of a 90 year old woman.

Yana Fry: horrible. To have a hip replacement operation, I assume that’s what you had. yes. Especially At this age, that’s quite traumatic. Yeah,

Cindy Tien: because it’s crazy and traumatic. I think I was 25 or 26 years old at that time. And I remember sitting in the hospital and the doctor telling me that, saying, there are four stages to this disease do when someone tells you’re not going to be able to walk

And he says, I’d like you to go home and renovate your home. Because you’re very likely going to be living in a wheelchair. Yeah, and I’m like, what do I do with my life? My life has just started and now it has ended. What do you do when someone suddenly tells you’re not going to be able to walk anymore?

Yana Fry: And you’re 25 particularly. It’s crazy.

How did you manage to pick yourself up from that and build to who you are today?

Cindy Tien: It was a whole journey. And I must say that my recovery and building myself up, it’s not like a One year affair, two year affair, decades.

Because even after I went through my operation, which was life changing for both legs, I still struggled with a lot of these negative emotions and managing myself. But to cut the story short, I think that when I found out about my leg condition, and because I was in so much severe pain, I had to stop working for about a year.

And during that year, it was the lowest point not just because I was experiencing pain every day, but because I had no money and I had no savings, no money. So I had to take money from my family, which was an embarrassment. When you’re at that age to get money from your family, it’s not easy anymore.

So it’s almost like life came crumbling down, but that’s the time where you really sit down and you reflect. if they are You connect with the spiritual side of You start to seek emotional support from people who really care keep going back to it.

You start to ask yourself what the hell happened for me to get from there to here. and to pay

Yana Fry: Yeah,

Cindy Tien: what it was slowly from then I started to rebuild my life again and And even as I hit my late 20s and early 30s, there were times when I went back to drinking. Cause, I think addiction is a thing that it’s not necessarily for certain people.

If they are blessed, I think they can just overcome it very quickly. It’s a one time off, but for many people, addictions can last a lifetime. We keep going back to it because it’s a pattern that we have developed and you need to slowly but surely learn to break that pattern and to pay attention to yourself and to ask yourself, what is it that makes me go to alcohol?

You have to observe yourself. Is it something someone said? Is it because I felt jealous of this person? very often we are unaware but it’s a little triggers that lead us to this So we need to start to observe Most people think that I’m really high emotional found that to be super helpful, even as I That’s the tendency that we tend to have, but I

Yana Fry: And that’s eventually brought you resilience is a lot more than that.

Cindy Tien: when I say that I’m very low in my

Yana Fry: How was that I remember? I think when we had coffee, you maybe half jokingly, half serious, said that when you were younger, you had no emotional intelligence.

So what does that mean?

Cindy Tien: Right? Whenever I do my speaking engagements in my training, most people. would not call themselves as somebody with low EQ.

Yeah, exactly.

Most people think that I’m really high emotional intelligence and I’m very good with people.

That’s the tendency that we tend to have. But I think emotional intelligence, emotional resilience is a lot more than that. And when I say that I’m very low in my EQ it’s not because I’m going around yelling at people. But what it means is that I was not able to recognize how I was I was not able to understand how I was feeling and I was not able to manage how I was

Yana Fry: So it was how people perceive us. at somebody and we say, okay, this person has a great emotional intelligence because we feel comfortable with this person, but they might not feel comfortable themselves.

Oh, yes. And then it becomes a huge problem.

Cindy Tien:  And that is spot on, right? Because, and even if I reflect on my own life I think that I was pretty good with people generally, because I’ve always been in jobs that required me to work with people, right? In the airline, and also corporate sales, and I came out to do corporate training.

I was very good with people outside, but I was horrible with myself. And as a result of that, I used to struggle with a lot of want to be that

First and foremost, I was very judgmental of other people and myself. I was always struggling with years old, you’re going to look back and ask yourself, Yeah, I was toxic superficial.

It came to a point of time where I was like, I really did not like myself. Like I look in the mirror and say, Cindy, you spend your entire life polishing up on the apple on the outside. But on the inside, you are a rotting apple.

And I realised I didn’t wanna be that rotting apple anymore.

Yeah. And I think that was really one of those moments that I started to ask myself one day, you’re 80 years old, you’re gonna look back and ask yourself, have you seriously, have you really created the life that you wanted? Have you truly loved yourself? And I didn’t think I could answer that question

Yana Fry: Self-love is such a deep topic.

So I’m Just curious here, how was your journey of self love? Like, how did you actually learn to love yourself and make peace with your past?

Cindy Tien: I think I never knew that I didn’t love self hypnotism, knew that ’cause. Because most of us, in the natural world, would think that we love ourselves, that we take care of ourselves, we wash our hair, we feed ourselves with good food, but even in my thirties and I start to look back, oh my god, I realised that I was really abusing myself. I didn’t care about my health, drinking like crazy, I was dieting till, I looked pale thin, and I was really just ignoring my emotions.

So I think recognising I didn’t even love myself in the first place was a very painful process. Because it’s like There was one activity where I did where it’s a little bit like self hypnotism where you go back to your own childhood and imagine you looking at your three year old self.

What would you tell your three year old self? And I remember this little girl, that little three year old Cindy sorry if you want to be, or, and it was really painful. So that was one.

And after that for me was really reconnecting to the spiritual side of me. So I came from a Christian family. So thankful, thankfully I had a lot of spiritual support from my parents and friends around me. I think reconnecting to the fact that for me, I see my identity being a child of God that regardless of whether, you’re successful in the world, you’re as pretty as the girl you want to be, or, whether you’ve got money or not.

You still state your claim that you are a child of God and nothing can take that away from you. Yeah, and then after the third thing was just learning to love yourself regardless of your faults and all because a Lot of us we it’s very easy to compare ourselves to others right and to see how weak you are And but I think it comes to a point of time whereby okay I know that maybe I’m not so good at something as compared to someone else But can I still learn to love and accept it’s like Talking yourself and loving yourself in a way that you would love a little child of your own.

Even if that child is imperfect. I think having that mindset has been very liberating and powerful

Yana Fry: These are such deeply touching words and sharing Cindy.

And when they also talk about love, a big part of that is also to learn to love parts of us, which are not prettier, which. We don’t like that much when we don’t show up in a way how we really want to show up when we are jealous and angry and resentful and superficial to love that too so it’s

Cindy Tien: Those ugly parts,

Yana Fry: How did you make those parts?

Cindy Tien: I think and do I still have those ugly parts? I still do. We are always awarded for this. Of course, everyone. We all do. We are all

Yes, we are. But I think being aware that I always feel that awareness is the beginning of change, right? If you’re not even aware that you have those parts, that those are your tendencies, then you can’t change. So for me, is this constant reminder of myself that, okay, I know I have those ugly parts, but I’m not leaving those to rot and perpetuate. I’m actually working on those myself, okay Cindy, now you’re being judgmental, that thought and to ask yourself, Hey, is this the right thought that’s going to help bring connection to this situation?

Is this the correct thought that’s going to settle this problem at this point? So I question myself and I catch myself and I think it’s a constant process of being more and more conscious and giving yourself little gentle corrections along the way and you evolve. So it’s, to me, I think that’s my little process of Self correction, self love, and self acceptance at the same time.

Hey you naughty girl, you’re having that judgmental thought about that person again? Stop that.

I love you. Yeah, and I still love you little girl. You’re a sweetheart. A lot of what’s happening, what I’ve noticed in the Asia Pacific

Yana Fry: emotional intelligence.

We talked a lot about it today and as we are coming soon, towards the end of our interview, I also would like to leave our audience with some tangible tips that they can implement in their lives. So when we say emotional intelligence, What would you advise today?

Cindy Tien: What I’ve noticed in the Asia Pacific region and generally with the younger people is that we are busy.

We’ve got so many things we’re doing. If we have a free moment, we are scrolling our phones. So we are busy all the time. And what happens as a result of that is we are not attuned with how we are the third place that people feel there And people are always saying, I don’t feel anything. Just because you don’t feel it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, So I think the first thing is try and identify how you’re feeling. And people feel out because, one thing I always remind my audience is that they feel it in their head. That’s when they ruminate and they overanalyze.

Pay And as a result of that, usually become headache. migraines buzzing in the head.

So people feel their emotions there. And then the second place that people feel their emotions is in the heart, where they get chest where they feel actually this sinking feeling in their heart like someone has stabbed them. Yeah, so pay attention to some of those things. And the third place that people feel their emotions is actually in the body, in the gut area.

And people like that usually struggle with stomach issues, butterflies in the stomach. Yeah, so pay attention to these areas because one thing I always remind my audience is that your body whispers before it shouts.

I’ve identified, okay, I’m paying attention to your bodily sensations and just because you don’t feel it, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Yana Fry: So awareness is the first step. And then once I’m clear what do you feel is the best thing to do about choking.

Cindy Tien: I would say that the best thing to do is toilet bowl and after a while it. allow yourself to get choked and everybody becomes stinky. Okay, now that I’ve identified, okay, I’m feeling a little bit insecure, maybe that’s the feeling. Then I want to ask myself, okay, why am I feeling insecure? backtrack. Is it because earlier I went on social media and I saw that one of my ex classmates is doing something better than me. backtrack it.

So process it, ask yourself, why did that happen? And then assess the severity of this emotion. Is it an emotion that is, you would consider it to be very severe? Is it something that you can just ignore? And okay, maybe tomorrow I’m going to feel better or is it a chronic emotion? It keeps coming back.

And once you recognize that it’s a chronic emotion, like I’m constantly feeling insecure. And when it’s chronic, what happens is it’s going to impact your behaviour, right? And your behaviours will then impact the results. So if I’m insecure, I’m never going to step up and share my voice and speak up. When I don’t speak up, it impacts me. So this small emotion can lead to a very big result. So then we start to ask ourselves if it’s a chronic emotion. Then how am I now going to direct my efforts to manage it? Do I then reframe my thoughts? That’s the, in changing the inner dialogue.

Is there something I need to do to change thinking about this? Or is it a skill that I need to improve so that it can soften my insecurity about what I would say is, you come to the end of your life.

Yana Fry: eloquently said. I love it, Cindy. And the final question for today. You still have many years to go ahead of you. So let’s say you live until 300 years in full health, very vibrant. And if you look at Cindy today, he is sitting on the sofa. What would you like to say to her?

Cindy Tien: The first thing I would say is: you come to the end of your life one day, whether you’re 80 years old, 100 years old, 300 years old, you ask yourself this question. Is this the person whom you want to Fast forward to your 300 year old self. Is this the person whom you want to be?

And the second question I would also ask myself is, rather than just thinking about the person you want to be, also be damn clear about the person that you don’t want to be.

Be sure about that, and once you’re clear about that, you’ll start to be able to redirect your life in the way that you want it to go.

Yana Fry: Thank you so much for sharing your story and joining us today in the studio. That was very deep. And that was Cindy Tian on YanaTV. And Cindy and I would love to hear from you in the comments about your stories.

Maybe there’s something you would like to share. Have you been struggling with addiction? If you’re comfortable talking about it. Do you need support with that? And we’re also going to include some links, so we’re going to do some research and include some links so you can check it out where you can reach out for support.

And for us, we just wish this, whatever it is that you’re going right you are clear on the person you don’t want to be and the person you really want to be. Like those were very big ones. And I’m very grateful to the Muse studio for hosting Kiana TV. So we love being here. And the most important last part, please remember, subscribe to the YouTube channel and share this video with a friend.

Everything starts with the conversation. And when we talk to our loved ones and people we care about, the conversation just becomes so much deeper. And I’m going to be seeing you next time.