HOME RENOVATION & MENTAL HEALTH
I’ve entered a whole new phase of “adulting.” It’s called home renovation.
This year, due to various semi-urgent reasons, I started renovating my place. I have years of work experience in both residential and commercial construction, so I thought a home renovation project would be relatively easy. I was dead wrong.
First, getting paid to fix other people’s places is very different from fixing your own.
Second, at the very early stage, I found I was being extremely indecisive. Overall, in the last ten years, I’ve trained myself to be a more decisive person, both professionally and personally. So, my indecisions were throwing me off of my game, increasing my stress level, and clouding my judgment. At first, I blamed my ambivalence on, “I am a dude, so I don’t care about the colors of shower tiles.” But, after digging deeper, there was something else going on inside that was causing this ambivalence.
For those who have read my previous blogs, or heard me speak about how I attended college, you know that I didn’t go to college until I was 21 years old. The main reason for this delay was that I had extremely low self-esteem. I didn’t believe I was capable or smart enough to go to college. Adding to this challenge, I also lacked financial resources.
History is repeating itself. I have been afraid to commit to my home renovation because of all the self-doubts and low self-esteem. Even though my place is falling apart and outdated, I felt this condition was okay, because I didn’t deserve new things. Additionally, there was some level of self-sabotage due to my fear of success and having a better life.
From what I have seen from my homeowner friends, whenever they have a new home renovation project, despite the usual stress that comes with it, they usually show excitement about the end results. However, I have noticed that I don’t feel any exhilaration from the final outcome. Instead, all I’ve ended up feeling is headaches and stress.
At first, I thought this was because I have lived in the same place for so long, it is no longer a novelty. But upon further reflection, I remembered that I didn’t even feel any excitement when I bought my condo. Why is that? It doesn’t make sense, right? I finally bought a home that was mine, and yet I felt flat and joyless.
After reflecting more, I started seeing the old culprit at play, which is my trauma from battling the immigration system. For 27 years, I struggled with the immigration process. I was living under one visa after another, not knowing if the Immigration Office would grant me another visa. On top of that, there was the constant fear of deportation.
Living in uncertainty for 27 years created a lot of stress and anxiety in me. I was so afraid to “settle down” or take root in a city, or a living space, because of the fear of losing everything if I got deported. Thus, I developed a detachment from life in order to cope with the instability and insecurity.
One of the lingering impacts of chronic trauma is that it puts people in a constant fight/flight response years after the traumatic event. Often, traumatized people prefer to act out (fight) rather than shut down (flight). Thus, according to Dr. van der Kolk, traumatized and abused individuals “feel fully alive in the face of actual danger, while they go numb in situations that are more complex but objectively safe, like birthday parties or family dinners.” What this means to me is that despite my efforts to overcome uncertainty and anxiety, these feelings were my “comfort zone.” They were more familiar to me and something I could handle.
So, when I finally bought my condo, it was the first time in my adult life that I had a home and safety. However, due to my past trauma and the long history of living in constant uncertainty, anxiety, and fear, I didn’t know how to react to the good news because the concepts and feelings of stability and security were still very foreign to me. Instead of feeling comfort and joy, I slipped into self-criticism and self-loathing, viewing it as a luxury I didn’t deserve and a lifestyle that would just make me “weak.”
My home renovation struggles reflect larger questions in my life: “How can I enjoy life?” and “How can I live a fulfilled life without emotional traumas such as ‘survivor guilt’?” Even though I have been on the path of recovery for fifteen years now, I am still learning how to live a life filled with joy and contentment, not guilt and shame. The path of mental health recovery is not linear. Instead, it is full of ups and downs. Looking back, I have made tremendous progress. I need to remind myself that with every new experience, like home renovation, new emotions from old traumas will surface. What I need to do is continuously adjust my mindfulness, focus on healthy daily routines, and commit to the path of recovery.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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