I have always been a happy go lucky type of guy. Everyone would describe me as enthusiastic, optimistic, and radiant, so I have always ignorantly thought it would be impossible for me to suddenly fall into the hands of mental illness. This all changed when I got into an accident that almost took my life.
After the accident, I would have constant panic attacks every day. These would go upward from seven to eight anxiety attacks a day. I would freeze up and time would stop. My mind would go down a rabbit hole on how I would die. My positive inner voice disappeared and I was left with his other friend. All my negative thoughts were amplified.
Indulging myself in self help content has always been a hobby of mine because I felt like there was something wrong with me. I have never focused on that negative voice, but it was still prevalent now and then. After the accident however, it was almost non-negotiable having my negative thoughts around. I felt like I lost myself. I knew the only way to find myself again is to double down on self development. I began to meditate and read self help books and binge watched motivational videos.
Eight months after the accident, all the self development started to kick in. I had a sudden realisation and the determination to take responsibility for everything that happened. I was tired of everything that was happening in my life. All the meditation allowed me to the deepest darkest parts of my memories and confronted them. This led me to uncover the trauma I have experienced in my childhood. This also led me to the beginning of my healing process.
The biggest thing that has helped me through this process has been documenting and filming my process. This allowed me to internalize my thoughts and watch my own thoughts like a movie. It allowed me to be present with myself. Instead of keeping all the negativity inside me, I gave myself a safe place to experience my darkest thoughts and feelings just so I can let them go. I continue to make videos and share my story because that is my way to heal, but ultimately, it is also to provide perspective and share how I developed my mindset to overcome something I once thought I wasn’t able to.
In this process, I learned three major things:
In order to begin the healing process, it’s important to accept your feelings and thoughts, and allow yourself to experience what is meant to be felt. Sometimes, some things are just not meant to be understood. Allow yourself to feel. Only you can choose when you want to begin the journey of healing! Healing is just one way of doing it. Let’s choose to be the best you you want to live with! Thank you for reading.
Mental health, like many, has always been an elusive topic growing up. Being raised in Los Angeles by Taiwanese immigrants, I was always bouncing between Asian and Western culture. Trying to navigate those spaces and have a balance between those identities was only a distraction for a deeper struggle I faced. I am a transgender man.
For as long as I can remember, I always went through life seeing myself as boy, or now, a man. I dreamt as man. I envisioned my life as man. My birthday wishes were always to wake up as a man. That little voice inside my head? A man. I just never had the knowledge, resources, or words to express my experiences. This confusion and cultural messages I received about mental health was ultimately suppressed as I entered elementary school. Presenting myself in boyish clothes were only met with “that’s not appropriate,” “you would look cuter in a dress,” “girls shouldn’t act like that,” and my personal favorite, “it’s only a phase.” I didn’t know back then, but how I dressed was how I expressed myself and a cry for help. Unfortunately, it was just a lost cry for help. I gave up on this dream due to fear and the negative messages surrounding the LGBTQIA community. I preoccupied myself with my Taiwanese American identity and blamed my self-hatred on that one identity. I was suffocating under the pressure and messages to behave a certain way and achieve a certain level of success. I saw college as a way to escape and explore what I want and who I want to be.
As a first-generation college student, I was completely lost on where to even begin the process of applying to schools. However, my determination to leave home forced me to do my own research and motivated me to do well in school. As I entered undergrad with the mindset that I would immediately “find myself” and figure out what I wanted to do, I was met with complete disappointment. Instead, I just put more pressure on myself to answer the questions brewing inside. I wouldn’t find the answers to the questions I was so desperately trying to answer until the last quarter of my last year in undergrad.
It was the last quarter and I was graduating in a couple weeks. Everything seemed to have lined up as I was closing this chapter of my life. I found a major that I loved, enjoyed all that university life had to offer, I was traveling every week of the quarter, I lined up a job after graduation, and I was graduating. Then it just hit me out of nowhere. The timing felt right to finally accept that I am transgender. Everything after that realization fell into place and a huge relief was lift. I scrambled to get appointments lined up to start transitioning hormonally. My first shot was a day before graduation, June 15, 2018.
And here I am now, 24 years old, living my dream, thriving, traveling, and eating tons of amazing food along the way. In Asian culture, it seems as mental health problems are synonymous with “weakness.” I’m sure like other fellow Asians, the message that weakness is not to be accepted was hammered into our mindset. However, I strive every day to break this toxic message and remind myself to be kinder to others and myself. There is no shame in seeking help. We shouldn’t feel guilty about our wants and needs. And we shouldn’t have to go through those experiences alone.
I’ve always considered myself a mentally healthy person.
Being the first-born son in an Asian family certainly helped with that; revered by my parents as the golden child, I was “the” role model for my younger brother in all the expected ways – academically, athletically, behaviorally -, and had so much taken care of for me. In fact, I am still fortunate in a lot of ways, but this current quarantine has given me time to reflect on myself, and my mental health, which had never really been a consideration up until recently.
Growing up I had a lot of self-confidence – I always liked the way I looked, I performed excellently in class, and I made it a point to try and get along with everybody. To this day I am still very much a people-pleaser; life is best when I am interacting with others and making them laugh, or supporting them in their creative endeavors.
But when stay-at-home orders were put in place, so many engagements were taken away; for me, my daily face-to-face with my coworkers ceased, and all the conventions I was looking forward to throughout the year slowly dropped or ultimately canceled. I haven’t stepped outside in two months, and have had to look to other means for spending time with friends. Thankfully, my main hobby has translated easily to digital, and we are lucky enough to live in an age where social media can keep us more connected than any time before. But this isolation has forced me to look at myself the past couple years through a different lens.
All the way through university my schedule was so full I never took the time to reflect on how I was feeling; I spent a fifth year pursuing my degree because of an intercollege transfer, and tried to make up the lost time with odd jobs around campus upon graduation, picking up every shift I could. I loved spontaneous plans when everything was walkable within a few blocks and living in those moments, but I never really knew what a mental vacation was to really appreciate where I was as a whole: so much of my formative years in life had been pursuing “the next thing” that this quiet we are now in was uncomfortable at first.
The whole world was rocked when quarantine stripped away normalcy, and I was furloughed from my job as the situation escalated. Like many others who found themselves in a similar position I’m sure, I took advantage of my new availability to consume all the entertainment I couldn’t with a regular schedule. But eventually that grew stale. A couple weeks ago I was informed that my department was let go, and now I spend too much time feverishly checking apps to find some kind of conversation.
This probably stems from the biggest thing lacking at home: communication. My family never really took time to discuss or process emotions together – the only thing that came up at the dinner table was the news or neighborhood gossip between my parents. Then everyone would break apart to our own spaces for our own responsibilities/activities – homework, games, TV, etc. There was always a distance, or fear, that bringing up anything remotely more meaningful than trivialities would be received with disinterest, or that we would be dismissed for being too sensitive, even though statistically this deliberate time together should bring us closer.
I do not believe that any of this was intentional, and it is very possible I may have felt something that wasn’t entirely there. I could have tried to lead those conversations. But expression was not a familiar concept, I imagine because the households my parents grew up in were the same. Lack of understanding sometimes reared itself when cases of depression or transgenderism surfaced and they simply didn’t know how to process these things. To their credit, those topics were completely foreign to them and not anything they had ever had to navigate before, and they have gotten much better about everything in the last few years. But that is why I value friends, whom I can talk with about anything, and from them learn so much more about the world.
Getting through 2020 has been made so much easier for me because I have people I know I can relate to, and feel like I can be heard by. People I can share insights, exchange perspectives, and trade laughs with. I’ve learned through them that everyone has their lifetime of experiences before I was ever in the picture, and to accept that. That there is no need for special sensationalism and to simply treat everyone as a person. And that bonding over even the smallest things is a gateway to understanding them, and myself, better.
Having always considered myself an extrovert, this time of social distancing has shown me that I can get along on my own better than I thought. Though I miss congregating in the same place as my family and friends, I have realized how much more I have enjoyed physical and mental space to myself and doing things on my own time than before. Setting boundaries and registering that nobody owes me anything has been a tough lesson for me to learn, but ultimately one in the right direction.
This journey into mental health is ongoing – and not just my own but how to respect others’ as well. Empathy is without a doubt my biggest area to improve, because there are plenty I cannot relate to. But surrounding myself with people who have experiences different from mine, and being open to hearing and learning from them, has been instrumental in better grasping how I respond to the world and how I should best respond in turn. There is no playbook of easy answers for any given situation, no prescribed code of conduct, but I have learned best from example, by observing and internalizing the ways people I admire manage.
These are some things that have worked for me, and I don’t want to pretend that they are the only way to master mental health; far from it. In fact, after all these ramblings, I think it is obvious how new I am to it, but I am okay with that; there is plenty to discover, both about myself and others, and finding new ways for keeping myself well excites me. Perhaps the most hopeful part of all is that how we take care of ourselves, and communicate it to others, will grow and change with us; though the future may not always be kind to us, we certainly can be kind to each other.
I had always been numb. I felt like a machine that devoured knowledge and produced perfect grades. And absolutely nothing else, including my happiness, had the space to exist.
For the longest time, I felt that sharing my emotions, my struggles, and my real feelings is unwanted and off-putting. I worked hard, crushed my goals, and bothered no one in my life. I had it together, but I was not happy.
It took a long time but gradually I learned how to be nice and kind to myself. I valued my own emotions, imperfections, and struggles. I took time to care for my happiness and spiritual pursuits. I started to have courage to let the genuine and true me shine through. Surprisingly, I found that my life actually became better with acknowledgement of my messy emotions and imperfections.
It is not easy and it takes a long time. Wherever you are with your own journey and continuum, know that you are already good, brave, and valuable enough!
Today, I read an article titled “A Letter to Asian Girls.” Typically, I’m not the type to fall for clickbait, but I begrudgingly clicked with expectations to read something that fetishizes my ethnicity. Instead, I was floored by how much I clung to each and every word and realized how I’m not alone in my struggles.
Growing up in a primarily Caucasian community, I became isolated, being the “token” Asian friend. As a child, I hated myself for my skin tone, my language, and my culture because it made me different and subjected to bullying. I grew tired of the constant questions of “do you eat dog?” “can you read this?” “is it true that you have a tight pussy?” The insensitivity of others made me assimilate into American culture faster. I purposefully didn’t practice Tagalog because it made me different. I purposefully changed my personality and fashion to tailor to those around me.
It wasn’t until I went to college that I found a community that shares the same culture and struggles. People who spoke the same language, who understood the same quirky cultural references, who ate the same food that we all found delicious, and who call the same place home. The author said, “I found comfort in others that experienced the same perpetual feeling of “inbetweeness,” of being a hyphenated identity that would never belong anywhere, forever displaced.” And fuck, that hit close to home.
To my 7 year old self — the bright eyed and bushy tailed girl that came to the US hoping for a better future — I’m so sorry that I was ashamed of who you were. I’m so sorry that I robbed you out of celebrating the beauty of your skin, culture, and identity. Now, at the age of twenty-two, I have more or less come to terms with being Filipino-American. I no longer harbor hatred for an appearance and a culture I never asked for, but I do regret all the nasty words I said to myself in front of a mirror, the years I missed speaking Tagalog, the lumpia, the halo-halo, and pancit I never ate. “I know that I will never be able to leave behind that small shy Asian girl who has been scarred from this white country, but who, in so many ways, has been made strong by what she has endured.”
I was hesitant about sharing something personal on social media, especially because I’m not super comfortable with opening up to people or sharing about myself. But I’m stepping outside of my comfort zone because mental health is so so so important. If I had to describe myself: quiet, shy, reserved, introverted, especially around strangers and in a class full of other students. However, my mind is always buzzing with thoughts and unspoken words. Sometimes, I’m laying in bed wishing I can shut my thoughts off with just one single flick of a switch. Because sometimes, my thoughts are too much for me to handle. It’s just all too much. Too overwhelming. I feel like I’m walking on thin ice. Always rehearsing what I’m going to say inside my head over and over again. Always having to reassure myself that people aren’t judging me. It’s exhausting. I just want to be myself. And I asked myself, “What does it mean to be myself?” This is when I began to focus on my mental health.
Here is a post that I shared a couple weeks ago: Does anyone else feel sad for no reason? Like sadness just pops out and hits you out of nowhere. Hard. And then you start thinking and get even more sad? You just want to turn off all those thoughts swirling inside your head. So you shut your eyes hoping that sleep will fix everything? But sometimes you can’t fall asleep even though you’re dying to do so. You try counting backwards from 1000. You try recalling some pointless formulas or processes you learned. nothing’s working. then what do you do?
I think one of the scariest things in the world is the human mind. We all have it. But each mind is different. No one can ever step inside mine. It’s just me, alone. me and my thoughts. sometimes when I try picturing my mind it’s a room. It’s vast, endless and it’s pitch dark. Lost. Scared. Alone. But other days, I can picture my mind as an endless field of flowers underneath the blue sky scattered with white, fluffy clouds. Like the flower field from Howl’s moving castle. This time, I feel Safe. Warm.
Each day is different. It sucks that it can’t be rainbow and sunshine every single day. It sucks that my mind can’t be full of sunflowers 24/7. But the peace that follows after bawling your eyes out or after feeling like it’s the end of the world makes life bearable. I always remind myself: it’s always too much to take in everything all at once. So instead of focusing on all seven days, focus on 24 hours. If 24 hours is too much, then focus on one. If one hour is too much, take it a minute at a time. If one minute seems too much, just focus on breathing and give your mind and body some break. We don’t have to figure out everything all at once at this moment. Things are kind of all over the place right now. Different. Give yourself the love you deserve. Always. From me to myself. From me to you.
I want to remind myself, and everyone else, to focus on yourself. Be mindful of what our mind and body are telling us. Our feelings are valid. Our thoughts are valid. Sometimes, we just need to take a step back and take a deep breath. Healing takes time. It takes patience. Show yourself compassion and kindness. To me, my mental health journey is about connecting with my feelings and thoughts, learning to be comfortable with myself, and reminding myself that I (we) also deserve love and kindness, always.
My name is Stephanie and I live with high-functioning anxiety. I found out very late in the game that I had anxiety in college and attended therapy sessions to learn about healthy mental habits. But after spending over a decade of coaching figure skating and teaching children, I realize that teaching is the most healing form of reflection and it transformed my anxiety. When you have hundreds of mini-humans mimicking your every move, you start to see how your habits, mindsets, and behaviors impact your students positively or negatively. Teaching makes me practice what I preach about mental health and happiness. Maintaining a healthy mental state allows me to stay present and be an example for my students. Through therapy, supportive loved ones, and teaching, I learned to concentrate on what’s within my locus of control rather than focusing on extraneous factors or outcomes that I can’t change. Although it is a daily struggle to fight against my anxiety, teaching motivates me to maintain a healthy mental state and gives my life purpose in helping my students achieve their version of happiness.
I lost my dad to a stroke during my senior year of high school. As a result, I messed up finals and lost a conditional offer at my dream university. I was also dumped by my first boyfriend around that time. All those things took a massive toll on my depression. Without any concrete university plans, I moved back to my home country to be with my family. This was when I decided to enlist in the military. I thought that it was the best option at the time. Going through basic training and officer cadet training was mentally the hardest thing I have ever done especially because I was also at my worst. I never spoke about my feelings, but I would spend every waking moment feeling empty and wishing I was dead. The intense military training didn’t distract me from any of those thoughts. Being in an incredibly male-dominated environment was harder than I expected. This was the first time in my life that I felt truly alone.
However, I shared a bunk with a girl who became one of my best friends. Despite having personal trauma of her own, she is the most caring person I have ever met and honestly became my lifeline throughout my cadet life. I only wish I was half as strong as she is. Despite my constant mental struggle, she never judged me and constantly pushed me to not give up. I commissioned and am now a lieutenant in the Navy because of her. I have always been introverted and reserved. Before this, I never realized how important it is to have the right people in your life until I met this girl. It was all four years ago. Since then, I’ve learned how to talk about my emotions and open up to people I trust. I’ve made it a point to reach out to others as I firmly believe that no one should have to go through anything alone.
Growing up in a small, predominantly white community, I had always struggled with body image issues and, consequentially, low self-esteem. Often times, it would feel as though my appearance was an inconvenience for others. Peers would often tell me my skin was too dark or my eyes were too small to be pretty. Family would often tell me to ignore their comments, but ironically my classmates weren’t the only ones to tell me what was wrong with me. Family members would often point out other flaws I never knew I had. These comments were always followed by unsolicited advice like pinching the bridge of my nose for a higher nose bridge or rubbing lemon juice on my skin in an attempt to lighten it. At several points in my life, I was even told my voice was too deep for a girl. An aunt of mine would often say I was similar to The Ugly Duckling. They had even provided me a nickname to use at family gatherings: “Tubby [Tiffy]”.
To avoid ridicule, I tried to become invisible. Don’t speak unless spoken to, make no noise when entering rooms, wear “safe” clothes, apologize often, eat meals as needed and save snacks for when no one is looking, avoid as much interaction as possible, don’t make eye contact. Puberty was my only hope at shedding this invisible cloak, I remembered thinking, as the Ugly Duckling had a “glow up” phase which resulted in everyone loving him.
For a while, being invisible worked. Redirecting attention became a skill I could throw onto my resume. I never had to consciously think about how physically (mentally was another story) inadequate I felt in comparison to other women my age. Sometimes I would think that appearance wasn’t tied to my self-worth; that I didn’t have to be pretty and look like other girls because I had other good qualities going for me, like being studious and a hard-worker. After several years, I had finally decided it was safe enough to come out of my invisible shell and allow myself to be- at least somewhat -seen at university. For the first year, I truly believed I was happy with myself and with how life was playing out. The past didn’t seem to matter anymore.
It wasn’t until my second year of university where my mental health took a turn for the worst. During my first semester of sophomore year, I was sexually assaulted by a friend. The incident made me remember how inferior I felt to everyone around me. Several thoughts ran through my head, “Only pretty girls get assaulted, why did this happen to me? Maybe I finally started to look better, and this is what happened as a result. Either way, I must not be as smart as I thought I was to end up in a position like this.” I confided in my (now ex) boyfriend, whom turned his back on me when I told him what had happened. I didn’t just feel ugly anymore, I felt disgusted with myself. The disgust went deeper than my physical appearance and had now tainted any self-worth I had left. Any amount of respect I had for myself dissipated, and I felt unworthy of respect from anyone. I had never felt more alone.
For the following seven months, I never spoke of the incident, but I had heard other versions of what happened that night. “She’s such a slut; I feel so bad for [my ex]- he didn’t deserve to be cheated on; I always knew she was easy; she’s not even that pretty, he could’ve done better.” I pretended everything was normal and tried to retreat into my old invisible ways. My normal soon became only sleeping 2 hours during the day and none at night, several panic attacks a week, obsessively checking if the doors and windows to my dorm room were locked every night, poor grades, skipping meals, and showering once a week if I had gathered enough energy to do so. Towards the end of the semester, a friend intervened, and I told her everything. She helped me file a report with the university and schedule an appointment with the university counselor, whom diagnosed me with severe depression and anxiety.
After completing my sophomore year, I took some time off from university and moved back home. I finally told my mother what had happened beginning with the assault and ending with my counseling sessions at the school. In hindsight, telling her felt like a mistake that needed to be made. I had opened up in hopes of being welcomed with support and assistance in finding a therapist closer to home, however I was met with more guilt, shame, and victim-blaming. Part of her response which shocked me the most was to consider the inconvenience I may have caused the perpetrator by filing the report. “You caused too much problem for him because you[‘re] stupid,” I remember her saying. Shortly after, instead of being called outright “Tubby” by family members, my new nickname evolved into whispers of the word “whore” behind my back. Instead of providing me advice to make myself more attractive as they had previously, I was now given advice on how to become invisible again.
Over the few years, my mental health continued to fluctuate, as I had finally accepted that I needed help but was still too afraid of others’ reactions to reach out. “Victim” seemed to be the term that I allowed to identify me. The loneliness associated with it engulfed me, which only sent me deeper into my depression and exacerbated my anxiety. But this loneliness also forced me to reevaluate every aspect of myself. My self-esteem and self-worth were already in the gutter when it happened; the assault was just the tipping point. Although I may have been a victim, I didn’t want it to define me for the rest of my life. It may have broken me, but it gave me a chance to rebuild and learn about myself in ways I never could have. It gave me a chance to truly love myself inside and out instead of faking it. I am not a victim; I am a survivor.
Everyday is a different, and every day is hard in their own ways. Although some days can be generally good, and other days generally bad, everyday I try to make peace with what I had once seen as flaws and to forgive myself for the self-inflicted abuse and mistreatment. Forgiveness wasn’t the easiest thing I had to learn, however I found peace in letting go of all of the anger and pain inside me. There are days I wish it didn’t play out like this- that I still wonder “why me” and “if only I had done this, then it would have never happened”. But ultimately, it has shaped me into someone I know Tubby would be extremely proud of today.
I started taking mental health seriously when my sister was diagnosed with mild depression late last year. My family has always been full of critique when it came to mine and my sister’s bodies. From weight, face shape, skin colour, and beauty in general. Over about 12 years of my sister’s life (she’s 27 now) she has been exposed to numerous ‘jokes’ from my family about her body. It became so pent up and destructive inside that one day, she had no feelings or reactions to whatever my mum said about her. The one most disgusting thing my mother said to her was, “Hey, don’t you want to be skinny? Don’t you want a man to like you and marry you?”. It was a horrendous thing to say to someone and its never left my mind.
Before she was diagnosed I hadn’t realised the extent of my responsibility in caring about her feelings and mental health too. Her struggles were voiced to me and I would listen but I could never give her proper advice, just opinions. She finally found the courage to seek therapy and she has been happier and much more positive about herself. At times she finds doubts about her body and feels ‘fat’ or ‘ugly’, but I would deflect it and speak words of truth and encouragement about what shes wearing or about her body. In a way, I’m glad she’s gone through this because it was the only way for her to grow stronger and realise the negativity coming from within.
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Personally, I have issues about my body image as well. Largely stemming from my mother and sometimes father but a portion of my negativity is drawn from social media too.
I used to wear baggy clothes to hide how small my butt was or wear large hoodies to hide my belly. My mother would call me fat on some days or too skinny on others. Sometimes my dad would see a pimple on my face and tease me about why I had so many, “Are you planning on selling them? You have a whole farm there!” It may seem lighthearted at first but to hear something you felt embarrassed about everyday was unnerving.
However, it began to change when I got into a LDR with my boyfriend. Our trust grew and eventually I began to tell him the thoughts about myself, all the shame and disgust I had about my body. In response, he gave me so much love and care for my feelings. Every doubt I had about my body was remade into something I started to love. His existence in my journey continues to reinforce the significance of another person’s help and care when it comes to body image and mental health as a whole. It reminds me that I have a role in my sister’s journey too.
My mental health journey had started many years ago but I was afraid in confronting it. The fear was hard to overcome but it was worth every little bit of energy and bravery in me to finally realise that what I was thinking wasn’t true.
Its a continuing battle everyday but it’s worth the sacrifice I have put in to achieve the position I am in today.