Tag: depression

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Reassuring Signs of Healing

It’s been a while my friends. It’s been turbulent. It’s been trying. But I am proud to say it has been a journey I’ve been going through on my own. As I’ve been reflecting on this rather tumultuous period of my life, I’m realizing that I’ve been exhibiting some really subtle signs of some major healing. Signs that I thought were simply signs that I was sliding back.

  1. Being able to brush things off – There was a time when the smallest bit of conflict, and the smallest little hiccup would send me into a complete meltdown. I first noticed this newfound ability to brush off unexpected events or mishaps in recent weeks, as my work has been piling on the unexpected meetings, tutoring sessions, and workshops.
  2. Things that I thought would devastate me, simply don’t – As a person with anxiety, I have thought of every single unfortunate event and imagined what I would feel like if that event were to happen. With anxiety, the emotion was always blown out of proportion. When that “devastating” event happened, it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not anymore. Since I’ve been regularly practicing rationalizing “catastrophized” thoughts, I have already worked out my feelings toward the devastating event.
  3. I allow myself to feel what I need to feel, both good and bad – I spent a lot of my childhood and younger adulthood running away from the “bad feelings.” I never wanted to feel sad, hurt, angry, frustrated, or hopeless. All of this running took its toll on me last year when my emotions cup completely filled and continued to overflow well into this year. Being able to sit with my difficult emotions is an ongoing process for me. I still become completely overcome with panic when a difficult feeling creeps up. I always feel myself fighting it first, but I have noticed my newfound ability to take a step back and allow the feeling to just pass.
  4. Coming to an understanding that I, too, deserve love – I spent a lot of my time in my last serious relationship questioning whether or not a “person like me” deserved to be loved. With all of my shortcomings, my traumas, and my struggles, was I deserving of love? If I cannot always choose to love me, do I have the ability to love and be loved by another? The answer is, yes. I did then. I do now. I always have and always will deserve to be loved and respected no matter what state my mind is in. I also have come to the understanding that anyone that tells me, “You need to love yourself before you seek love,” is someone that just really doesn’t have the capacity to deal with someone that will always have to actively choose to love themselves despite the gut feeling that they should loathe themselves instead. While I do need to continue to work on self-love and acceptance, I do not need to be free of baggage to be loved.

I am still a long ways from the me that I want to be. I am still experiencing dissociation that cuts myself off from enjoying the present. However, I have a light at the end of the tunnel: a long-awaited break from working in a place that has taken me for granted and also begun to take advantage of my ability to function despite the underlying anxiety and depression that often cripples me the moment I get home. A new beginning is on the horizon, and I am hanging onto a sliver of hope that I can make more progress in my mental health journey with a balanced environment.

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Late Night Thoughts: Breaking Point

Over the last few weeks I have had some severe ups and downs. I fluctuate between being a hopeful and optimistic person that is shaking with excitement of what the future has to offer and a person that is paralyzed by the fear and anxiety of uncertainty. While dealing with this uncertainty, my work has been going through the “Intensives” period for summer. What is this, you ask? Well, it’s basically where we, the teachers, teach anywhere between 6 to 9 hours non-stop for at least 4 out of 5 days a week. To add a dash of salt to the wound, COVID-19 has shortened my students’ summer vacation with public school, and we had to cram all 4 weeks of a normal 4 week vacation intensive camp into 3 weeks. Yep. Saturday classes required.

I have been expending my energy, both physical and mental, in order to do my job well. I know that I have previously discussed having High-Functioning Anxiety/Depression. I am recently coming to terms with the fact that being this way may has driven me to the point I am at today. I care so much about “doing well” and being “put together” that I forget that I get to be upset about things and be on the lookout for something better.

A few months ago, I had a meeting with my direct supervisor and the director of the school on the direction that I hoped to go in. I asked to be a regular teacher and to remove my title as a Head Instructor. Of course, it wasn’t that easy, and there were stipulations. I suppose I felt like I owed it to work to allow for stipulations because I wanted to continue to be a useful worker. For the first time in my life I wasn’t continuing to claw my way up because that’s what I “ought” to do. For the first time, I decided what’s best for me as a whole human being. It was terrifying. I was overcome with guilt for “disappointing” my supervisors. I berated myself for not being useful, and a little voice in my head reminded me that the reason why I couldn’t “handle” being HI was because I was weak and stupid.

You see, telling the self-loathing part of me to just shut the fuck up and let me live seems to be an easy thing to do. After all, you’re supposed to be able to control your thoughts. Or at least that’s what the world tries to make you think. Individuals with anxiety or depression end up wondering how the hell you’re supposed to just… “control” these thoughts. While people will just say, “Just don’t think about them.” It’s the most excruciatingly frustrating conversation. I have had these conversations so many times. “Well, I can’t really do that, because these thoughts are intrusive,” I’ll say in reply. The reply I usually get is, “Well, just try a bit harder to block that out.” This reply makes me not want to make another human acquaintance again. Like, ok, cool. You cured me. The thousands I’ve spent on therapy, medication, and specialized treatment. Useless. I should have just blocked the damn thoughts this whole time. Easy.

Clearly, as you can tell by the little rant, stopping myself from hating myself and blaming myself is something that is hardwired into my brain. Not sure why. I’m still digging for it. But I know it has a lot to do with culture, upbringing, and habits I’ve formed since I was a child. My willingness to unlearn these habits is the only strength I have right now. The hope for a better future is one of the few things I can hang on to.

As I’m laying in bed having a mini breakdown because: I hate work, I’m sad, I’m lonely, I hate myself, etc., I have to remember the one universal truth. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. Nothing is permanent.

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Late Night Thoughts – I’ve Learned Stuff

TW: Discussion of suicidal thoughts and ideations.

Some days when I think I’ve reached my breaking point, life just says, “Nah, girl, I can drag you so much lower. Just watch me.” These days I feel as if no matter how horrible things go, or no matter how low my moods get, I can’t seem to reach the bottom. It’s not to say that I don’t ever feel like quitting… it’s that I am constantly in the state of “I quit,” or “I have quit.”

These days, I’ve been in a constant low. I don’t have energy for much other than going to and from work. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. I don’t want to make time for anything… not even myself. A few sessions ago, my therapist urged me to take a day to myself to just rest. I did that same day, and I felt great… but awful afterward.

What the fuck am I doing? Laying around like a useless sack of shit? There are people dying in America of COVID, and you want to “rest” and “take care of yourself?!” How first-world of you!

I berate myself constantly and bully myself into believing that I am not worth the self-care. That my shit isn’t as bad as other people’s shit so I should just be grateful. Doesn’t matter though, I still feel like a sack of shit, even if I am grateful that I have the luxury of life and feeling things. I guess it’s a luxury that it’s not my life I’m fighting for but just the feeling of the inevitable rock bottom I seem to keep discovering. A new kind of low that keeps telling me, “Don’t worry, hun, this is the worst that it’ll get,” but somehow still seems to keep dragging me further down.

When I read back on what I’ve typed, I know what this all is. Another depressive episode. Episode. It sounds so temporary and like a “phase,” but I can’t imagine any other way to live. It’s like I live in a fog where I function almost perfectly “fine” in all of society’s definitions of fine. I productively contribute to society, I read up about what is wrong with the world, I have some level of passion for things, and I continue to do what’s necessary to be alive. All of this, while I don’t feel like I’m here for any of it. All of this while I feel like I’m not really “alive” for any of this.

I realize that this sounds pretty horrible. I realize that this is a huge downer for anyone that knows me to read. I used to really care about not burdening others with my shit. It got to the point where all of the people that I called my “best friends” didn’t actually know that I sometimes thought about throwing myself into the Mississippi River, or taking too many pain killers. I was so terrified that someone would somehow find out about these secret thoughts of mine and throw me into the hospital. Lock me up. I was scared shitless of being labeled as the “fragile” or “special” one in the family. So I’d zip my lips, push the thoughts away, and continue to function.

So what has that taught me?

  1. This all comes at a price. That price is years of functioning at max capacity only to watch everything kind of fall apart while the real you is watching from a distance. You can’t say that it wasn’t your fault, but your therapist is trying to tell you it wasn’t your fault. When blaming yourself is second nature, unlearning it all doesn’t just happen. I was taught to be successful, productive, and do everything “right” the first time. The realization that my upbringing has caused so much pain and suffering at this very moment is a hard pill to swallow, because I watched my wonderful parents toil away to give me everything they thought I needed. I had every material thing I could ever want at the price of self-compassion.
  2. Shit just happens and no one needs to be assigned “fault.” This really just applies because I’ve spent countless years blaming myself for things that no one else blamed me for. Every decision or word that’s ever come out of me… down to things I said that one time in band in the 11th grade. Stupid shit. Countless stupid little things that sometimes just come back to haunt me so that I can assign the blame to myself. It’s taken 29 years for me to learn that not everything has to be my fault. Or anyone’s fault. What the fuck is fault?
  3. This whole damn time, I was enough. I’m not sure where the hell I got the idea that I wasn’t. But this whole damn time, I was more than enough. I am enough for my parents. I am enough for my sisters. I am enough for my friends. I am enough for me. Do I believe this every day? Hell, no. But I know that I am enough. I will be enough to pull through this depressive episode. I am enough to get through this rough patch in life. I will be enough for people I have yet to meet. Those that have gone and those that I no longer have connections likely no longer are connected to me because whatever I was at that point was enough.
  4. Absolutely nothing is permanent. My feelings right now won’t last forever. Feelings that I have toward myself will change. Feelings I have toward people that I thought were permanent can morph into other types of feelings. Things are always changing, and I am always changing.
  5. I have to speak my truth. I have depression. I have it bad at times. I have crippling anxiety. It sometimes keeps me home for days at a time on the weekends. Hell, my depression is crippling, it makes it hard for me to see past the next day. It looks different for everyone. I can hold down a job fine. I can continue to function at max level just fine. But imagine functioning and doing all this with a smile plastered on your face, but your brain is screaming “YOU ARE A SACK OF SHIT” the entire time. It can be mighty hard to have room for much else. So, I need to stop belittling it and actually address my mental illness as an actual illness that affects my life in an adverse way.

Mid-year check in with myself… and reflecting on shit that I have learned during 2020. Can’t wait to see what other destruction and despair this year has to offer. This certainly has been one for the books.

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High-Functioning Anxiety/Depression

I recently had a talk with my therapist about what it means to be a high-functioning person with anxiety and depression. It made me realize that a lot of people are likely suffering from mental illness despite “keeping it all together.” This happens because I was taught that falling apart was not ok. I also continue to function because the culture in which I work in cannot really deal with “mental health issues.”

I have been in situations where I’ve been sobbing in my classroom before class begins. Desperately trying to suck the tears back in before any students see me. I’ve been still in bed 30 minutes before the time when I have to be at work, and still somehow managed to get myself “together” enough to pass for “functioning” at work. The moment the students come in through those doors, I put it all away and I put in all of my energy and efforts into making class fun for the students. I know that the students can feel me struggling some days, because they are patient with me. But I constantly berate myself. I tell myself how I’m not doing enough. I reprimand myself for not being more “together.”

The High-Functioning part of my mental illness stems from a childhood of constant activity. If I wasn’t at school, I was doing some type of sport, or some kind of project at home. I was raised thinking that idleness is a sign of weakness. That if I let my mind or body stay idle, I will, in turn, allow myself to become a worthless sack of shit. Being useless is my worst fear. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I rarely sleep a weekend away.

So what happens when my mental health takes a turn for the worse? Well, I simply overcompensate. I run myself until I’m on empty. I forget about really simple things such as meals, medication, cleaning, and doing laundry. In my worst state, I do everything I can to make it through those doors at work before collapsing in a heap on my bed at the end of the day. On the weekends, I have no work to occupy my time, so I keep myself so busy that I don’t even have time to think about what is making me so distraught. This works for some time because it keeps me from dwelling on negativity, but eventually my emotions cup overflows. When it overflows, then the anxiety begins to manifest itself into real physical symptoms.

The past two weeks, I’ve been terrified to fall asleep. I wake up every two hours during my sleep, gasping for air. Panic attacks plague me and coming down from each attack takes time and energy. Sleeping is almost as detrimental as not sleeping, and I wake up every morning absolutely defeated. In my dreams, I replay all of the things in my day, my week, my month, my year that have accumulated to break me down so that I can be gripped in fear when I wake up… on the dot… every two hours.

I am exhausted. I feel like I’m constantly on the verge of tears. I feel hopeless. But that’s life, right?

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Battling Progress

I have struggled to find the energy to write over the last couple of months. With the current events, the social atmosphere, and the change in dynamics due to COVID-19, I haven’t been able to articulate how every day has felt. I’ve made a lot of big choices in my life in order to uplift and push me on to a path of healing. I’ve also made some questionable choices that appear to have set me back. To say I’m feeling back to square one would be an exaggeration. But to say that I’m still trying to see the “progress” I’ve made has made me feel as if I’m not expressing myself in a genuine way.

I know that my progress has come in small waves. I’ve gained more independence away from my friends, and especially away from the me that I wasn’t so fond of at the beginning of this year. In half of a year, I’ve grown into a me that I’m proud of. I’ve taken this entire year of uncertainty and learned to cope without devastation. I’ve made one decision after another that completely changed my life without ending up certain that it would destroy me.


On the other side of this, I do see myself self-sabotaging. I put a block on progressing and moving forward by putting on a heavy coat of armor. Shielding vulnerable self from emotional connections. I see myself berating my vulnerability by telling it to “suck it up” or to not “let it show” that I’m struggling. I plaster an emotionless face on top of a lot of sadness and worry. I overwhelm myself with social engagements and activities because I hate that feeling I get at the end of the day when there’s nothing left but to sit with my thoughts. I become passionate about social issues and overwhelm myself with news, media, and other content in order to keep my mind away from hurting about the stuff happening on a personal level. I justify it by telling myself that the little stuff isn’t important compared to all the big stuff happening in the world that is unjust.

While I want to say that I want to keep fighting, engaging in conversations about social activism, and making statements. I have found myself unable to keep up with my own basic needs. I wake up every morning dreading what I will face at work and hoping to get to the point where I can lay my head back down on the pillow and fall asleep. I often wonder who the hell am I, and what am I doing here? Do I like being alone? Or am I just so exhausted from everything I have been doing to care?

I’ve been told that this is what progress looks like. That it can feel as if nothing has really changed on a micro level. But if I take a step back and look at things at a macro level, there’s a world of a difference for me. I just have to step out and stop sabotaging my own progress. Easier said than done.

In order to focus on my progress, I’ll be taking on a little less. Resting a little more. Ruminating a little less. Being a little more vulnerable and letting myself cry a bit more. I’ll be cutting out the parts of my life that have drained me, and continue taking on what I can handle not what I “ought to” handle.

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A Year

One year ago, I was in Korea, by myself, with minimal furnishings in my apartment. I was trying to get by until my dog arrived in late May, but the pressure of work began to close in on me. Work, as it seems, turned out to be not what I needed at the time, but I felt “stuck.” I held down the fort as best as I could but my mental health was deteriorating as I stuck it out until the return of my coworker.

A year ago, I teetered pretty close to the edge of existence and non-existence. I remember having a particularly stressful conversation with my then-SO. It was one of those never-ending, dramatic conversations where I kept spiraling and cycling through the same cognitive distortion and reasoning through it with another distortion. I had a nasty habit of forcing the situation into resolution rather than to give each other space and time to process and regroup before discussing the issue. I never really remember what these conversations and arguments were about, all I remember is the panic that ensues. The thoughts that swirl in my head and how they seemed to be absolutely uncontrollable. At the time, I didn’t really realize that what was happening was that my cognitive distortions and my anxiety level had turned from adaptive behavior due to past traumatic experience into a maladaptive disorder that would send my life into ruins.

I remember hitting the ground, my rock bottom, both physically and mentally. Not sure what it was that took over me. I suddenly couldn’t see anything past that floor and that moment when I was laying on it, half sobbing and half gasping. Anxiety saved my life that day. “I don’t want to die” alarms were screeching in my ears. I’m not sure why I felt like I would. I just did, and my brain was screaming for me to do something to help. I went to the emergency room that day after not being able to re-set my breathing to automatic for over an hour. Having my colleague pick me up off the ground and take me to the hospital was an ultimate low. I remember him telling me in the car, “I wish you told me that you were struggling.” All I could say was, “I wish I did, too. Because maybe all of this wouldn’t have happened.”

A year later, I still feel that way about the whole situation. I wish I stepped out and told someone sooner. I wish I told myself that I needed me sooner. I wish so many things for my past self, but all of that is useless at this point. I have walked this path and things have changed in my life. I am unrecognizable to me in the mirror. It’s no longer a bad thing. It just is. Disruptive thoughts have still ruined my day. They probably won’t stop. Luckily it just doesn’t ruin my life anymore.

Today, I want to celebrate a year of working on myself. Cheers to you, my friend. You are strong. It’s fitting that a new song by one of my favorite bands was released today. It hit me like it was about my life.

Zombie by Day6

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Survival Mode

“Survival Mode” is probably something a lot of people currently being impacted by the current COVID-19 situation can relate to. Every day, I mindlessly scroll through the news, social media, and get through my work. As things have begun to normalize here in Korea, I am beginning to feel more weary and beaten down by everything I have experienced and lived through int he past month.

It started with some sadness and heartbreak but as I’ve begun to climb out to the sadness of the ending of a very special chapter of my life, I can’t help but look around and see everything else moving forward at a pace that I can’t keep up with. While I know that I can move about my recovery and my journey to regaining the me that I lost and, possibly, bettering that part of me, I can’t help but feel like everything’s been put at a complete stop.

Unfortunately, my mental health is not the only thing that has suffered. I went through a period of 3 weeks of home quarantine due to physical health issues. While I tested negative for COVID-19, I was still put under self-quarantine for my own safety. As my immune system battled out secondary infections of the upper respiratory system that were a result of influenza, I lost a lot of my ability to withstand stress and mental distress both personal and in the workplace. The saying, “it never rains but it pours” has never applied more perfectly in my life.

I’m slowly regaining my health, and work has been busier than ever. I feel really lucky to be employed by a company that is still seeing steady enrollment and timely paychecks. However, the minor things at work are beginning to get to me. Office politics are pointless, and I have noticed myself fighting for myself less and less. I’ve become complacent with the conditions here, not because they make me happy, but because it seems pointless to even fight. I count down the days to nothing. I keep trudging along. Day after day. Night after night.

Today, as I walked to work, I felt absolute dread while crossing the street to get to the building where our academy is located. The dread seeped into my bones as I dragged my legs up the stairs. Dread. How can something I loved so much become so tiring? How did something I used to do easily become so hard? It all became so because I’m living at the edge of it all. The end of my patience and wits.

Even in life, where there was once a pretty picture of a future with someone I love. I realize, in this mode, all that really was, was something that I got to have a taste of, but ultimately will not get to have. Why? Because the reality is I will likely struggle with this forever. The toll that mental illness has taken on my perception of self and my perception of worth has, actually, made me, at times, believe that I will probably be better off just alone. Because anything I’ve touched with an ounce of sincerity in how I feel or what I deal with has become the worst for the person that I connect with. It’s no one’s job to pick my sorry ass up from the ground when I’m having a moment. It’s mine. Yet, when I turn off the ability to feel and deal with these negative and difficult thoughts and emotions, I come off as cold, disconnected, and insincere.

As I have continued to work with my feelings and process the events in my life, I’ve realized just one absolute certainty: This process will never end. While I do know that I can curb my panic and impulsive behavior much, much more effectively, I will always have panic and impulsive behaviors. I will always have days where getting up out of bed feels pointless. I will always live with these feelings that I cannot actually control. I can hear the chiming in of bullshit already, “But you can control your reaction to these feelings! You have control.” Sure. That doesn’t make anything better. In fact, it makes it worse. Because I don’t have the control over the part that is actually distressing. I just have control over the mess I have to clean after I have started to feel the distress. And all of this bullshit about, “It won’t get better unless you do something about it” is unfair to those that really… can’t do anything about their situation.

The doom and gloom aside. If you are struggling with this thought that it’s never going to end. It’s ok. I truly believe that life is cyclical, and the natural way of things is that… well, we are constantly going to be bettering ourselves and struggling with things that are difficult to handle. It is a fact of life, and we can choose to learn how to adapt, or we can sink in the mess of it all.

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Late Night Thoughts – How the Mental Health Challenge Died

At the beginning of April, I started this challenge and lasted for barely a week. I want to make excuses for myself, like I normally do when people ask me what I’ve been up to and why I haven’t gotten in touch with people. I want to tell, “Oh, man, work has been so busy.” Which doesn’t mean it hasn’t been. It has been. There have been points in the last few weeks where I wonder if I’ve reached my stopping point for work, my personal life, and overall general well-being.

I’ve been mindful of each day’s challenge, attempting to acknowledge or practice them, at the very least, but reluctant to do a post or pick it back up on the blog. I think one of the biggest stoppers for any of my projects is the fact that I am a bit of a completionist. I know that this usually applies to people that play games or likes to collect full sets of things. However, in my case, I do not like to continue after failure. I wish to complete things in a perfect way. If I am not able to, I would much rather abandon it rather than continue going through.

In the last few weeks, my mind, body, and spirit have hit “survival” mode. When I hit that point, everything feels completely pointless. It’s hard to feel strong emotions or connection to yourself. It’s just a constant state of auto-pilot. It’s what I need to survive at this point. I haven’t journaled or have any time to play video games. At some point, I just wished for things to be “normal” again before realizing that I no longer really know what normal means.

Survival mode began to turn into “at wits’ end” mode. When I hit that stage, sleep deprivation continued to affect me, despite having multiple pills that are meant to help me sleep. I remember the deja vu moment of last Sunday while realizing, “Oh damn, second sunrise I’ve seen in a row. I haven’t slept at all in between.” When I finally hunkered down for some real sleep, I was instantly taken by sleep paralysis.

My fellow survivors, take it one day at a time. The most helpful thing I’ve done for myself is to set a small goal each day to complete. It helps increase my productivity and also help me achieve that sense of accomplishment that will help me get into a better headspace. Just one day at a time.

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Mental Health Challenge – Day 7

Day 7 – Clean our your social media feed

I did this a few weeks ago when the COVID19 situation was at its peak here in Korea. I was getting so much negative news, so much dismissal from people back home in the US. “Stop spreading panic, you’re young and you’re going to be fine.” My social media was flooded with racist, Asians eating bats, and anti-Chinese “jokes.” It hurt.

As an Asian-American currently living in Asia, I am not experiencing the first hand discrimination that my fellow Asian-Americans must be feeling back home. I am very thankful the government here acted upon the outbreak immediately, and that people are mostly cooperative in the social distancing movement.

Back to social media. I have completely cut Facebook out, and I use only the Messenger function. I stick to Instagram and have begun to really narrow my feed down to people, things, and topics I truly enjoy. It has truly helped my mental health and helped me keep myself in a mostly good headspace. It wasn’t really challenging, just sort of sad. Even with Instagram, I’ve been trying to limit the endless scrolling. I know that during this time of lockdown, it’s hard not to dive deeply into the Internet and scroll through other people’s lives endlessly… but taking a look at what type of information you follow can help make that scrolling a more uplifting experience.

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Mental Health Challenge – Day 6

Day 6 – Take a relaxing bath or hot shower

This is one of the things that I never skip out on doing. No matter how shitty or sad I feel, I always spend time taking a hot shower. I upgraded the existing shower head in my bathroom for one that gives me a little more water pressure. I’m also one of those people that takes scalding hot showers. The type of showers that probably aren’t great for my skin. I take a few of them a day, but the one at the end of a long work day (first day back at the office after weeks of working from home) with my lavender body wash from Lush that actually helps me feel relaxed was a great way to end the night. No I’m not getting paid by Lush to advertise their products. I just really like them. I really wish I had a place with a bath tub. Maybe that can be a goal of mine to work toward. But with currency currently being so unstable, I think it will be a good long while before I can make that goal a reality.

Courtesy of Lush South Africa’s Twitter

In addition to taking a shower yesterday, I went ahead and did my nails. Which I do on an almost weekly basis anyways with my lazy girl press on manicures. Taking care of yourself feels good. During a time like this, even when I’m not going anywhere or trying to impress anyone, having pretty nails to look down at remind me that taking care of myself and doing little things for myself is still ok during this time.

Hang in there world. Sorry for the late post 🙂

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