Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Taiji

My re-birthday and my mental health

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I’ve been writing posts about my medical crisis, my re-birthday, and my goals for the upcoming year. I have written one goal per post (as is my wont to talk endlessly about the smallest minutiae), and we’ll see if I continue that in this post. Yesterday, I talked about learning new weapons forms in Taiji because I haven’t in some time.

Today, I want to talk about my mental health (Taiji and Bagua would fit here as well). It has been on a slow, but steady decline since the second anniversary of my re-birth. In the last post, I outlined some of the reasons why, but I want to dive more deeply into that.

One of the biggest issues is that while I had a life-changing event, that didn’t stop life from happening. It also didn’t completely change me. I mean, there was a change to my core. How could there not be when I died twice? That leaves a stamp on your soul that you can’t erase. At least, I cannot. Nor would I want to erase it. I have said that while it was traumatic (of course), it was also the best thing to happen to me.

Side note: This is one of the books I’ve toyed with writing. A joke self-help book in which the only advice is to try dying and coming back again. I just don’t know if I have enough to make it last for a whole book. I can carry a joke far, but how far?

Back to my mental health. My depression is probably back up to 60% of what it used to be.

Interjection: I have struggled with chronic and deep depression since I was seven. It lifted by roughhly 90% when I died. Twice. And came back twice. Then it steadily went up again. (My anxiety dropped to 40% and is now back up to 60% or so.) Here’s the thing, though. As I mentioned in a recent post, I had a shitty run of several months in which there was a steady drip of negative things happening to me–ranging from trivial and irritating to devastating and heartbreaking.

Which brings me back to my mental health.

Taiji (and now Bagua) has kept my mental health issues under control for fifteen years. Taiji has saved my life, even if it’s metaphorical. I mean, it literally saved my life during my medical crisis, but it metaphorically did it for years before that.


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Depression sucks, part four

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Let’s keep talking about depression. Here is the previous post I wrote about it. I’ve had it all my life, and in the past, I had just accepted that it was part of my life. Which it was. Until I had my medical crisis and my depression went away. Not all of it, mind, but 90% of it–which is amazing. For the first year after my medical crisis, I was so grateful to be alive. I felt peace in a way that I haven’t in any other time of my life.

I would look out the window and just marvel at being alive. That’s not something I have ever done in my life before. Every cup of coffee tasted extra-strong, and every weapon form was extra-meaningful (once I could do the weapons again). I’m not being flip when I say that dying puts a different perspective on life.

However (and you knew that I was going to qualify it), that state of mind can’t last forever. It’s simply not possible to not revert to the mean over time. What I’m saying is that, even the miraculous becomes normal over time. Yes, it’s still amazing that I’m alive when I should have stayed dead. Yes, I still feel that in my bones, deeply. But it’s not on the forefront of my mind as it was for the first two years.

Now, for the first time since my medical crisis, I had the thought that maybe it would have been better if I had died for good. It was fleeting, and I was able to dismiss it, but it shook me that it’s happening at all.

Life is hard right now. And with depresion, it’s a slippery slope. For me, anyway. It starts out mild and then before you know it, I’m on the couch and can’t get off it. At least that’s how my old depression worked. Plus, my sleep gets even suckier than normal, and I’m jsut blah all over the place.

Now, it’s different. I’m not on the couch, but I’m not any more productive. My brain feels fracture, and my life is so gray (as I said in the last post).

In the past, depression was just a part of me. There was no rhyme or reason to it. This time, however, there are specific reasons for it. In late February, I had a major tragedy happen to me. It was expected, but still sudden. What made it weirder was that it happened the day (and the day after) the Elden Ring DLC trailer dropped. Which was…a thing. And cast a pall on something  I had been anticipating for literal years.

I dealt with the tragedy at the time surprisingly well. As I said, I was expecting it to happen–just not at that particular time and so quickly. I still don’t want to say anything publically about it, though I have written several unpublished posts about it.

I say surprisingly, but it’s not surprising at all. One, ah, positive of having PTSD is that I’m very calm and cool in a crisis. See, I’m alwayst imagining the worst-case scenario, so when I’m in one, it’s my time to shine. Nothing can be worse than my brain, you see, not even dying. Twice. It’s when the outside matches the inside of my brain, and there’s a certain quietness and solidness to it that calms the fires of my brain.


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Taiji, me, and mental health (part nine)

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Yes, I am still going to talk about mental health and Taiji. Family dysfunction as well, and perhaps therapy.This is continuing my week(s) of musings about the topics, and here is the last post in which I discussed lots of things.

I must say, therapy has been more miss than hit for me. I went to my first counselor when I was fourteen and profoundly depressed. I will give my mother credit that she got me into therapy. Hoqwever, unfortunately, she chose a therapist at a very conservative Christian college, and a man to boot. Who was white. He was not in any way equipped to deal with someone like me. Especially as I had a broken brain in so many ways.

I will say, though, that he was a very nice guy who tried his best. I do not hold it against him that he didn’t know what to do with me.

After that, I had a series of therapists/counselors who just sucked. Here’s the problem. I have a psych background. I know a lot about psychology. I am very smart. I know how to think on different levels. Which means I am a terror for some therapists. If I can run rings around someone, I will not respect them. Unfortunately, this was the case with many of the therapists/counselors I had. To be honest, it’s one reason I stopped going to non-psychologist therapists. Social workers just didn’t do it for me.

It took me forever to find a therapist who worked for me, and then I saw her for a decade or so. What I liked about her was that would suggest things that weren’t considered traditional. This included body work, tarot card readers, EFT, EMDR (before it hit mainstream), electroshock therapy, meds, and more. In her opinion, anything that worked was fine with her. She also discussed CBT and introduced DBT to me as well.


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Taiji, mental health, and me (part eight)

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I’m contiuning my week-long posts about Taiji and how it’s benefited me. In the last post, however, I veered into talking about my mental health. Let me be clear. Taiji has helped my mental health tremendously. I would say it’s probably the thing that has helped the most. Therapy helped the last time I did it (which was over a decade ago), but my time with that therapist came to a natural conclusion.

I have been thinking of finding a therapist ever since my medical crisis. not to deal with the medical crisis, ironically, but to deal with the family dysfunction that burst forward during it. It was always there, mind, but since my parents live in Taiwan, I did not have to deal with it on a daily basis–or even monthly. I mean, I had to talk to them on the phone once every three weeks or so, but that was all.

I have always had difficulty with my parents, but this showed a very ugly side to my mother that I had not seen before.

Side note: It’s really strange. I have had issues with my father all my life, but I’m actually less upset in dealing with him now than I am with my mother. There are a few reasons for it. One, my father’s pronounced dementia now makes it easier to say that he doesn’t know what he’s saying (because he doesn’t). Two, I talk to him for two or three minutes, up to five minutes once a month or so. Three, I have compassion for him that I didn’t have thirty years ago.

Dementia SUCKS. It’s terrible, and I would not wish it on anybody. I am watching it make a zombie of my father and tearing my mother from the inside out. So why is it harder for me to have compassion for my mother?

Let me say that I do have basic compassion for her. Again, it’s a terrible situation to be in.She is 81 years old and does the bulk of the caretaking. The vast majority. She has a helper, but from what my mother says, the helper does the bare minimum. I don’t know what that entails, exactly, because my mother is not the most reliable of narrators.

There are three options that are equally possible. 1. My mother is holding the helper to too high a standard so the worker has ‘quiet quit’ in trying to help. 2. The worker is doing the bare minimum and knows that it’s hard to replace her. 3. The helper is doing amazing and my mother is not happy about it.

My guess would be that the helper has given up trying to do things to my mother’s standards and is doing the bare minimum. My mother is never happy with anything–that it her whole M.O. She will always find the cloud surrounding the silver lining, and she will always question whatever decision she makes.


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Taiji and me, part seven

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This is post seven of my weekly musings on Taiji and how it’s helped me with life. Yes, that’s it. That’s all I’m doing. Just kidding. In the last post, I was talking about life in general and how messed up I was before I started studying Taiji. I mean, more messed up than I am now. Yes, I’m still messed up, but not as much as I used to be.

I was also mentioning how my teacher has earned my trust because she has been transparent, honest, and open about what she does and doesn’t know. We’ve reached the point that if she suggests something for me to try, I will immediately try it.

Here’s another reason why: She makes sure that anything she suggests will not hurt me. It may not help, but it’s not going to hurt. The most recent example surronds my difficulty with periphery. I’ve always had an issue with it (along with spatial issues, reflex issues, and more), and it’s only gotten worse since my medical crisis. I don’t like to drive on the freeway because of this, and I restrict my driving to local roads whenever possible.

This means that I have stayed with online classes rather than driving to them because I live north and she teaches in south. Before the pandemic, I would go to class in person and had to take two (or three? I don’t quite remember) freeways during rush hour in order to do so.

I never liked driving. I want to make that clear. I am bad at it, and I do it as little as possible. I failed the driving test three times and would have not taken the test at all if my mother hadn’t pushed me to do so. It’s good that I can drive, but it’s something I will avoid doing when at all possible.

I have been in all kind of scrapes with a car. As a driver, I mean. In part beacuse being a nervous driver was not good, but it also occurred to me MUCH later that I had periphery issues. I can’t see things to the side of me then I’m driving. Is this because of something physical? Or is it psychological? I don’t know, but it kept happening. And by ‘kept’, I mean once every few years, I would hit something with my car. Not at high speeds and not with much damage, but it wasn’t great. Obviously.I thought it was just me being a terrible driver. Which, let me hasten to add–I am. But there may actually be reasons for it other than just I’m a terrible driver.


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Taiji and how it’s changed my life, part six

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I’m continuing to muse about Taiji and me for the sixth post. In the last post, I talked about how I learned to trust my Taiji teacher over time beacuse she was consistent, transparent, and steady in her response to my barrage of questions. It’s one of her best qualities in my eyes. I could expect honesty from her no matter what question I asked her, so now, a decade-and-a-half later, I don’t even queestion it when she tells me something about Taiji. She has earned that trust.

Then, six months ago or so, I wanted to learn the Swimming Dragon Form with the deerhorn knives in Bagua, a different martial art. I love the deerhorn knives. They are probably my favorite weapons overall (double sabers are myi favorite taiji weapons) beacuse they are so vicious. Did I say that out loud?

Many many moons ago, I was having difficulty with meditation. I kept having flashbacks, which was highly unpleasant. My teacher brought in a pair of her pratice deerhorn knives and handed them to me. She taught me how to walk the circle with them, and that wsa what I did in the corner while the rest of the class was doing meditation.

It was during this time and while I was walknig the circle that I had a life-changing realization. I used to proclaim that I was a pacifist and  that if someone tried to kill me, I would let them. This was married with my belief that my life didn’t matter in and of itself. That wasn’t something I just thought up myself, by the way. My mother drummed it into my head ever since I could remember, and when I was eleven, she started pouring out all her problems (especially with her marriage) to me.

I got to hear about how unhappy she was and how depressed. She comlained about my father incessantly and how he had done her wrong. Which, she wasn’t lying, but it wasn’t something you should be telling your eleven-year-old child. She did not do this to my brother, by the way, in case you were wondering. There are a few reasons for this. One, I was AFAB, and my mother has very rigid ideas about gender. Women were for nurturing, cleaning, cooking, sewing, and birthing babies–not necessarily in that order. Funnily, though, even though she liked to say that being a parent was the most important thing to her (and she said it all the time), she focused all her attention on my father.

It makes sense now because he has dementia that is getting worse and worse. It started when he was in his sixties, and he’s mid-eighties now.

When my mother complained about my father, I just shut down. There was nothing I could do about it, and she would have not handled it well if I walked away. I was a hostage to her complaints, though there were no physical chains restraining me.


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More about Taiji, part five

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This is part five about my discourse on Taiji (and how it’s been a boon for me). In the last post, I talked about….well, lots of stuff. I wanted to talk about trust and my teacher, but then wandered into my past and why my family dysfunction made me unlikely to trust.

It turns out thaht I can trust–when someone is worthy of that trust. And, yes, it did not happen immediately, but took quite some time. It’s good not to be too trusting, but I think I took it to the extreme. Hell, I kow I took it to extreme, and I would say I still have a hard time calibrating my ability to trust (especially in my romantic life). It’s either too much or too little, but rarely just enough.

In the case of my Taiji teacher, she earned it by being transparent, honest, and open about what she knows and doesn’t about Taiji. It’s the last one especially that really made me trust her.

Side note: I have a hard time admitting when I don’t know something, especially if it’s an area that I consider myself an expert. The fact that my teacher can do it with ease is a plus in my book. She doesn’t seem worried about undermining herself by doing so, which I admire.

Anyway, I learned over time that she would be honest with me no matter what. She accepted me where I was and did not push me–wait. That’s not what I want to say. Because she absolutely did push me, but in a way that was positive. I think it’s better to say that she encouraged me to go outside my comfort zone.

I’m stubborn, though, so I would often push back. That’s my nature. I’m not proud of it, but I have to be real. It’s a fear response, but it’s also a way for me to guard my boundaries. That was necessary in my family, but it was not as necessary in Taiji with my teacher.

What helped me with that? Sit back and listen to a little story I have for you. I started learning Taiji beacuse I wanted to be able to defend myself, but I was rabidly anti-violence. In other words, I was a pacifist. About a year or two after I started studying with my teacher, she wanted me to start studying the Sword Form. I reacted strongly against it because I did not want to do weapons. That was violent! Not like the Solo Form, which was without weapons and so gentle.

My teacher brought it up every few months, and I  was adamant that I would never, ever do the weapons. After a year or so of this, she pressed a wooden practice sword into my hand and told me to just hold it. I tried to pull my hand back, but she would not let me. She wasn’t mean about it, but she made sure I closed my hand on the hilt of the sword.


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Taiji and me, part four

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This is part four of my weeklong treatise on the unexpected benefits of Taiji and other things related. In the last post, I meandered here and there, but was ostensibly talking about my teacher and how I grew to trust her. Because it’s me, I had to give background as to why I have a hard time trusting people.

In addition, my prior Taiji teacher was terrible and did not engender trust. He was skanky, sleazy, and a bad teacher. He was way up his own ass and thought much too highly of himself.

Side note: I find this to be a problem with cis white dudes who position themselves as gurus, whether consciously or unconsciously. They already have an unearned authority about them just because they are cis white dudes, and then they surround themselves with people who agree with their assessment, which means they usually don’t get told off when they are crossing the line. In other words, it becomes like a cult.

One of the first things I did when I was looking for a new teacher was look for women (now, I would expand that non-men). That meant drastically reducing the number of studios available to me, but I was fine with that. It was that important to me, and I stand by that.

It took time for my teacher to earn my trust, which is as how it should be. Just because someone is an expert in something, it doesn’t mean they are immediately trustworthy. Also, someone can be an expert in something and still a lousy teacher.

One thing my teacher excels at is teaching each student in the way they will best learn. With me, it’s giving explanations for things until I have reached the point where explanations are not necsessary any longer. With a classmate of mine, it’s scolding her lightly. Another ex-classmate of mine had MS and with her, it was adapting to doing the forms in a wheelchair.

I have reached the point where I don’t need the explanations any longer, but I do appreciate when she tells me what the applications for the movements are for. She knows what I need in order to accept what she’s saying, and she has no problems providing that. It’s what makes her a good teacher, and I have heard it from other students as well.


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Taiji and me, part three

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I have written two posts about the unexpected long-term (and slow-to-realize) benefits of Taiji. I was going to write a third (this post), and while that is still the nominal plan, I want to focus moe on my teacher in this post. Or rather, how  I got to the point where I trust her implicitly when it comes to Taiji.

When I was in my twenties, I was a hot mess. I make no bones about it or try to hide it in any way. Nor do I sugarcoat it. I was deeply depressed by the time I was seven, and I didn’t see the point in living. College was a pivotal time for me in many ways, both bad and good. That’s when I realized that I had several isms to deal with (racism ‘coz Taiwanese, sexism ‘coz woman, and homophobia ‘coz I was bi, but that was after I realized I was bi–which took some time in and of itself), not to mention family dysfunction.

It’s the latter along with undiagnosed mential health issues that really fucked with my head. I was disassociative when I was in my early twenties, but didn’t realize what was happening. I’m pretty damn lucky I didn’t seriously hurt myself or anyone else during that time because it happened as I drove on the freeway, too, which was the worst.

I had many arguments with my mother because I stubbornly insisted on actually telling her important things to me while I was in my twenties. I believed the trope that mothers were all-loving and cared deeply about their children. It took me many decades to deprogram myself, and I’m not quite there yet.

I’m telling you all this because it was Taiji that helped me with the family dysfunction. My teacher has said more than once that she hopes that we never get into a fight. I do, too. But she always added that it’s beneficial for real life, too. She said that while we may neve have to fight off an enemy, we probably will have to fight through a crowd.

I have difficulty with my temper. I can keep it under control for the most part, which is better than me not realizing I had a temper in my youth. Because I had it drummed into me that I was not allowed to show any negative emotions as a kid, I stuffed my anger waaaaaaay down deep inside.


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The unexpected (long-term) benefits of Taiji, part two

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Yesterday, I wrote part one of the unexpected long-term benefits of Taiji with a fair bit of meandering in between actual points. That’s how my brain works, and it’s not something I care to change. Things are connected, man. That’s just the way it is.

I mentioned that I fell the other day. This is not unusual for me–or rather, it was not unusual for me back in the day. Now, I don’t fall nearly as much as I used to (or bump into things), and when I do, I don’t take as much damage. I will say, though, that yesterday, as I was eating, it hurt. I could not figure out why until I realized that I probably bit hard as I fell, which made my teeth hurt. Weirdly, though, it was on the left side, not the right. I say weirdly because the scrapes I have are on the right side. But it’s possible that I just bite more heavily on my left side than right side in general.

Here is another unexpected benefit: I have an ass now. Not a big one, mind you, but a noticeable one. I’m excited because I had no junk in the trunk prior to practicing Taiji. Hey, I’m Asian. We’re not usually gifted with big, juicy asses. Then again, we usually don’t have big honkers, either, and mine are huge. When I complained about it to my mother, she said that her grandmother had had big boobs–liek Double Ds. Which, for Taiwanese women thirty years ago, would be huge.

I mourned my lack of ass, to be honest. I would look at J-Lo and be consumed by lust. Er, envy. Also lust, but in this case, envy is more pertinent. I had no cheeks to clap, much to my dismay. After many years of Taiji practice, I noticed as I looked in the mirror that I actually had an ass! Not a full one as I said above, but an actual ass! I mentioned it excitedly to Ian and he said very diffidently that he had noticed it the last time we had seen each other.

I also was giddy when I told my teacher about it, and she laughed heartily. She thought it was hilarious, and I told her that she should advertise it as one of the benefits of Taiji. She thought it was probably the Golden Roosters (basically, marching in place, but in a Taiji kind of way and stepping backwards as you do), which I do every day. It’s high and tight (my ass, I mean), and I’m irdordinately proud of it.


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