Underneath my yellow skin

Just me and my brain, part four

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Let’s actually talk about burnout today (as it relates to my neurodivergence). Here’s my post from yesterday where I talked about burnout, toxic positivity, and other things. It’s been interesting to go through it, to actually realize it’s burnout in real time, and then to deal with my warring sides about it. One side of me thinks, “Just push through it. It’s no big deal. You idiot.” The other side recognizes that if I do that, I’m just going to feel worse and worse about it.

Back when I first started Taiji, I had to force myself to practice five minutes a day, and I did it by tricking my brain. First, I added two classes a week so I was going to a total of three a week. Then, I told myself than I would just do five minutes of stretching a day. I slowly started adding pieces to it, and it’s up to an hour-and-a-half now. Stretching/warmups for both Taiji and Bagua; one part of the Solo Form (Taiji) and the Swimming Dragon Form, alternating right side and left side (Bagua); then weapons for both disciplines. The stretching, warmups, and Solo Form/Swimming Dragon Form take forty-five minutes to fifty minutes, depending. The weapons take about a half hour to forty-five minutes because I’m teaching myself the Bagua Knives Form.

I’m always teaching myself  a new weapon form these days, so that takes up a big part of my practice when I’m actively teaching myself a new movement or three. I’m almost done with the Bagua Knives Form, and I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I would like it to be Double Swords, but I cannot find one that is based in Taiji.

Today, for the first time, I decided not to do the Swimming Dragon Form or the Bagua Knives Form. I was exhausted because my sleep has been really shitty, and I mean really shitty. I’m always baseline tired, but I’ve been having even worse sleep problems lately. I’m trying to make sure that I get up at 2 p.m. consistently in the vain hope that it would spur me to get to bed at a consisten hour as well. So far, that has not happened, and it’s in part because I keep doing the same habits.

The last time I talked to my Taiji teacher, she was very encouraging of me varying my practice so that I wouldn’t get burnout. This is one of the things I like about her–she never pushes people to do things harder, faster, better. She encourages us to take our time and to take as much time as we need to learn things.

She likes to say that we have all the time in the world, meaning that we don’t have to get anything in any set amount of time. She will gently push people to try new things when she feels they’re ready, and in my case, not-so-gently push. That’s a plus, by the way, because I tend to drag my heels in trying something new. This is very much a part of me, and it’s not something I like about myself.


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Combatting burnout and my weirdo brain, part three

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Let’s talk more about burnout.

Not yet, though. Park that thought as I start off with something that might seem not related, but it is. Oh, before that, here’s the post I wrote yesterday about how I found out that there might be a link between neurodivergence and not eating breakfast.

There is a toxic positivity mentality in American culture that is tiresome. This spills over into exercising. Every time I hear, “Give 110%” or any other percentage that is about 100, I scream (either out loud or internally). Not only is it physically impossible to give that much, it wouldn’t be healthy if you could give even, say, 100% all the time.

The way people take pride in pushing themselves past their limit baffles me. Then, some of them seem to want a cookie for it as well. Look, you do you. If you want to break your body, that’s your right. But don’t expect me to applaud you for it.

Side note: This is similar to how I feel about dieting. I don’t buy into dieting culture, and I find it deeply harmful. Personally, yes, but also just in general. (Resists impulse to go on a 2,000-word diatribe about dieting.) I have dealt with eating disorders in my late teens/early twenties. Anorexia and bulimia combined–twice.

The second time, I got so many people gushing about my weight loss and asking how I did it. Beside the fact that I really didn’t want to talk about it, I couldn’t even tell them anything that they didn’t already know. Exercise and cutting down on portions. Except I took it to extremes–which was the part I most definitely would not say out loud.

I wanted to shout at them for being so positive about something that was very negative. And, yes, I knew at the time that it was negative–even if I wasn’t convinced it was a real eating disorder. Why? Because as I used to darkly joke with myself, “I didn’t have the will power to have an actual eating disorder.”

But I knew, deep down, that what I was doing wasn’t healthy at the very least. I would spend hours looking at pictures of food as a way to push off cravings. And it would be the same food, like tiramisu. Hours.

Back to burnout and toxic positivity/pushing yourself too hard.

I’ve been able to push back on the ‘give 125%’ mostly. In part it’s because I’m lazy by nature. I’m saying that with a wink and a smirk, but also a wry smile. It’s what people have told me because I don’t seem very ambitious on the outside .My mom once asked me in exasperation (after questioning me what I wanted to do with my life): “You want to work, don’t you?”


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Refining my Taiji/Bagua practice, part two

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In yesterday’s post, I was going to talk about why I don’t do groups–and I’ll get to that (eventually)–but I went waaaaay off the rails as I ended up talking about burnout instead. I decided to go with it because it’s obviously on my mind, and I want to get it under control before I completely lose my shit.

It’s ironic. Weapons have saved me, and now weapons are my burden. I am being completely honest. I can do the warmups/stretches with no problem. Then, my brain goes, “Uhhhhhh”, and I procrastinate. I have to force myself to go through it all. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it as I’m doing it–I do. It’s just a small (or not so small) part of my brain going, “I’m soooooo tired.” To be fair, my sleep has been really shitty lately. I don’t think it’s pneumonia again (hopefully), but I can’t rule it out. I’m not as tired as I was when I had it, but I’m pretty groggy.

Also, it’s not that I physically can’t do it; I can. It’s my mind saying it doesn’t want to. And, yes, my body is tired (as I usually am), but I’m not in any distress while practicing.

Here’s how this relates to my neurodivergence. I tend to go overboard when I’m into something. Way overboard. I don’t know where the ‘this is an appropriate amount of effort and time to put into this’ line is.

Here’s a related tidbit about me. My hunger gauge is completely broken. I struggled with anorexia and bulimia when I was younger. Remember, my mother put me on my first diet when I was seven and hounded me about my weight until I put my foot down in my thirties. It was too late by then, though.

Ok. I had a hunch about neurodivergence and not recognizing internal body signals, and I was right. The ability to know what is going on in your body is called interoception. It’s how you know you’re hungry, tired, thirsty, etc. People with neurodivergence (I could find more about ADHD than autism) have a harder time recognizing their internal signals. Whether it’s because of hyperfocus or just bodily issues in general, people who  are neurodivergent tend to be more susceptible to eating disorders as well.

I say this because I cannot tell when I’m hungry or thirsty. I’m pretty good about drinking regularly, but I’m very bad at eating. I don’t like breakfast, so I don’t eat when I first get up. I like to do my Taiji/Bagua practice before I eat, which means I don’t eat my first full meal* until two or three hours after I wake up.


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Why I don’t do groups

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I have written often how one of my traits is that I reach the end of things. This is both because of my neurospiciness (hyperfocusing on one object/thing until I am suddenly done with it) and because of how I was raised (give until you can’t give any more). I was well-aware of the latter, and I knew it wasn’t a good thing. I talked about it with my therapist several times. She plainly told me it wasn’t a good thing, and I retorted that I knew that already. Oh, here’s the post from yesterday when I started down this path.

Side note: One of the most frustrating things about being pretty self-aware is that I can know what my flaws are, but I can’t always change them quickly if at all. My therapist said that thinking too much was what got me into trouble, and it wasn’t what got me out of it. But thinking was the only tool in my toolkit for so long–I felt lost without it.

I understood what she was trying to say, but every fiber of my being fought against it. I could think my way out of a problem, couldn’t I? I was nothing without my brain! I rebelled against her statement for much longer than I care to admit.

I felt vaguely ashamed for how into things I got before completely abandoning them because I thought it meant something was wrong with me. Also, I felt bad for wasting money on a hobby for months only to let it fall to the wayside completely without ever using/doing all of the hobbies. I remember a time when I was really into jigsaw puzzles. I bought so many of them, and I think I managed to do three or four of them. Granted, I got cats soon after, which made it nigh impossible to do jigsaw puzzles without keeping them out of the room.

I have gotten better to some extent. I haven’t given tons of money to a hobby that I quit in quite some time. One of my latest obsessions, weapons, has lasted for ten years and is an investment. Also, I practice my weapons every day, so it’s not as if I have stuffed all the weapons in my closet and tried to shove them out of my mind, too.

I have to be careful, though, because I want all the weapons. Right now! Some of them are defensible (nice double sabers) and others are not (double butterfly swords). I can’t learn all the weapon forms at one time so it doesn’t make sense to buy them now. And yet.

My inner toddler is pretty demanding. Also, I have the money to buy both items whether I’m going to use them or not. To be clear–I already have a pair of practice double sabers, and I do know the form. I just want the nice pair because they’re gorgeous. Also, because I prefer practicing with real weapons than with practice ones. The real ones feel weighty in my hands and have real heft. The practice ones are lighter and flimsy.


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How my brain works (and doesn’t), part seven

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Sometimes, I just want to give up. Well, lots of times. It’s much less of an impulse now and not nearly as strong, but it’s still there. My brain is tired. I am tired of always trying to be “normal” or anyithing remotely close to it.  Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about struggling to differentiate between my brain being broken and it working as intended (but just differently than other people’s).

I could just say fuck it and go to bed at six or seven. There’s no real reason I can’t do that–it’s not like I usually have to get up at a specific time. Well, one day a week and two other days every other week I have a set time to get up, but that’s not a big problem. Only one is in the morning and would be a real problem.

I want to be…not normal, per se, but not such a weirdo. I’ve written about this before. I’m not one of those who is slightly odd or just one deviation from normal. I’m a freak. However, not in the way that, say, artists are freaks. I don’t drink or do drugs, so that makes me an outlier for that group of people as well.

In fact, I don’t do groups in general because I will never fit in. That part doesn’t bother me because I’m used to it and I’ve given up the hope that I will find a group that is my people. Not because I don’t think there aren’t people who are my people out there–it’s because groups tend to fall to the lowest common denomination.

Hm. That’s not quite what I wanted to say, either. It’s really hard to explain without making it sound like sour grapes. I’ll try my best. When a group of over, say, ten people (actually, maybe even over five) gather, there has to be a code of conduct, whether it’s verbalized or not. Maybe not so much a code of conduct, but any group needs norms.

The problem is the more people a group has, the less the ability and/or desire to monitor behaviors. And, because groups are microcasms of the world around them, that means that all the things that are wrong in the world at large will always be present in a group.

This is why there needs to be explicit rules and miscreants need to be dealt with swiftly. Conventions learned this the very hard way. Many of the comic/gaming ones are, well, were filled with misogynist bullisht. And racist bullshit. The groups who put on the cons tried to ignore the problem for a long time, but it reached a tipping point, and it exploded messily all over everything.

I don’t know how the tipping point happened, but afterwards, many cons started having posted code of conducts and got more serious about making their minority con attenders feel safer. It’s become a standard, and now it’s weirder not to have a code of conduct than it is to have one.


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Why my brain doesn’t brain, part six

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I want to talk more about how my brain works–or doesn’t. In the last post, I went way off the tracks as is my wont, and I never really made my way back to the main road. Who knows if I’ll do the same thing today? (I will. I always do.)

I was talking to my mother tonight, and she was lamenting that she hadn’t been shopping in a real store in such a long time. Nor does she really feel comfortable shopping online. She was castigating herself for not doing the former, putting it in very negative terms. I was saddened for her because of the huge amount of shame she was carrying because of it. And I understood because I did the same thing to myself more often than not.

She was shaming herself and saying she was getting agoraphobia as a reason for not going shopping. I stopped her and said that she had a lot to deal with, so it made sense that it would be harder for her to go shopping. In other words, it didn’t always have to do with mental health. This was something I had a hard time deciphering. Sometimes, it was my mental health issues acting up. Sometimes it’s something that anyone in the situation would do. And sometimes, it’s just the way my brain works.

In other words, it’s not always a mental health issue–though sometimes it can be, of course. Anwdn it’s not always my particular way of thinking. Sometimes, anyone would react in the same way in the same situation. It’s just hard to tell when I’m used to defaulting to there’s something wrong with me.

One thing I talk about with A is how to decide which flaws I want to actually change and which I’ve accepted. This is getting past the point of shaming myself for everything I think of is wrong with me. For example. I work to the back of a deadline. My mother and I used to have friction over this when I did editing for her. She would give me a date, and I would assume that was the date she wanted it by. It was usually a date far in the future, so I would file it in the back of my brain and move on.

A week or two later, my mother would ask how it was going, and then  be not happy when I said I hadn’t even started. We did this song and dance for far too long (Midwestern and Taiwanese cultures at work here) until I finally brought it up to her. She said that the date she gave me was the ‘last resort’ date. Secretly, she wanted me to get it to her about a week or two after she sent me the piece to edit.

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More about my weirdo brain, part five

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I want to talk more about my brain and how for the longest time I thought it was broken. And why it’s important to talk about mental health issues.

Side note: (And, yes, this soon into the post). There is a toxic positivity that pervades American thought that says if you work hard enough, you can overcome anything. Any time there’s a success story, it’s trotted out as proof that hard work and a positive attitude are all that’s needed to succeed. Which is not true at all. Yes, both of those things are needed, but so are luck, synchonicity, and did I mention luck? Luck plays a huge part in success, no matter how much Americans want to deny it, ignore it, or are oblivious to it.

Take my medical crisis. A few months before it happened, my brother had a friend who got pneumonia and went to the doctor. The doctor said because he could breathe, he should just take the meds the doctor prescribed. Then, the doctor sent him home. This was during the pandemic so hospitals were struggling with the overload of patients. My brother’s friend woke up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe. His wife called 911, and an ambulance was sent. During the ambulance ride, Regions Hospital called the ambulance to tell the EMTs that they, the hospital, had no rooms. The ambulance had to go to a different hospital, and my rbother’s friend had a heart attack and died.

A few months later, I woke up and could not breathe (Or I was still awake. It was three in the morning, so the latter is more likely than the former). I managed to call 911, and the police managed to get to my house in less than four minutes. How do I know? I’ll get to that in a second.

I managed to follow the instructions form the 911 operator. I kept talking to them while I stumbled to the front door. I unlocked it and then promptly passed out. I do not remember any of this, by the way. I had to be told about it later.

The cops knew to bag me when  they came because I wasn’t breathing. When the EMTs came, I had a cardiac arrest. I had another on the way to the hospital. Oh, and the thing I always forget or just tack it on as an after thought–the ischemic stroke.

I was unconscious by the time we got to the hospital. I stayed that way for a week. I eventually found out that it all started wiht me having walking (non-Covid-related) pneumonia. So my story was very much like my brother’s friend, except I got all the lucky breaks. This was ALL luck. Or as I like to say, I got through with the help of love, Taiji, and luck.

You could argue that Taiji was on me–meaning that I actually have worked on it. It’s something  I have done and continue to do. But the other two? I had no control over that. Oh, sure. You could say that my friends and brother love me for me, which is about me. However, it’s still not something I actively did, if that makes sense. And luck? Well the word itself is self-explanatory.


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My brain and me, part four

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Let’s talk more about how my brain is weird. I’ll give a very recent example. Tonight (last night? About five hours ago), my carbon monoxide detector/smoke alarm went off. I thought it was four quick, sharp (and loud) beeps in rapid succession while the lights flashed green. I looked it up, and four beeps meant CO. Before I go any further, here’s my post from yesterday.

I’ve had one go off before, and it was because it had reached the end of its life. I read a lot of conflicting information about the beeps, but I finally decided that calling 911 and just explaining the situation as I did the last time was probabl yfor the best. Three policemen came, and I explained what happened. We tested the detector/alarm (I had put the two batteries in wrong, so we put them in the riht way and tested it.) It was actually beeping five times. We counted several times. That meant it was at the end of its life, but why is it so close to the actual alert for CO, I don’t know.

They checked the gas levels all over my house, and there was nothing. The lead cop told me to buy a new one (I only had one) and to monitor how I was feeling. I knew the basics–flu-like symptoms, dizziness, etc. The lead cop told me that I really don’t want to turn chherry red.

I’m not overly concerned, but there is a nagging thought in the back of my mind that maybe there is gas somewhere. And I should have tried harder to get the detectors (I’m getting them tomorrow morning). I don’t think that’s so unusual, but I don’t know.

That’s the worst part of having a weirdo brain. Not knowing what is normal and what isn’t. I don’t think this is that unusual (to be worried even though there’s no real reason to). The higher the stakes, the more the worry explodes. And even though the chance of dying from CO poisoning is minimal, it’s impossible to detect except for with a detector.

I don’t know if I’m overreacting or underreacting. Or maybe just reacting? It’s so hard for me to gauge. Also, I’m tired AF because I only got three-ish hours of sleep last night. So knowing whether I’m fatigued or not is not that possible. I was joking with the lead cop that who wasn’t fatigued these days? He had a girlfriend and a child, so he knew all about tired.

He sent his cohorts back to the cop shop to get the CO monitor, and we chatted while they were gone. I learned about his prior jobs and how he ended up in New Brighton on the night shift. It was a nice little chat, and I proved I can be normal when I need to be. Granted, I had a vested interest in keeping the cops on my good side, but still. I was able to talk like a normal person, and that felt good.


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Me and my brain, part three

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Let’s talk more about me and my broken brain. I say that with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but I still half-believe it. Or rather, I know that I think very differently than most other people. I have accepted that, and I’m mostly ok with it. The hardest part is when I say something that I think it totally vanilla and get an outsized reaction to it. That’s when I completely retreat into myself and shut down. I hate when I’m trying my very best, and it’s still not good enough.

Which, honestly, is how I feel most of the time when I interact with the normies. I’m always calibrating what I should say and what I shouldn’t. And usually erring on the side of not saying something if it’s even close to questionable. That’s why I’m miffed when I say something that I consider safe and then I get shit for it, anyway. Oh, and here is my post from yesterday before I go any further with this post.

You know what’s also frustrating? Neurotypical people saying that everyone has to mask or hide parts of their true selves at work (or other times). While it’s true that everyone has to mask to o certain extent, it’s the extent and amount of effort that matters. And it’s discounting how much more neurodivergent people have to mask than normies.

Side note: I could say that about any minority, by the way. It’s a point I wish normies would truly internalize. Minorities have to go the extra mile-and-a-half past where they (the normies are) just to be considered equal. Plus, we always have to make the calculation of how much of ourselves we can show. In some ways it’s better now than it was when I was in my twenties, but in many ways, it’s much worse.

One of the big ones is queer issues, especially trans issues, obviously. It’s horrifying how quickly and viciously the current administration is attacking civil rights for queer people. Every time I check the news, they are trying something or the other to do harm to me and my kin. It’s reached the point where I don’t want to hear anything on the news because it’s just going to make me angrier.

I was talking in the Discord I’m in about dating. I mentioned that I haven’t dated in quite some time in part because the last two times I thought about dating, rather big events interrupted that train of thought (the pandemic and me dying (twice!), respectively). I know it’s superstition, but I’m worried about trying for a third time.

Also, I’m overwhelmed every time I go on the apps. There is just so much there, I don’t really know what to do. One person in the Discord suggested doing backstage steps first. Such as writing out what I was looking for to make it clearer in my mind. I told her that was what actually worked for me, anyway. Breaking things into micro-steps, I mean.


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How my brain works (or not), part two

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For the first forty years of my life, I thought my brain was broken. I didn’t think like other people, and for the first few decades of my life, I thought that meant there was something wrong with me. It didn’t help that I had very old-fashioned Taiwanese parents who were more than willing to criticize every aspect of me. I was too loud, not feminine enough, too fat, just too much in general. Here is the post I wrote yesterday in which I wrote a lot about politics. Which is a side tangent, but also not a side tangent. Which I also said in the post.

I thought I was worthless and broken when I was a kid until I was in my twenties. Hm, scratch that. It was until my mid-thirties. Then, I started taking Taiji, and that helped me feel better about myself in agonizingly tiny incremental steps. It wasn’t until about five years ago after my medical crisis that I realized I was probably autistic (with the help of a friend who was also autistic).

I thought I couldn’t be because of how strong the stereotypical depiction of an autistic person as a young, hapless, white man who stims, can’t look people in the eyes, and makes clueless comments all the time is so pervasive. Oh, and that he has little to no empathy. It’s the last one that made me think I had no chance at being autistic. For several years, I thought that I might have ADHD because that fit better. The lack of focus until I hyperfocus. The scattered attention. Those were the main ones.

I knew there was something wrong with my brain–I just wanted to figure out what it was. This is one of the arguments I’ve had with K. She thinks that there is too much emphasis on…how do I phrase this correctly? We are both proponents of mental health awareness. She’s just less enthused about how much it’s emphasized now. She said we dealt with it as kids and figured things out. I pointed out in a snappish tone that some didn’t figure it out. Like me.

I spent so many years thinking it was me when it mostly wasn’t. I mean, it’s always partly one’s one fault because no one is perfect. However, the way I thought was not my fault–or rather, it wasn’t because my brain was broken or wrong–it was just different. And had I been told this when I was a kid, I would have had a much easier time in life.

You would think that having a psychologist as a mother would have made these things much better for me, but that would only be true if she was a good psychologist. Which, sadly, was not true. Her flaws as a human being interfered with her ability to be an effective psychologist. In fact, she went back to Taiwan so she could escape some of the constraints she faced here in America. Like mentioning religion in a session.

Honestly, the vast majority of my self-esteem issues stem from her constant and persistent criticism of every part of my being. I cannot name a single thing she liked about me when I was a child. I was never enough, and she pushed me to do a wide variety of things I didn’t want to do. Like a typical Asian mom, my brother and I had to take music lessons. I did piano for a few years and then cello for eight or nine years. dance lessons for twelve, and I played ping-pong, volleyball, and softball. Not on a league, but just played them. Oh, and tennis.


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