Healing Hoarding Through Compassion-Focused Therapy | Trauma, Attachment, and Letting Go

Healing Hoarding Through Compassion-Focused Therapy | Chia-Ying Chou on Trauma, Attachment, and Letting Go Explore the emotional roots of hoarding and the healing potential of compassion-focused therapy in this thoughtful conversation with Chia-Ying Chou and Deirdre Fay. As part of Trauma Therapy Training at Academy of Therapy Wisdom, this webinar helps therapists understand hoarding not simply as clutter or behavior, but as a deeply relational and nervous-system-based struggle around safety, attachment, identity, and fear. In this rich clinical discussion, Chia-Ying Chou—founder of the San Francisco Center for Compassion-Focused Therapies—shares how her work evolved from trauma research into specializing in hoarding disorder. She explains how hoarding often reflects difficulties with emotional safety, self-concept, and secure attachment, where physical objects become extensions of memory, identity, relationships, and protection. Together, Chou and Deirdre Fay explore the somatic experience of letting go, including how clients may feel exposed, unsafe, or emotionally stripped when faced with discarding possessions. The conversation highlights the importance of inner psychological safety, body awareness, and helping clients reconnect with their physical and emotional experience in gradual, compassionate ways. This webinar also examines the genetic, developmental, relational, and trauma-related contributors to hoarding behaviors. Clinicians will gain insight into familial warmth deficits, shame, isolation, fear-based coping, interpersonal struggles, and the connection between insecure attachment and the need to hold onto tangible objects for emotional continuity. Ideal for therapists, trauma clinicians, and mental health professionals, this training offers a nuanced and humane framework for understanding hoarding through the lenses of compassion-focused therapy, somatic awareness, attachment theory, and trauma-informed care. Free Online webinar with Deirdre Fay, MSW: https://therapywisdom.com/treating-at... #HoardingDisorder #CompassionFocusedTherapy #TraumaTherapy #AttachmentTheory #SomaticTherapy #ChiaYingChou #DeirdreFay #TherapistTraining #MentalHealthCEs #TraumaInformedCare #PsychologicalSafety #AcademyOfTherapyWisdom