I apologize for being so MIA (missing in action), it has been a tough and busy year both physically, mentally, and emotionally. I haven’t had the capacity or time to write out or process my thoughts. But today, I wanted to blog about trauma because of another (typical) recent incident I had this morning.
Change is a tough process, and I say that with heavy, heavy weight. I think this term is easy to nonchalantly state while empathizing with friends, as a comfort statement, or simply as a response to appease another individual. However to fully comprehend the weight of these words, as well as words such as ‘trauma’, ‘episodes’, ’emotional episode’, ‘anxiety’, is no easy feat. It is a journey and a process I am still learning to grasp even to this day.
It is funny because as I was having an episode today (typically they come out during fights with my partner), he holds me and states “Look your ABA is working”. Let me explain what this means. He was holding me tight and hugging me, something he literally has never done and did not know how to do just 2 years ago when I was upset. He made that statement because I had been working on teaching him and utilizing my ABA strategies to teach him what I need and how I need to be comforted, and what that looks like. It certainly has not been easy and there were many times he did not do this even though I would request this over and over again. It has really made me realize the importance of putting aside your ego, your shame (something I grew up with like sticky glue that just won’t peel off, my whole life). Juggling and learning how to process my trauma, my emotions, my self-sabotage habits, my negativity and perfectionism, while also teaching your boyfriend your needs and how to respond to you is not easy, and I am extremely lucky to even have the capability to juggle all of this at once because honestly, a lot of people suffering with trauma and anxiety don’t have the capacity or know-how for this. So today, my goal is break-down each challenge I have been facing for the past 2-3 years and how I am been trying to process and grow through each one. Self-reflection is a great way to process.
Anxiety: Anxiety come in many shapes and forms. How you speak with someone, your body language, your tone. It could be your sighs, your urge to “rush”, your forgetfulness, your bad decision-making, your negativity and focusing on worry/stress, road rage, unintentional mistreatment of someone, an invisible barrier that prevents you from growing, connecting, or healing. Everyone feels and produces anxiety, but some just have higher levels of it depending on whether they were taught appropriate coping skills on how to respond to it. I obviously, was not. I’ve been working on discerning when my actions and decisions are driven by anxiety, not something else. Let me tell you, it’s a crusher. Knowing that your actions and words are driven by anxiety, but not being able to control it. Not being able to control when you hurt someone, or when you hurt yourself. Watching yourself from the outside acting like a person you are ashamed of, but can’t help it. It literally feels like an addiction that just won’t go away, and if anyone has been through addiction you know the process I’m talking about. Trauma is also the same way.
Trauma: I heard from an expert from an NPR podcast (that was discussing trauma in regards to gun violence with children) that you go through enough trauma, it’s like neverending psychological warfare in your own head- over and over again. I thought that was a perfect depiction of what I go through on a daily basis. Trauma + high levels of anxiety go hand-in-hand. I am still learning what trauma actually looks like, but what I do know is that the antidote to this is time, and continual effort to self-love. Trauma is having your anxiety, your episodes, your explosions, your emotional outbursts all out of your control if you do not have enough self-awareness of your triggers–but even with self-awareness you don’t always have control. The brain is a tricky thing. Someone could literally state one word in a well-meaning way during a conversation, and they might have just triggered you to explode or react (embarrassingly). Trauma affects your beliefs of hope, love, loss. It affects how you see your future. It affects the limitations you place on yourself. It affects what you believe you deserve. It affects your faith in someone. It certainly affects your relationships. It can emotionally and mentally cause exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, and physical arousal (such as road rage) on a pretty regular basis if you don’t keep yourself in check. Physically, it can cause insomnia, physical aches and pains or chest pains, fatigue, muscle tension, racing heartbeat over miniscule situations, and difficulty with concentration. If continually not addressed, it can also lead to sleep disorders, nightmares, constant fear/paranoia, anxiety focused on flashbacks, depression, and avoidance of emotions.
Self-sabotage: This one derives from trauma & lack of self-value. The mentality that “I’m comfortable with maltreatment. I don’t deserve this. There must be something wrong with me, this person, or this situation. There is no way there is nothing wrong. “. So what happens is when I am too happy or content, or even when I’m fighting, I subconsciously manipulate situations into a bigger deal than it is. I start engaging n lots of assumptions, implying things a person may not say, and accusing the other person of something they did not directly say. I subconsciously say and do things to push others away. And you know what the scariest part is? I say and do things that I know that will specifically push their buttons. It sounds so horrible and manipulative. It doesn’t sound like someone who is in a lot of pain, but in actuality it is. In actuality, it is because deep down they don’t believe they deserve this person, this relationship, this love. They do this because from habit, it is easier for them to fight someone and assume they will leave so that they can protect their heart. It’s a really unhealthy coping mechanism based on how that person was shown love growing up.
Self-sabotage seems to have derived from a combination of my childhood trauma’s and my adult trauma’s. And the more trauma I went through- the more self-sabotage increased (also because I wasn’t seeking community and getting the help I needed). I can say proudly that I definitely engage in this less this year, but the hard part is remembering that the goal is not for it it ‘stop’ or ‘go away’, the goal is really to achieve the mentality that I am loved, and I deserve to be loved to the best of a person’s ability so that I do not feel the need to self-sabotage.
Shame: This one’s a killer and the one I struggle with the most. Like Tony says “It’s like not trying to sneeze every time” (except unlike a sneeze it’s with you 24/7 like a plague that continues to spread if you don’t keep it in check 24/7). This one derives from how I was raised by my mother. I grew up becoming shame, absorbing shame, taking on my mother’s shame. Shame is defined as blaming yourself instead of blaming the behavior when something goes wrong. When you blame yourself, you dig yourself a dark hole and limit yourself from healing and growing. When you blame the behavior, you are able to accept your wrong-doing so that you can correct it and take responsibility for it by changing your habits. Learning to discern the difference between taking responsibility, versus emotionally and mentally causing yourself turmoil and hitting yourself over the head for doing something wrong is no easy feat. It has been no easy feat to dissect shame and make it “disappear” or decrease because it is in every thought, every action, every decision I make. Only grace, acceptance, and love for yourself can resolve this one. Two years ago I discovered grace and acceptance through individuals from my church community. I had no idea what those terms meant growing up, and clearly I had not been provided the gift of being modeled that growing up. My healing started with surrounding myself with the right people, but it doesn’t stop there. Step 2 is self-awareness and internal reflection. Now that I’ve received this gift, I’ve experienced it, how do I apply it to myself? That is an answer I am still journeying through, but all I can say for now is it’s the minutes of your day that matters. Not the hours, or the day, or tomorrow, just the minutes. I chose to spend my minutes blogging and self-reflecting, and that will make an impact on my healing process from shame. To fight shame is to say “It’s okay” to yourself. To fight shame is to say to others “It’s okay. I still accept and love you for everything that you are”. To fight shame is to disassociate your behavior from your self-value. To learn to discern that your mistakes are not directly correlated to who you are, your worth, or what you deserve. Be proud of your mistakes, even if it may hurt others along the way unintentionally –because those mistakes are what make you who you are today.
Perfectionism: Perfectionism is a result of shame. It’s like a coping mechanism in a way (I learned this from “Healing the Shame that Binds you by John Bradshaw”). Perfectionism compensates for shame because self-acceptance is not in our vocabulary. In a way, we were never taught or modeled to self-accept or self-love, thus the product of severe shame typically results in one or two ways: perfectionism or being rebellious. Perfection comes out when I don’t have a good regulation on my anxiety. Perfectionism in my life looks like: Criticizing my partner when he is not doing something the way I think it should be done, taking over something or doing something myself because I don’t trust others to do it (or as Brene Brown calls it “over-functioning”), getting more irritated than usual when someone does not understand how I want something done after explaining it, getting in a fight with my partner because I made clear my expectations, and he wasn’t able to meet them in regards with adjusting his behaviors and habits. If you haven’t noticed a pattern yet, let me expose this hugely flawed way of operating: It’s becomes all about me. And to top that, it’s simply an inhuman way of perceiving people and situations. Acting this way limits my connecting to others and ultimately becomes a barrier to self-growth. Why would someone want to focus on self-growth? It could be from feeling lonely, disconnected to the world, constant fights with family friends and partners, difficulty getting along with people at work or in your community, feeling like you lack motivation, or simply feeling like there is something more out there for you (because there is).
Criticism: This is where my negativity comes from. It’s never good enough. There is always something to work on (perfectionist side talking). “Why aren’t you ________?”. “You need to do __________”, “Did you do ______?”. This mostly stems from my mother because I was always the victim of criticism (never good enough) and modeled this growing up. But criticism can also be a product of my own anxiety, shame, and perfectionist side not being regulated. Whether it’s criticizing strangers or criticizing my partner, I have to always remember that this stems from my insecurities about myself. It honestly has nothing to do with them. It has to do with what I feel I am in control of. If I don’t feel in control, I am going to grasp at anything else I can control such as criticizing my partner because I know I will get a reaction out of him (of course I’m doing this subconsciously). My partner also struggles with this. To a degree, I think he also realizes he makes critical and judgemental comments to compensate for his ego. His ego is deflated, he is too busy shaming himself, engaging in anxiety, that all he has to compensate for sometimes is putting others down so that he feels more superior and better about himself. Again, no one ever realizes they are doing this. These are coping habits that were at some point taught to us, modeled to us by family, friends or community around us. But this is what I always say: anytime you want to say a critical statement (that’s assuming you are aware), replace it with a grateful statement, a compliment, or an empathetic statement. You can’t be ungrateful and grateful at the same time. You can’t genuinely appreciate a person and criticize them at the same time. It’s a daily choice you have to make. But let me just tell you again, this is no easy feat. Having had at least 30 years of growing up like this, topped with influenced by family and friends who may engage in this, this is just another bad habit that I have had to learn to “self-accept” and accept that I can only love to the best of my ability, and that is enough.
Healing
If I can take anything away from these difficulties I face, is that I empathize. I have so much compassion and empathy for those who struggle with changing habits, addiction, anxiety, trauma, PTSD, or any other emotional barrier (that’s assuming my critical perfectionist side has not taken over). And honestly I would never want to take away this gift of empathy, compassion, love, and hardship because it is what has allowed me to fully connect this others as I’ve grown older. While it has been a difficult journey, and continues to be a difficult journey, it ultimately has taught me how to obtain peace, taught me what genuine intentionally really means, how to build meaningful relationships and most importantly a full experiential reality of what God’s love really entails. I will continue to tell myself to take it one step at a time, and one day at a time.
Crying by the way, is one of the most therapeutic ways you can physically exhaust everything you are mentally, physically, and emotionally holding in. It is one of the healthiest coping mechanisms out there because it plays duel roles both mentally and physically for your healing! But let me just say, it’s a serious pain the the a$$ for me because I get swollen eyes, headaches, stiff neck, sore throat, and fatigue the the following two days. -_-
#perfectionism #shame #self-sabotage #healing #trauma #change #barriers #psychologicalwarfare #criticism #asianamerican #secondgeneration
A Biography of Life Lessons, Reflections, and a little bit of ABA 