BLOG
Insights, Reflections, and Inspirations
Sign Up for JR's Newsletter
Numbness
“I’m tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
Don’t know what you’re expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes…
… Can’t you see that you’re smothering me
Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control?
‘Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow, just caught in the undertow)
And every second I waste is more than I can take
I’ve become so numb
I can’t feel you there
Become so tired
So much more aware
I’m becoming this
All I want to do
Is be more like me
And be less like you
And I know
I may end up failing too
But I know
You were just like me with someone disappointed in you…”
– “Numb” by Linkin Park
In the past, during intense or crisis situations, people would tell me that I was stoic, expressionless, or emotionless. One of my former bosses even accused me of not caring because I wasn’t showing any emotions such as distress, nervousness, agitation, or excitement before an important meeting or during a usually stressful situation. Looking back, I was not devoid of emotions (I wish I was). In fact, I was heavily impacted by all sorts of negative emotions and bombarded with anxiety, fear, and distress. I appeared deadpan because I could not afford to experience an emotional breakdown. With all of the childhood traumas that I had undergone and the severe depression that I lived through most of my life, I was always one camel straw away from a complete emotional breakdown. Since I didn’t have any social or familial safety net, I had to hold myself together at all costs. So, I held myself together by learning to suppress my sadness, happiness, anxiety, depression, excitement, and whatever natural emotions that a young man might have. Throughout this long history of repressing my emotions, I was so good at hiding my feelings that I succumbed to the void of being dispassionate. I became the numbness.
The numbness in my life dulled my senses and overall well-being. I maintained this numbness for the sanity of my own mental health, at the same time I was trapped in the cage of this numbness. I wanted to break free, to feel alive, or at least feel something. Due to my trauma, fear, anxiety, and depression, I didn’t know how. Thus, the cycle of misery continued.
Fast forward to the present day. Some of the most common feedback I receive from my public speaking clients and theater performance audiences is that I always appear very calm and confident when speaking and acting. When my neighbor asked me if I am nervous the night before an important speech, I tell her that I am fine and not really feeling anything. Of course, the reality is that I always have the butterfly feelings in my stomach before I speak or act, in-person or virtually.
When I tell my neighbor that “I am not nervous,” it is not because I am an astonishing speaker/actor or because I’ve mastered my anxiety and figured it all out. It’s often because I need this nervousness to a certain extent, and I thrive in this tension.
Through years of trial and error, what I’ve discovered about myself is that somehow when I speak and act or perform in front of people, I truly feel alive. This feeling of aliveness and excitement resembles an innocent and naïve childishness along with a youthful excitement about life, my surroundings, and the future. It’s one of the very few things that I can do to break away from my numbness. Besides Lola dog, this sentiment is probably the closest I get to knowing what true happiness is. Thus, the nervousness of speaking in front of hundreds of people is part of the process and experience for me to feel alive and free.
As you can see, to a certain extent, what I have shared so far can be contradicting and oxymoronic. How can the two opposite mental/emotional health conditions of numbness and excitement coexist? I think I know, but I don’t really know. What I know is that we humans often live in contradictions and thrive in divergence, despite the awful feelings that come with it. The more I learn about myself, I realize that I need to be more forgiving and comfortable living with contradictions, and even welcome them as part of my growth and healing process.
Image by: 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay
Murphy’s Law
“Murphy’s Law”
“You are having a good morning. You are driving to your next appointment and you are ahead of schedule, and you drive swiftly through all of the green lights. A few days later, you are having a stressful day, you are running behind, and you literally hit all of the red lights.”
Doesn’t this sound familiar? I call this Murphy’s Law. Murphy’s Law is “an adage or epigram that is typically stated as ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.’”[i] In addition, for me, Murphy’s Law also means that everything happens all at once and that things can be too good or too bad.
Here is another example. Back in January and February, my schedule was slower with a lot of downtime. Fast forward to April, in the span of four weeks, I had over eight different friends from out-of-town visiting Denver and wanting to meet up. A couple of other Denver friends that I have not seen since last fall also wanted to hang out. On top of that, I had to make two trips to Dallas and Los Angeles. Thus, I was out almost every single evening meeting up with friends and having a good time with my peeps. At the same time, I was socially exhausted.
Building on last month’s blog titled “Why is This Always Happening to Me?” and January’s blog, “Is This How I Want to Live, Anxiety,” Murphy’s Law is part of the continuum of anxiety and inner frustration that I struggle with, and somehow, it is something that I am having a really hard time dealing with. It’s like when things are going well, everything is going well. When things are going bad, everything is going downhill.
Of course, some incidents can be explained away and some I just don’t understand. For instance, April is Spring Break time so people are traveling more often. At the same time, I can’t stop myself from wondering why it’s “happening to me” and why things can’t (both the good and the bad) be spread out more evenly.
Whenever Murphy’s Law occurs in my life, I become very frustrated and annoyed. The frustration and annoyance come from feeling powerless. This feeling of powerlessness comes from the sense that I have little or no control over my calendar and scheduling, and it screws up the plans that I’ve set my mind on.
On the surface, it looks like this is my anxiety acting up. Digging deeper, I notice it is my depression that is fueling this reaction. It is quite common for people that are experiencing depression to also experience anxiety at the same time. This is called comorbidity. In fact, studies have shown that 60% of people that have anxiety disorder also have some type of depressive symptoms, and vice versa.[ii]
While I was struggling with severe depression during my twenties and early thirties, one of my biggest fears was enjoying happiness (the high) in fear that the high would be extremely temporary and that literally the very next minute I would slip back into the dark abyss of depression (the low). Since the highs were always so short-lived, I would prefer to sacrifice my happiness so I wouldn’t need to experience the crashing down. This is one of the reasons that I rarely celebrate my birthday or I don’t enjoy holidays. This mentality I have tells me there is no point in being “happy” for a couple of hours or one day knowing that I will soon have to go back and face my miserable life again.
Over a decade, this fear has morphed into a habit that has become part of my lifestyle, my mentality, and my mental health technique. The pros are a feeling of smooth sailing that prevents ups and downs in my life, maintaining my internal and external composure, and keeping everything in my life pretty consistent. The cons happen when I don’t allow myself to experience the different up and down emotions and truly and fully expose myself to them. I miss out on various fun and adventurous opportunities, and ultimately I prohibit myself from enjoying life.
For the longest time, it felt like my experience with depression was separate from anxiety. In fact, I didn’t even really notice I had anxiety until a few years ago after years of therapy recovering from my depression. Thus, when my anxiety and depression manifest simultaneously during Murphy’s Law incidents, I feel overwhelmed, defeated, and powerless because I feel like I have no tools to counter both at once. It’s like I am getting two punches at the same time, one to the head and the other to the stomach.
Murphy’s Law is something that I am continuously struggling with, and I have no solutions. Murphy’s Law is the symptom, and the real pain is the ongoing, recurring struggle with anxiety and depression.
I’ve been reminding myself of the word “resiliency.” I need to continue to practice what I preach and use the tools that I’ve shared in my previous blogs. I need to see this as a journey of new discovery. This means that instead of wanting to take a magic pill that will “cure” everything, I need to allow myself the opportunity to learn, explore, upgrade, and experiment with new mental health and lifestyle tools. I need to just keep going. If I fall, I need to pick myself up and keep going.
Just for fun and to vent my feelings, here is another Murphy’s Law incident that I just can’t comprehend and gets me worked up really badly every time. I go to Costco once a month to stock up. Every Costco shopper knows that weekends at Costco are like the zoo and it can get quite busy during weekday lunchtime and after work hours, too. One of the privileges of working for myself and from home is that I can go to Costco in the middle of the day to avoid the crowds, like at 10 am right when it opens, or around 2 pm after the lunchtime rush. Seriously, the last ten times that I’ve gone to Costco during those supposed “slower” times, Costco has been so packed and crowded. The lines at the checkouts and gas stations are ridiculously crazy long. Somehow, whenever this happens, I go berserk and get super mad, lol. The worst part is that, even though rationally I know that the busyness at Costco is a recurring phenomenon, somehow I still fall into the same old trap that my anxiety and depression have set up.
Meme by makeameme.org
“Why Is This Always Happening to ME?”
“Why Is This Always Happening to ME?”
“Why is this always happening to me?” is a question that often pops into my mind. When this question starts flashing in my head, it’s often during stressful situations accompanied by different negative emotions, such as frustration, anger, jealousy, and/or anxiety.
Here is an example. Recently I had the opportunity to visit the State of Oaxaca in Mexico. I had a transfer flight from Mexico City to Oaxaca. Like O’Hare International Airport, Mexico City International Airport is well-known for flight delays and disruptions. With this information in mind, I allocated two hours of cushion time between my transfer flights. Guess what? Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. The departing flight from Denver to Mexico City was delayed for about 45 minutes. The gate agent made me check in my carry-on bag. When the airplane flew into Mexico City airspace, the plane had to circle around for 30 minutes to wait for an opening for landing. The line at immigration and customs was unusually long for a weekday night. It took about 45 minutes for my checked bag to come out.
Standing in the baggage claim area, the question “Why is this always happening to me?” kept ringing nonstop in my head. On top of that, my frustration was fueled by “WTF, I planned everything right!” My anxiety skyrocketed. My upper body was tight. My body temperature was through the roof. My mind was racing with all of the negative thoughts. My friend was waiting for me in another terminal and I was so stressed out that I would miss my transfer and that it would ruin our trip.
In the past, I would be totally and easily consumed by this situation and succumb to my anger, anxiety, and victim mentality. I would start complaining, pounding, and pacing around, ultimately turning into a “Karen.”
With all of these external and inner shenanigans going on at that moment, I told myself, “I am going to try something different this time and really practice what I preach.”
Building upon the “chill the fuck out” mindset and mantra that I used when I traveled to Belize, I started off by mentally and physically forcing myself to take multiple deep breaths. When people are stressed, they naturally start taking shorter breaths which increases carbon dioxide in the body. Increased carbon dioxide in the body causes headaches, an inability to focus, feelings of confusion and paranoia, and maybe even panic attacks.[i] Thus, in stressful situations when your body is tightened up, it can be extremely helpful to intentionally inhale air deeply and exhale slowly. Personally, by practicing this breathing technique even for a minute or so, I noticed my body became relaxed, my head became clearer, and my emotions settled down a little bit.
After I had done my breathing exercise, I checked in with all of my emotions. I observed them. I tried to understand the root causes of these anxieties and negativity. The biggest one was the fear of ruining my trip by being stuck in the airport and wasting my precious time, as well as the potential additional financial cost. Once I was aware of these root causes, instead of suppressing them, I mentally and emotionally acknowledged them. Like a troubled child that needs attention and TLC, once I validated my emotions, they started simmering down.
The next step was transforming these root causes of my negative thinking by using self-affirmation. I started telling myself, “Hey, it could be worse. I could be stuck in an airport somewhere in Iowa. I love Mexico City. So, it’s not going to be that bad being stuck here for a night. Yes, I might have to spend extra money on a hotel. Yes, it’s going to suck financially, but it can be an investment to have an extracurricular adventure here in the city.” This new mindset became my new mantra. Instead of letting my stressed-out brain keep saying, “Why is this happening to me?” I replaced it with a newer and more positive inner dialogue.
Ultimately, what I was trying to do was free myself from the victim mentality. Yes, I was a victim of the flight delays. Yes, it was the airline/airport’s fault. Yes, it could be my fault, too, for only allocating two hours of cushion time. But I refused to dwell in this endless loop of negativity. I didn’t want to be the victim of my own victim mentality which always results in increased frustration, anger, and/or anxiety.
Reflecting back on all of the trips that have gone wrong, when I was trapped in the victim mindset, my toxic mentality often spilled into my vacation and the negative energy acted up later. In a way, it wasn’t the missed flight or long lines at the car rental that ruined my trip, it was my own mental health.
By the time I retrieved my checked bag, the transferring flight was scheduled to depart in 10 minutes; it would take me about 10 minutes on the shuttle ride to get to the other terminal. To my surprise and relief, my friend messaged me and told me that the transfer flight was delayed for about 30 minutes.
I am grateful that I had the mental and emotional tools available and the capability to work on myself at the baggage claim. By the time I met up with my friend on the transferring flight, I was able to let go of the victim mentality, move on, and start enjoying my vacation.
Oaxaca
Oaxaca is a beautiful state. It’s still considered a hidden gem in Mexico. We spent all of our time in the coastal region. The beaches and sunsets down there are phenomenal. I love their culture. The foods and cheese are amazing. Oaxaca is famous for Tlayudas (picture below), which make the American quesadilla look like child’s play. I highly recommend it.
Motivation, Focus, Energy
Motivation, Focus, Energy
Building on what I wrote in the previous blog about my anxiety and the question, “Is there a balance between the hustle culture and the enjoyment of life?” I came across this quotation from Motivational Lines, “Work-life balance is not about finding the perfect equilibrium; it’s about finding harmony within the chaos.” This quotation has inspired me to continue digging into the intersection of my obsession with work, success, the thrill of achievements, and my anxiety. Somewhere in the midst of this intersection, there are three other elements that need to be brought to light, which are motivation, focus, and energy.
For the longest time, I struggled with motivation. As a person that used to experience severe depression, summoning the inspiration and energy to do anything was extremely challenging. The things that kept me going were survival and fighting the immigration system. People had walked out of my life and I had no safety net to fall on. If there was any tragedy that ever happened to me financially, physically, emotionally, or psychologically, I was dead in the water. On top of that, I could get deported back to Taiwan, a country that I barely knew. Thus, I worked hard with long hours. At any given time, I had two or three side jobs just to meet my need and tried to build up some financial security. Even though I hated it and didn’t have any motivation to do these jobs, I had no choice but to force myself out of my bed every morning. Reflecting on this whole process and history, ultimately it was my anxiety that was pushing me forward as I continued to fight on. I guess in a way my anxiety was my biggest motivator and ally.
The absence of any positive and inspiring motivation resulted in a lack of focus. Whenever I tried to study, read, and write for school or work, I found myself having a really hard time concentrating. I thought I had ADHD (maybe I do). I probably wasted countless hours just staring at the screen and zoning out. Of course, social media didn’t help at all.
Looking back and diving into the unfocused state that I was in, I realize that the major culprit was my trauma. In reality, I wasn’t simply zoning out and daydreaming about the good old times. My brain and body were bombarded with a whole bunch of undesired and unwanted memories and emotions from my childhood. These feelings and thoughts were replayed uncontrollably again and again in my head. I would get so overwhelmed, afraid, and exhausted that I didn’t have any more mental energy left to focus on the tasks at hand. My brain was so scattered and my body felt very vulnerable. The only way I could get myself to focus was to use my anxiety and fear-driven mentality to force myself to concentrate and get the work done. The consequences of not getting my work done could result in living on the street or facing deportation.
All of these anxieties, fear, and trauma-induced emotions were extremely taxing to my mental and physical health. I was chronically fatigued. Fortunately, back then, I was younger so I could summon up more energy. That being said, at one moment I could feel all energetic, and five minutes later, I would feel worn out.
So, as you can tell, for almost two decades, my motivation, focus, and energy derived from trauma-induced and anxiety-driven sources. As part of my mental health healing and recovery process, I have been learning and developing ways to have more positive and healthy ways to motivate myself, have better mental focus, and have more balanced energy.
Here is what I have learned and been practicing.
When it comes to motivation, the clearer my purpose, the more motivation I have. The more clarity I have in every mindset and thinking process, action, and decision I make, the more sense of control I have. For the longest time, I was trying to fulfill and meet society’s and other people’s expectations. I was always chasing something that was not me. The moment I found my passion and purpose, the moment I stop caring what other people thought of me and trying to please everyone, the moment I started looking within and acting and pursuing my passion and purpose, that’s the moment I possessed all of the motivation. Of course, not having to deal with immigration is a huge help, as well.
When it comes to focusing, having the motivation by knowing my purpose and passion is a natural progression and extremely beneficial. To sustain the focus and motivation, I’ve developed healthy daily routines that consist of meditation, reading, exercises, naps, time management, and constrained time on social media and watching TV. These routines ground me. They are the healthy habits that align my mind, purpose, passion, emotions, and the tasks at hand. For example, in the past, after sitting down at my desk and trying to write a blog, it would take me at least 30 to 45 minutes to feel motivated and focused enough to even start writing. I would be scrolling through news sites, emails, social media, or whatever things that would distract me. Nowadays, it takes me only 5 minutes to get into the zone. And, I feel GREAT!
This feeling of greatness is the exact energy that I have been striving to obtain. When I see myself motivated/focused and producing the results that I’ve set up for, I get even more energized. It’s a positive cycle that constantly is empowering itself. In addition, physical health is crucial to sustaining energy levels. Nowadays, sleep trumps everything else. Nothing is more important to me than sleep, maybe except Lola dog 😊. Of course, healthy diet and body movements all are prerequisites to having good energy.
If you are interested in learning more about how to increase your motivation, focus, and energy level, please reach out to me. I will be more than happy to share other tools and tips that I have been using.
Mural by: Joe Pagac, Katherine Joyce, Arielle Alelunas, Brady Fellows (2021)
Is This How I Want to Live, Anxiety?
Is This How I want to Live, Anxiety?
“What is success? It is an inner and indescribable force, resourcefulness, power of vision; a consciousness that I am, by my mere existence, exerting pressure on the movement of life about me. It is my belief in the adaptability of life to my own ends. Fortune and success lie within ourselves. We must hold them firmly—deep within us.”
– Thomas Mann
You work hard every day in pursuit of your professional goals while others sit back and wait. You only rest for a short time or not at all. The reward is the success, glory, and “freedom” that you will attain after a certain number of years of hard work. Does this sound familiar? This is pretty much the definition of the hustle culture.
This is the mentality and belief that a majority of Americans and immigrants are taught, indoctrinated and have grown up with. Recently, I read a statement (paraphrasing), we always ask our youth what they want to be when they grow up instead of how they want to live and what type of person they want to be. We often identify ourselves with the success of our work, job title, position, material and financial wealth, and the line of work we are in. There is always the internal and external pressure and desire to continue wanting more, to overcome more challenges, and to attain the next level of achievement.
It’s not inherently wrong or bad to pursue your passion, wants to work, makes a name for yourself, and generate wealth. I myself am the byproduct of the hustle culture. I love to work. I am thrilled when I get a new contract. I feel excited when I get to custom design workshops for my clients. On average, I work about 47 hours per week. At the same time, a study by Deloitte shows that 77 % of people have experienced burnout at their job and 42% have left their jobs because they felt burned out. So, the question is why am I doing this? Is this a healthy lifestyle? Is this the lifestyle that I want for the rest of myself? If I don’t want to have this lifestyle, what is the alternative? Is there a balance between the hustle culture and the enjoyment of life?
People engage in the hustle culture for different reasons. Some people use it as an escape from reality especially if they have experienced some type of traumatic event. Some people are money, power, and/or fame-driven. Some people have the need to feel in control all the time. Some people simply need to know what to do next. Some other people associate their work success as part of their intrinsic identity and the reason for living (this is especially true for a lot of men). My profession as a professional speaker is a large part of my identity as a person, probably more than my identity as a Taiwanese/Asian American man.
When I dive deeper into why I am so obsessed and in love with the hustle culture, I discover my old culprit and nemesis, Anxiety. On the mere surface level, I work so hard because I need to prove to myself that I can “make it.” This need to prove myself derives from insecurity and believing that I have wasted/lost so much time in my life due to immigration, therefore I need to work 3x’s harder and more than others. Also, this insecurity comes from the fear of failure, my survival instinct, and the lack of a safety net in my life and in our society. To add to the fire, there is a layer of guilt knowing that I have a decent life and there are so many people struggling, therefore I feel bad if I don’t “suffer.” To compound this guilt, the money culture of “time is money” has been driven deep into my subconscious and unconscious mind. Combined with all of these reasons, my Anxiety runs rampant and haywire in my psyche, mental health, and emotions.
For example, my friend from Mexico City loves snow. Whenever there is a snowstorm in Denver, I send her pictures of snow-covered buildings and trees. And my friend always tells me, “It’s a good day to sit on the couch, drink some hot chocolate, bundle up with warmness, and enjoy the snowing view.” Whenever she says this, instead of appreciating the beautiful snow day and considering taking advantage of my semi-flexible schedule to take a little time off to enjoy life, I get super anxious, uptight, and nervous. My primal reaction is often, “Hell no, I got no time for this. I have too much work to do.” The saddest part is that I know I can at least take 30 minutes off, and somehow I simply can’t make myself do it. I feel so anxious that I am compelled and pressured to work on my next task, project, or meeting that I forget to enjoy the moment.
Growing up in Eastern culture and religions (Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism,), I am familiar with various cultural practices of pausing, slowing down, and renewal such as Zen practices of retreating to nature or some form of seclusion to practice different forms of spiritual exercise. The Jewish culture has the Sabbath. Native tribes in the United States or on other continents have practices sitting around with their people/family and being in the present moment.
Solutions:
Lately, I’ve been telling myself that I need “to chill the fuck out.” Baby steps. Instead of taking an hour to drink hot chocolate and enjoy the snow (which my anxiety would literally induce a heart attack in me), I take five minutes to appreciate the view. From five minutes, I slowly increase this time to ten minutes.
My long-time good friend often tells me that I get very tense and uptight, borderline angry when I’m stuck in traffic or have to wait in line at the gas station or grocery store. And, she is definitely right. I hate waiting. Because the idea of “time is money” is so ingrained in my consciousness, my anxiety flares up and I forget to just “let it be.” So, I have been preaching to myself, yes, time is money and so is my health and mental health.
Last, I was very fortunate to spend ten days in Belize last month. I set out for Belize with the intention of fully practicing the “chill the fuck out” mantra by slowing down and allowing myself to embrace the uncertainties. For example, I took local buses knowing that I would have to wait longer and that it was going take much more time. So, I used this opportunity to:
- Observe my anxiety and build a deeper awareness of my anxiety.
- Reflect and try to understand the causes of my anxiety. Instead of being ashamed, fearful, and hating my anxiety, I learned to appreciate it because my anxiety is one of my survival skills and has been keeping me alive.
- Slowly learn to be comfortable with my fear and anxiety even though it can be unpleasant.
- Acknowledge and recognize that my anxiety is and will always be here.
- Build the capacity to co-exist with my anxiety, so I will be able to slowly manage my anxiety by replacing or transforming it with other more positive emotions and feelings.
- Repeat steps 1-to-5 over and over again.
Throughout the whole process, I learned to truly be by myself, enjoy my surroundings, and live in the moment. And, I was able to talk to local people that I would never have conversed with before and learn about their life stories, which is priceless. For example, during one of the legs of my trip in Belize, the shuttle was running late. In the past, I would get so impatient and borderline agitated. This time around, I practiced to chill fuck down. Instead of pacing around nonstop and all worked up, I started talking to the shuttle company’s front desk employee. The employee had the TV show “Wednesday” on and she shared her screen monitor with me. For the next 30 mins, I watched the show with her and learned about her favorite types of shows and movies. On top of that, I fell in love with “Wednesday.” Once I got back to the states, I binge-watched the whole show.
2022 Reflection and Onward to 2023
Onward to 2023
Looking back to 2022, I had a great and productive year. I met 87% of the goals that I set out for myself. So, I am feeling pretty satisfactory and swell. Here are some of the highlights and my proudest moments:
- First of all, I want to acknowledge and thank all of the forty different organizations and companies that I worked with in 2022. I highlighted a handful of them in my November blog. I can’t appreciate them enough for the opportunities to collaborate in addressing important topics like mental health and diversity/equity/inclusion (DEI).
- Talking about mental health and DEI, 2022 was the year that I pushed and combined the intersection of mental health and DEI. I truly believe that we can’t address diversity/inclusion without talking about mental health and vice versa. They are two sides of the same coin.
- Late in 2021, my prediction about my line of work was about 30% in-person and 70% virtual. I was dead wrong. Once mid-May hit, everything went back to in-person. In fact, between June and December, only about 10% percent of my speeches were virtual. This sprightly transition caught me off guard a bit, and it took me until September to fully re-adjust back to in-person mode.
- As part of Motus Theater and Affinity Arts Consulting ensemble groups, I acted more in 2022 than in the previous five years combined which I was very thrilled about.
- My film partners and I started working on our new documentary “Out in Nowhere” last April in Kentucky, and we wrapped up the recording in October in California. I am very passionate and excited about this project. I am very grateful that I can use film to spotlight some of the untold stories about the Asian American community.
- I wrote two long blog posts about my long battles with depression and anxiety. I am still stunned that I was able to articulate and actually write out my experiences because the whole process was mentally taxing and emotionally draining. So, I am feeling pretty proud of myself.
- In early July, I trekked my first major hike abroad at Trolltunga in Norway. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
- I bought my place from my former landlord after living in it for nine years. Even though I own my own place now, I don’t feel like a homeowner. This is probably because I have been living here for so long and my place still looks and feels the same.
- Lola is healthy. She had a tumor toward the end of 2021. Now, she is in good physical condition and still crazy.
- I am not a big music connoisseur and the two genres of music that I listened to a lot in 2022 were Latin pop songs and trip-hop. I normally just played them randomly. Somehow these two genres were very helpful in boosting my focus and concentration while I was working.
Now, onward to 2023. Here are some of the goals and projects that I am excited for:
- My presentations about the intersection of mental health and DEI received a lot of positive attention and feedback in 2022. I am excited to continue building out my materials around these two important topics in 2023.
- My other passion is using the arts to bring awareness about mental health and healing generational and historical trauma without anyone ever mentioning the words trauma or mental health. I am feeling pretty confident that I will have an opportunity to make this happen in 2023. Currently, I’ve received preliminary approval to creating a theater troupe in Los Angeles County. My vision is to use interactive theater as a conduit for a group of Asian Americans to address mental health, immigration, and celebrate our cultural identities. If this contract does come through, I will be fulfilling one of my life dreams.
- I am excited about the release of the first episode of “Out in Nowhere” in the spring. With the last round of grassroots fundraising, we’ve received some additional funding. With this new funding, I am hoping that we will be able to connect with another potential restaurant owner/interviewee and start filming the second episode.
- Almost two years ago, I was invited to write a chapter for an academic book. After so many painful hours of writing and back-and-forth revisions with the editor, I submitted the final copy in November. The book is scheduled to be published in March 2023. On top of that, I have already gotten invitations to talk about the book and my chapter at different upcoming conferences. Once the book is officially published, I will be able to share the content with you all.
- If you are reading this, by now you probably know that I love to travel. Somehow, I’ve never really thought that I would make it to the continent of Africa until recently. I have an opportunity and invitation to go to Kenya. I am definitely planning to go in 2023. If not, for sure in 2024.
If you are interested in partnering up with any projects that advocate for mental health, DEI, the arts, and/or travel, let’s make it happen!
Photo by Gabriel Meiner
Support “Out In Nowhere”
Please Support “Out in Nowhere”
“Out in Nowhere” is a miniseries highlighting the stories of Asian/Asian American restaurant owners that have opened and operated Asian/Chinese/Vietnamese restaurants for decades in geographical locations in the United States that have a small Asian population. My vision is to capture these restaurant owners’ unique stories asking why they decided to migrate to those parts of the country, how they got there, and why they stayed. Coco (pictured above) is our first restaurant owner interviewee.
We need your support. Please donate by clicking here.
Click here to view a short preview of “Out in Nowhere.”
————————————————————-
During the height of COVID-19 in June 2021, I flew down to Miami, FL to help a friend move from Miami to Dallas, TX. On the way, we stopped by Selma, Alabama on a Sunday. This was my first time in Alabama.
The city of Selma is ground zero in the fight for voting rights and civil rights in the United States from the 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., former US Rep John Lewis, and 3,200 civil rights demonstrators marched from Selma to Montgomery. I spent some time on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, now a National Historic Landmark. While walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the images of Rep. John Lewis and other marchers who were beaten by police officers for advocating their rights kept flashing in my head.
While in Selma, the only place that was open for lunch was a Chinese restaurant called China Star Super Buffet; prior to eating at China Star Super Buffet, we had driven by a handful of Chinese/Asian restaurants that were located in small towns such as New China in Luverne, AL.
I’ve visited/driven through 42 states in the US, and have noticed something peculiar: from a little town in West Virginia to Iowa to Wyoming, and to Idaho, the frequency of seeing China/Asian restaurants in small rural towns out in nowhere is always a given. While many Asian immigrants, refugees, and diasporic communities typically flock to major metropolitan areas in the United States such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, and New York, less is popularly known about communities that exist in the sprawling, rural areas described as “the middle of nowhere.” During my trips across the country, I’ve stopped by and eaten at a handful of these Chinese/Asian restaurants, and have spoken to the restaurant staff in Mandarin, and a majority of them are immigrants. What was notably surprising is that all of these businesses have been operating for over twenty years. So, while eating at China Star Super Buffet in Selma, Alabama during a trip in 2021, I began wondering:
- How did they get there?
- Why did they choose to move here?
- What were their migration stories?
- How did they open a restaurant?
- What are the adversities that they have to overcome such as potential racism?
- What was it like being so far away from your people?
- And, the most important question, why did they stay?
These were the questions that I really wanted to ask them. I wanted to capture their stories. I believe their stories are as interesting, meaningful, and inspirational as other famous Asians/Asian Americans in the major metropolitan areas.
Thus, building on top of the success of my first documentary film, “Coffee Talking Out of Mental Coffins,” Q, the director of this film, and I decided to partner up again and make “Out in Nowhere” to capture the often-forgotten and ignored stories of these Chinese/Asian restaurant owners.
Anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked rampantly around the world since the Covid-19 pandemic began, but this hate and discrimination toward Asians is nothing new. In fact, it can be dated back to the 1860s when the Chinese came to the US to build the railroad. The erasure of Asians and Asian Americans from US History texts further perpetuates the model minority myth that stipulates AAPI ‘exceptionalism’. This ‘exceptionalism’ narrative complicates the traditional Black/White racial discourse of civil liberties and social justice at the expense of AAPI and BIPOC communities by falsely describing AAPI communities as ‘intrinsically smart and considerate, and therefore ‘immune’ to systemic racism, class inequity, and social injustice. The model minority myth simultaneously strangulates the AAPI community into being perpetually handicapped compared to White counterparts by falsely characterizing the AAPI communities as passive, soft-spoken, and easily pushed over, therefore lacking in any significant leadership or political leadership role. Lastly, the model minority myth falsely equates all AAPI communities as being wealthy (e.g. “Crazy Rich Asians” [2018]) and only existing in metropolitan areas with the ability to easily immigrate intra- or internationally at whim. This false perception erases AAPI community members who are impoverished, do not live in densely populated and diverse metropolitan areas, and/or do not have the financial/political/legal means to migrate intra- or internationally.
“Out in Nowhere” refocuses the AAPI narrative on communities often ignored by larger liberal discourses focusing on wealth and representation of Asian America. Instead of the widely perceived, we will focus on the widely unseen population: the lower socioeconomic status and rural AAPI communities that made a home for themselves outside of the perceived norm.
We envision “Out in Nowhere” to be a three-part documentary miniseries, starting with filming three Asian restaurant owners that established their businesses in parts of the United States with little to no AAPI communities present. By generating interest in our documentary miniseries, we hope to expand “Out in Nowhere” into a feature-length documentary film where we would focus on more restaurant owners from other immigrant and refugee/diasporic communities from around the United States.
For now, we completed an interview with our very first restaurant owner in October 2022. This is in the post-production and editing phase. We are planning to release the first episode in Spring 2023. Here is a short preview:
Here is Q. Le Sugiyama’s selected filmography to date (*indicates that JR Kuo was a producer)
- “Coffee Talking Out of Mental Coffins” (2020)*
- “Is This Going to Be on the Test?” (2022)*
- “I Never Picked Cotton” (2019)
- “Mat Nuroc – We Can’t Go Back” (2019)
- “Personalities of Public Health” (2019)
- “Ebola: A Media Retrospective” (2019)
Click here to support minority art and film project.
We are accepting donations of any amount. Every little bit helps. We appreciate all the support you are willing to send us.
We have benefits for higher donation levels.
- $300 – advance viewing of the first episode.
- $600 – advance viewing and receive a T-shirt.
- $900 – advance viewing, receive a T-shirt, and your name will be on the film as a producer.
The fund will help us to film and make the second episode of “Out in Nowhere,” assisting us with travel expenses and compensating our film crew for their time, specifically in sound-scoring and film-editing.
Q grew up immersed in the local library and feverishly rewatching movies on her family’s VCR any time her mother and brothers were asleep. She’s been aware of her cinephilia since she was 9 years old.
Raised to be globally, politically, and socially aware, she pursued her undergraduate and graduate degrees in public health with the intent of helping vulnerable communities through a systemic and interpersonal level.
While pursuing formal education in public health, she spent her free time learning and refining her knowledge and practice of film criticism, film theory, and filmmaking with the guidance of mentors and friends in critical cinema studies programs.
She can frequently be found reading, rock climbing, wrangling her cats, and relaxing with her husband.
Learn more about Q and her other film work here: https://www.splinterend.com/
Rachel is a professional photographer based in Denver, Colorado. She specializes in weddings and portraits and loves being able to make people smile for a living. She recently had the opportunity to expand her skill set to include film and video and is learning more about this medium every day.
Rachel is passionate about expanding social awareness on issues like immigration and is so excited to be part of such a fantastic team helping to tell the often unheard stories of immigrants.
Rachel loves to travel, and can often be found playing card and domino games, chasing her cattle dogs around, or cozied up with some truffle popcorn and a good movie with her husband.
If you would like to see more of her work you can check out her photography website here, http://www.theturquoisecamera.com
Bryan Vo – Sound Specialist
Music has played a huge role in my upbringing and has helped to define the instruments and melody of my life’s story. As a multi-instrumentalist and innovative, I now spend most of my hours in the studio creating stories and enhancing audio in today’s mass media forms. I hope to continue evolving my practice and skills through collaboration and impacting today’s film/music industry. Learn more about Bryan at www.Bvomusic.com
Giving Season
Giving Season
We are entering the giving season. I want to share and highlight the amazing nonprofit organizations that I’ve partnered up and worked with extensively this year. Please check them out and support them, however you can.
1000 Cranes for Recovery is a community partnership platform helping to raise awareness, educate, and promote wellness for one thousand mental health advocates utilizing cultural humility to better serve the Asian American community. We’ve partnered up to provide mental health and arts workshops for the Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean-speaking communities in Los Angeles County. We’ll be teaching educational and preventive mental health information along with showing participants how to fold origami cranes. One of the goals is to have the community members fold one thousand origami cranes and display them to symbolize hope and recovery.
Colorado Succeeds uses their unique business expertise, leadership skills, and influence to improve Colorado schools. I’ve been providing a series of DEI workshops for their staff. Their proactive initiatives and commitment to continual growth and improvement in the areas of DEI as an organization make my job extremely rewarding, exciting, and fun.
DIRT Coffee is a local, women-run social enterprise nonprofit with the mission of bringing you quality crafted Huckleberry coffee, food, and drink while training, employing, and empowering neurodivergent individuals through workforce development programming.
I was just at DIRT Coffee last month. It’s located in Historic Downtown Littleton, Colorado. DIRT Coffee just opened a second store in East Denver in October. If you are around these neighborhoods, please go check them out and say “hi” to Catharina, the Executive Director of DIRT Coffee.
FACT stands for Filipino Americans Coming Together and is a conference hosted annually by the Philippine Student Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is the largest Filipino-interest conference in the Midwest, bringing in about 1,300 delegates just last year. The conference works to empower young, rising professionals while simultaneously educating the delegates about Filipino culture, identity and issues; this conference is not limited to delegates of Filipino descent. The facilitators and delegates come from different backgrounds and ethnicities, and the workshops cover a wide array of topics. FACT’s mission is to build a community of leaders by uniting, enlightening and empowering Filipino/Fil-Am/Non-Filipino youth nationwide.
I’ve spoken at the FACT Conference five times, and I am speaking again this coming weekend. It’s one of my favorite conferences to present at. Their cultural night galas after the conference workshops are beautiful, entertaining, educational, and empowering.
Freedom Service Dog of America (FSD). If you love dogs/puppies and are passionate about providing assistance to people experiencing PTSD, physical mobility issues, and/or autism, this is your organization. FSD transforms lives by partnering people with custom-trained assistance dogs. Their clients include veterans with PTSD, children and teens with autism and other neurocognitive disabilities, and individuals with physical challenges resulting from conditions such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, and traumatic brain injury. They also provide professional therapy dogs to serve as partners for clinicians, therapists, law enforcement, and more. Since being founded in 1987, FSD has graduated hundreds of client-dog teams and provided lifetime support to nearly 200 active teams, at no cost to their clients.
I’ve given DEI workshops and coaching sessions to their staff over the years. While I was facilitating the workshops, there were these adorable dogs sitting or lying on the floor and chilling. During my breaks, I could walk down the hallway and play with different puppies. It was so hard leaving that place without stealing at least one puppy.
NAAPIMHA. I have a long history with NAAPIMHA. The mission of the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association (NAAPIMHA) is to promote the mental health and wellbeing of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities. NAAPIMHA strives to raise awareness of the role of mental health in an individual’s health and well-being, especially in Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities throughout the country.
I used to run NAAPIMHA’s Friends DO Make a Difference college program, which contributed to my ten-plus years of experience working in higher education and with college students. Friends DO Make a Difference is still going strong and currently focusing on high school students.
NAAPIMHA’s other programs like Achieving Whole Health, Asians*in Focus, and heART’s hope are using creative, artistic, and holistic approaches to address, advocate and normalize mental health conversations within Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian communities.
The Executive Directors of Color Institute (EDCI) is a two-year leadership development and organizational capacity-building program for BIPOC nonprofit leaders. Monthly peer-led learning sessions strengthen the individual leadership capacity and collective impact of BIPOC-led nonprofit organizations across Metro Denver. The institute seeks participants looking to grow and expand their skill sets, contribute to a dynamic network of peers, and work to inform, shape and maximize opportunities in today’s nonprofit sector while making the sector more inclusive, equitable and just. Click here to see the names of the current participants and their organizations.
I was part of the 2015 EDCI cohort and I learned a great deal from other community leaders. As a presenter to their 2022 cohort, I am extremely humbled and inspired by all of the nonprofit leaders in my workshop groups and the amazing work they are doing to heal and uplift their communities.
Photo by Caley Dimmock on Uplash
Toxic Positivity
Toxic Positivity
Lately, I have been hearing folks talking about “toxic positivity” a lot. Here are my thoughts about this topic.
One of my favorite authors, Susan Cain, touched upon toxic positivity in her books. She describes it as the “tyranny of positivity.” Here is an excerpt from Cain’s GQ interview in April 2022:
The consensus became that the reasons for failure had to do with something inside you—and the more important it became to have the emotional effect of a successful person, somebody who is unfailingly cheerful and positive, and acted like a winner. We started to divide people into winners and losers. You can trace this through the use of the word loser. A loser used to be just somebody who had lost. Then it came to mean somebody who had the soul of a loser, somebody who was predisposed to lose. Once you believe that, you’re going to try your hardest not to act like someone who has experienced loss because that’s seen as a failure of character.[i]
One of the ways that I interpret Cain’s tyranny of positivity is that it is a social construct that has been created by men/people to reinforce classism in our society. This classist paradigm prioritizes material success over an individual’s mental health and well-being by masking it as “positive” or optimistic.
We live in a society that is driven by superficial and superfluous perfection and material wealth. The fancier the car you have, the more perceived success you have. The influence of social media makes people want to show off only the “good” aspects of their life or pretend they are well off. The societal and marketing schemes create a FOMO mindset in people and in return folks are enticed to buy the newest phone every year, the latest fashionable pair of shoes, or whatever the new trend is. The get-rich-quick way of thinking ignores the important fact that real wealth requires discipline, patience, and hard work. Ultimately, if you don’t pursue and achieve these material goals, then you are perceived as a loser.
This pursuit of material wealth compels people to seek what’s outside of them fulfilling other people’s expectations. They believe these external “things” are the solution to their happiness, insecurity, and misery.
The lack of inward inspection and reflection, I believe, is the primary cause of toxic positivity. People feel guilty or ashamed for experiencing sadness or anger because they are weak; dismissing one’s own mental health challenges, believing that they can be overcome simply with their own willpower or seeking external validation; invalidating other people’s difficult feelings or struggles because either they don’t know how to respond or perceive them as incompetent; ignoring problems by refusing to acknowledge changing trends and other people’s suggestions and pretending everything is fine, and suppressing painful emotions instead of learning to heal from within.[ii] Ultimately, toxic positivity is the result of mental health stigma and the unwillingness to look within and tackle uncomfortable yet important challenges.
“Yes…and…” is a core principle in improv theater that I learned years ago. We live in a very dichotomous society and mentality and we like to think and function in a right or wrong and good or bad world. There is definitely a place and need for this contrast. At the same time, this duality oftentimes derives from the scarcity and “either/or” mindset. The “Yes…and…” principle allows us to recognize that it’s ok to experience different feelings at once. We can undergo depressive episodes at the same time feeling hopeful; we can be excited about the new promotion and have impostor syndrome; and we can enjoy material things and engage in our inner work. Being able to be comfortable in the gray zone can help us to avoid toxic positivity.
Another tool to fight off toxic positivity is to avoid the obsession for perfection. Continual improvement and growth are a must. On the other hand, the desire to be perfect can create tremendous and unnecessary pressure. The pressure of being perfect often leaves no room for failure. Our ability to fail and learn from the failure is an essential part of human experience and growth. Thus, allowing yourself to step outside your comfort zone and experiment with different and new experiences can help you stay true to yourself and steer clear from pretending that everything is good.
Photo by Monstera
Why, Anxiety?
Why, Anxiety?
When I was working with my therapist, we were tackling my depression most of the time. After nine years of healing from depression, I’m feeling pretty good about balancing my life and managing my depression. For the longest time, I thought I didn’t have an anxiety disorder. As it turns out I’ve been experiencing anxiety since I was a teenager. Only recently did I realize that my anxiety was masked by my depression. Once the veil of depression was lifted, bam! There was my anxiety, chilling and waiting to strike.
According to the Mayo Clinic, “people with anxiety disorders frequently have intense, excessive and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations… These feelings of anxiety and panic interfere with daily activities, are difficult to control, are out of proportion to the actual danger, and can last a long time.”[i] Also, more often, when individuals experience a specific mental health challenge, they often have symptoms of another mental health issue. This is called comorbidity. For example, it is estimated that 60% of those with anxiety will also have symptoms of depression, and the numbers are similar for those with depression also experiencing anxiety.[ii]
I’ve always been very anxious about my future since I was a teenager. A huge cause of my anxiety derived from the 27 years of a traumatic battle I had with immigration. For 27 years, the uncertainty of my future loomed over my head constantly. I wouldn’t know if my new visa application would get approved or not, if I would get to stay in the US longer, or if I needed to pack up and leave if USICS found out my old visa was relapsed without proper renewal and decide to deport me, or if I could have a future life in the US or go back to a country that I barely knew.
What this meant is that I didn’t know what would happen to me next month or next year. I was afraid to plan for my future for fear that I would get my hopes up and be disappointed. Even now, I can still feel this lingering feeling of uncertainty clouding over my head. From this long history of an unpredictable future, I was constantly living in fear, agony, and stress. Since I didn’t know how to verbalize and channel these negative feelings, it morphed into a constant state of depression.
I’ve been over-compensating for this anxiety by developing a mechanism of high alertness in my life and the need to mentally and emotionally prepare for the worst case scenario. This translates into always needing to have a plan for my future, my week, and my day. For the longest time, I thought I was just a good planner that has a healthy structured lifestyle and daily routines. It turns out that I’m just a very anxious person that has been plagued by an anxiety disorder.
The impact of this is that I can’t just chill and be a couch potato even just for an afternoon or take a full day off during the weekend. I always have this feeling of urgency that I need to do something and work toward achieving my goals and dream. I always envy my friends that can sit around a campsite in the woods and simply chill and not do anything. This would be my worst nightmare. I would feel so impatient, anxious, and antsy.
What is really hiding beneath my anxiety is a sense of urgency from the lost time. Again, due to the 27 years’ battle with immigration, I’ve had this perturbed inner perception and feeling that I’ve had a late start in my life. I’m at least ten years behind “average” people when it comes to professional and financial development and career. I missed out on a lot due to immigration. I wasn’t able to travel internationally, I wasn’t able to have a stable career, I wasn’t able to save up for my retirement and invest, etc. Thus, I can no longer afford to waste my life anymore and I feel the need to work extra hard to catch up. This overworking gives me a sense of security in my life and for my future, and temporarily blocks off and calms my anxiety down.
As I’ve been observing my anxiety, I’ve become more aware of this unhealthy mentality and fear. So, slowly, I have been working on healing myself from anxiety. Below are some of the methods and inner healing that I have been practicing.
First, I’ve been carefully and softly engaging with my own anxiety. Instead of trying to compensate for my anxiousness with the desire to overwork or suppress this uncomfortable feeling, I’m allowing myself to be with my anxiety by simply feeling it and further understanding it. The way I’ve been doing this is to take a walk in a park and sit on the grass. When the sensation of panic and worry bubbles up in my body, I take a deep breath, tell myself “it’s ok,” and observe these feelings like I am watching a documentary movie.
Second, the more I am able to sit with my anxious feelings, the more understanding I have about the cause and effect of my anxiety. For me, this is a huge first step in managing and healing myself. From here, I keep telling myself it’s ok to feel this way AND it’s ok to sit here at a beautiful park and chill. This whole process is a way for me to slowly unlearn my old emotional habits that have been driven by my anxiety, rewiring and re-educating myself with positivity and self-love.
Third, I fight fire with fire by taking advantage of my anxiety. Yes, the voice saying, “I’ve lost too much time and opportunities due to immigration and I need to work harder” is still ringing in my head constantly. So, I’ve been consciously re-educating and telling myself this is more of the reason that I need to take the time to enjoy my life and try the things that I’ve missed out on. Using the planning skills that I’ve developed due to my anxiety, now I’m using this same skill to plan and budget out fun and relaxation time.
Fourth, baby steps. I practice steps one to three in small increments. For over a decade, I rarely ever took a whole day off or a whole weekend off from work except when I was traveling abroad. So, instead of forcing myself to take a whole weekend off, in which I definitely would get a huge pushback and backlash from my trauma, I just take a whole afternoon off on a Saturday to enjoy life. Or, instead of working every single weeknight, I take an evening/night off to watch a movie or go out to dinner with my friends.
In conclusion, anxiety disorder is real and can be very unpleasant. A lot of our current actions, behaviors, mental states, and emotions are the results of past trauma. For the longest time, I was hiding my anxiety behind my depression and my pride in being a responsible, career-driven, hardworking, goal-oriented, and over-productive person. And, I’ve started seeing how my anxiety is too unhealthy for my physical, emotional, and mental health. Healing from anxiety from past trauma takes time and courage. And I’m committed to this process because there is always hope, and recovery is very possible.
The methods/tools that I mentioned above are purely based on the mental health tools that I have learned and my experience from my recovery journey. Please let me know if you have similar experiences with anxiety and how you have been managing it. I would love to chat with you.
Title Photo by Suzy Hazelwood.
In Text Photo Unknown
#mentalhealth #stigma #empowerment #diversity #inclusion #diversityandinclusion #DEI #firstaid #wellness #mentalwellness #hope #recovery #resilience #selfdevelopment #therapy #psychology #health #wellbeing #strengthbased #strength #personbased #personcentered #peer #depression #anxiety #suicide #suicideprevention #prevention #intervention #treatment #signs #symptoms #panicattack #trauma #traumaticevents #intergenerational #conflict #culturalcompetency #minorityheatlh #culturalappreciation #data #mentalhealthintheworkplace