Tag: overthinking | A Banana Peeled

Me and my brain, part three

Posted on July 22, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

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.

How my brain works (or not), part two

Posted on July 21, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

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.

Overthinking it v. thinking it through

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I tend to overthink things. By a lot. I’m not talking about spending five more minutes on something than I should, but obsessing over something that I should just let go.

For example, gender. I have talked about it ad nauseam, and I know that it’s not good for my mental health to do so. I also know that for whatever reason, I can’t ever come close to understanding gender. Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to grasp it, but then it slithers out of my hand.

Then, I say to myself, “I’ve made my peace with it.” I may even believe it for a minute or two. However, the dissatisfaction slithers in, and I’m in despair once agian. What is gender? Why can’t I feel it or understand it? Why am I such a freak–yet again? Just once, can’t I be normal?

The answer to that is a most emphatic no. There is nothing about me that is normal. Not my hobbies to my lifestyle to my pop culture tastes to everything else. I have mostly gotten used to it, but it niggles at the back of my mind now and again.

Especially in a time when my federal government is actively hurting me and mine. I have said that I’m relieved at the last time I had to declare my gender on my driver’s license that I chose F. Even though it’s the first time they included NB, and I would have chosen that if I was thirty years younger. This time, though, it was right before the elections. There was much muttering from certain people* about the queers something or the other blah blah blah I always close my ears at this point.

I will say it’s always amazed me that people can get so wound up at a tiny minority of people who have no impact on them at all. Not directly. And, no, “they’re ruining women’s sports” or “they’re a menance in the women’s bathroom” are such bullshit.

By the way. Those arguments are never made in good faith. Do you know how I know this? Because the same people are not concerned about domestic violence abuse victims, the vast number of sexual assualts in America, or any other array of issues that face women, nonbinary people, genderqueer people, agender people, and, yes, indeed, even men in this country. The only time the conservatives roll out ‘but the wimminz’ bullshit is when it comes to their transphobic bullshit.

Pardon me if I don’t believe them when they bleat about caring for women when the do everything they can to make life harder for women in so many ways*. Pardon me again for giving such heavy side-eye at the faux concern.

Here’s the thing. There always has to be a bogeywoman the pols can point at so the slavering masses. For me, it started wiht Reagan and the ‘welfare queen’. Thus began the stereotype of the black woman trying to game the welfare system while driving a Cadillac to said welfare appointments. Reagan also systematically further disenfranchised gay men during the first AIDs crisis, but I’m not going to talk about that, either.

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