Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: mental health

I’m channeling my inner Veruca Salt (martial arts)

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about the connection between my obsessive nature and my love of martial arts weapons. It’s been a long and bumpy road in discovering my neurospiciness. Now that I know that I am some flavor of ND (and probably more than one), I have to make the decision if I want to get a diagnosis (diagnoses) or not. I’m not here to talk about that right now, though!

I’m Veruca Salt at the moment (and, yes, I’m including that scene below yet again) in that I want it all now. Every weapon form at this very moment. I don’t want to have to take time to learn them; I just want the knowledge to be magically implanted into my brain by osmosis. As I noted in yesterday’s post, I am currently obsessed with the Double Fan Form. I don’t know it yet, mind, but I really, really want to learn it.

Here’s the funny thing about the Fan Form. It’s the most feminine of the forms  I know. I am not a feminine person at all. And yet, I have always been drawn to the fan. It’s the weapon form I most wanted to learn, and I kept pressing my teacher to teach it to me. She kept pushing back, but would not say why. She did show me some fan drills, but that was as far as she would go.

What I have learned since then is that the weapons are not her thing, and she does not feel as confident about teaching them as she does the Solo Forms and other non-weapon-related Taiji. to her credit, she hid it well and did her best. As she always says, anyone with more time in the practice than you had was a master to you.

It’s similar to how when you’re a kid, you think your parents know everything. Or in my case, you think that your parents are normal because you have nothing to compare them with. Actually, it was more that I thought I was broken and just utterly wrong because that’s how they treated me. They were the gold standard, and I fell short all the time.

Taiji helped me in that it gave me some self-esteem, confidence, and at least a willingness to try to set boundaries.. Unfortunately, my mother does not know the meaning of the word ‘no’, and her M.O. is just to batter you until you give in. My broethr and I have learned that it’s easier to pick your battles. In other words, we give in on the little things and then stand up on the things that we really don’t want to do. That can only be once every year or so because my mother doesn’t take well to it–at all–and will become incredibly nasty in a very passive-aggressive way.


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More on martial arts and me

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I am still working on finessing my Fan Form. At the same time, I was fucking up a few steps in the Cane Form, so I went back to watch the videos I had taken of my teacher doing the form. There is one simple movement that I forgot when I first learned the Cane Form, and while I focused on it in re-teaching myself, I forgot about it again soon after. And I’m practicing it every day! Right side one day, left side the next. I don’t know when I fogrot the movement, but now I’m committed to watching the video every day for at least a week in order to cement it in my mind.

It’s frustrating that’s it’s the easiest movement in the form, too. Well, in the top five, at any rate. I’ll see if I can describe it. Imagine facing forward with the cane held in the right hand, left hand lightly touching the right hand. I’m lunging forward with the cane pointing up in the air and to the left side of my face. It’s the next posture that I keep forgetting. In it, I step forward with my left foot and swing the cane to the right side and move it to a horizontal position.

Before I continue, here is the post from yesterday. In it, I mentioned finding the Double Fan Form, and I will include a video of one such form below.

It is so unbelievably easy, and that’s probably why I forget it. As I have established in prior posts, I tend to let my mind wander when something is easy. If it’s hard, I will focus and pay attention. But if it’s simple, then my brain tells me that I can learn it while only half paying attention.

Side note: I have recently fully realized that I am neurospicy. I have not been tested for it, but in talking with a friend about her neurospiciness, I’ve slowly come to realize that I am probably autistic. I used to suspect I had ADHD, but I  had no clue about autism because I had bought into the stereotypes of what it looked like. Young white boys who stimmed, wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye, and had no capacity for empathy.

In the last year or so, I have researched it and talked about it endlessly with my friend. She sent me a few quizzes to take, and I score firmly in the autism camp. She explained to me that especially in non-men, the symptoms were very different. Also, it’s not that autistic people don’t have empathy, indeed, they can feel it more deeply than neurotypical people. It’s just that in our society with all the rules and regulations we have about social etiquette, many neuroatypical people don’t know the “appropriate” (in quotes because it’s all constructed) way to show those feelings in society.


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More about Taiji (and Bagua) and me

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I can talk about martial arts for hours on end and never get tired of it. In class today, we went overc the Fair Ladies, which is something I’m struggling with on the left side. It’s in the beginning of the third section of the Solo Long Form, and it’s something that my teacher’s teacher has recently tweaked. He has changed two of the four Fair Ladies into Master Choi ones rather than Master Liang’s. In the previous form, all four of the Fair Ladies were Master Liang’s. Oh, by the way, the movement is called Fair Ladies Weaving at Their Shuttles so you can see why I call them My Fair Ladies. Or not. It could just be my brain.

I realized in teching myself the left side of the form that I have been fudging the new Fair Ladies. To be fair to me (heh), I was taught a completely different form a decade-and-a-half ago. They were awkward and overly elaborate, and I was just never comfortable with them. Then, they were changed about a decade ago to be much more streamlined and simpler. They were all Master Liang’s Fair Ladies, which were purely for health. Now, there are two of his (for health) and two of Master Choi’s (for combat). They are much more intuitive, but I have not yet gotten them into my body. Why? Because I practice the third section much less than the first two.

One really good thing about teaching myself the left side of any form is that it makes me clarify the squidgy parts of the right side of the form. Funnily, there are a few movements that I do better on the left side than the right, but they are few and far between.

The third section is roughly 17 minutes, which is longer than the other two sections put together. It’s natural to practice the first section the most, then the second, then the third. And it’s natuaral to fudge things when they’re fuzzy in the memory.

I filmed my teacher doing the first section a few weeks ago. I have that section down pretty well. I’m going to film her doing the second section soon, and I know that I’ll have problems here and there with that section. Then, the third section at some point. I asked if I should start with the third section because it’s the one I knew the least, but she said it was fine to start with the first section.

Now that I’m done with the Fan Form, I’m going to spend the next few days polishing it. Then, it’s the Karambit Form. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I had to go into detective mode in order to figure out what I was doing wrong in one specific part of the Fan Form. How I kept missing what the teacher was doing even though I studied (I thought) her very carefully. Even when I was looking at her right hand as she caught the fan, I was looking at the fan and not her hand.


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Taiji, Bagua, and me

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Let’s talk about hubris. In yesterday’s post, I had said that I would be fine with tutoring several different forms. In class yesterday morning, I led a beginner student in the first several movements in the third section of the Solo Long Form. I forgot the name of a movement I’ve done several hundred times, and I was a bit unsure on the counts. Plus, I went much faster than my teacher (I tend to rush in general), and I was a bit flustered as I was on Zoom and she (the student) was in person.

It’s teacher’s fright, really. My teacher has talked about how it’s a form of stage/ performance fright. Of course, it works the opposite way as well. You can know a segment of the a form to perfection and then lose it when the teacher watches you do it.

When I used to perform, I would do Taiji beforehand in order to chill out. I don’t know what I would do before a Taiji demo, though, because would Taiji help me chill out before doing Taiji again? Probably a little. Also, just accepting that I’m going to fuck up is probably the best thing to do. That’s what my teacher advises, and she’s very cool about us making mistakes.

I am nearly done with teaching myself the Fan Form. Obviously, it’s much easier the second time around than it was the first. There were whole chunks I could just glide on by, but I still had to polish up little movements here and there in the sections I remembered. Normally, I would be castigating myself, but for whatever reason, I was not upset that I hadn’t remembered crhunks of the Fan Form.

I think it’s because it’s the first form I taught myself after my medical crisis. Or right before it, but had to reteach it to myself. I think it’s the former, but I’m not sure. It’s the form of my teacher’s teacher’s (other) student. She has her own studio in Denver (I think it’s Denver), and my teacher’s teacher has given it his aproval. If it’s good enough for him, it’s obviously good enough for me.

It’s fascinating how I’ve completely forgotten chunks of the Fan Form. I had said to my teacher before that it seemed a bit short–well, yeah. That’s because I forgot roughly ten of the movements! Or melded a few together. I’m not saying it’s long, but it’s definitely not short. I also said that I wanted more opening and closing of the fan. And, yes, I had forgotten a few of those, too.

It’s taught me a lesson about how I teach myself. I tend to do everything quickly, whether it’s learning, practicing Taiji, or typing. This is no a brag, humble or not, but it’s just facts. It can be a deterrence when I don’t learn something quickly because then I tend to just give up.


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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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The face of my depression

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I’ve been talking about Taiji, mental health, and me for the past week-and-a-half. Today, I want to tell you how I know that my depression is deepening. In the last post, I talked more about my family dysfunction. I kinda rushed it at the end because it was very late and I was very tired. You can tell because it abruptly ended with no real conclusion as to waht I was saying.

My point of that post was that abuse twists everything. And that sometimes it’s more complicated than one person is the abuser and the other person is the abused. I have always felt that was too simplistic, along with the idea that you can’t question anything an abused person does. The latter makes me very uneasy, but that is not the point of this post. I bring it up because the uncomfortable truth is that a person who is being abused can simultaneously abuse others. Especially in the case of parents.

It’s true. My father was emotionally abusive to my mother. He was awful to her. He cheated on her and didn’t bother hiding it. It was an open secret, but no way anyone could bring it up to him. Everyone in our church knew it and covered it up. Which was a separate issue. He was mean to my mother, dismissive of her, and treated her as unpaid help. She had to work full-time (which was strange for a Taiwanese man to demand, but in keeping with my father’s fear of being poor), do all the household chores, and take care of us kids as well.

My father was openly disdainful of her as a woman and a person. It was clear that he thought women were sub-human. I mean, he didn’t think much of other men, either, but at least he treated them as human beings. To a certain extent. It’s the alpha-male thing/social class thing. If a man was above him in some way, then my father would pay him at least nominal respect.

My brotehr is not the most observant of men, but even he noticed that my father treated us differently based on our gender. Again, it wasn’t as if he showed a lot of respect for my brother, but it was at least a whit more than he showed me (which was none). And he respected that my brother had expertise in at least one area–technology. Me? No.

Here’s a two-part illustration of this. I did not date before I was sixteen. There were a lot of reasons for it, and it did a number on my already scraping-the-floor self-esteem. My father, out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, offered me the following advice. He said, “If you want to get a boyfriend–” Here, I braced myself because I knew that whatever followed was not going to be good. Remember, we were not talking about dating or anything like this when he pulled this out. “You need to raise your voice an octave or two, let a boy beat you in a sport/game, and ask him to teach you something.” I was appalled. I retorted, “If that’s what it takes to get a boyfriend, then I’ll stay single for the rest of my life.”


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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 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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