Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: therapy

Unbreak my braaaaaaain

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I want to talk more about mental health. I think now is a good time to get a therapist, but as is the bitter irony of mental health issues–the time when one most needs a therapist is the time when it’s the hardest to summon up the energy to find one. This is a well-known problem with depression, by the way.

When I first got out of the hospital, my depression was about 90% gone. My anxiety was down by about 60% (meaning I had roughly 40%) what I used to have. Over the years, both slowly crept back. Now, I would say my depression is about 80% of what it used to be (before my medical crisis), and my anxiety is about 75%. In other words, they are both back in almost full force.

Am I surprised by that? Not really. I have had depression since I was seven, and I’m sure I’ve had anxiety nearly as long if not equally so, but I just never recognized  that anxiety was a thing. Not even when I was a psych major in college. It just wasn’t really well-recognized back then. Now, it’s acknowledged to be a thing, which is good. But I have a hard time grappling with it, even more so than depression.

Depression is…weird. Since I’ve had it for so long, in a weird way, it’s almost a friend. Or at least a longterm adversary with whom I am so intimate. I know it so well. I know every trick in its bag, but that doesn’t mean that I know how to deal with it or repeel it. I do think I’m better at dealing with it now than I was twenty years ago, but better does not equal good, sadly.

One thing I would really like to learn in therapy is to set healthy boundaries. Again, I’m better at it than I was twenty years ago, thanks to Taiji; I’m still not good at it, however, especially with my parents. I think this is the biggest problem, frankly.

My mother thinks of me as her emotional support person. This is not just a guess on my part–she has said, out loud, with her outside voice, that I was her therapist. When I tried to protest, she said that she could not find a legit one because she knows all of them personally in Taiwan*.

One thing you need to know about my mother–if she makes up her mind about something, nothing will change her mind. She can find a million excuses not to do something. I’m saying this while shaking my head beacuse I’m like that. I’m sure I get it from her, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. In fact, as the truism goes, it probably angers me so much because it points out something  I don’t like in myself.


Continue Reading

Mental health is a health issue

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I may have to move mental health issues to the top of my list. I have been dealning with my mental health issues mostly by burrowing my head in the sand keeping my news input to a bare minimum.

Today, though, living in the Twin Cities made it impossible to avoid the most explosive and horrific news of the day. The killing of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent. I heard about it tangentially, and then I discussed it with several friends.

I’m outraged, furious, scared, and–numb. This year has been too much, and it’s been especially stressful for us Minnesotans because we’re being targeted by the federal government. There are several reasons for this, and I am frightened about the upcoming  governor’s election. While we vote Democratically on a federal level (though just barely in the last election, worryingly enough), we’re all over the map locally. We tend to split the vote, and the batch of batshit Republicans running for office, especially mayor, is making me very nervous.

These are dark days in this country. Our president just attempted a coup of a foreign country because he wanted their oil; he’s embroiled in nasty business (I mean, he always is, but this time, it’s especially nasty); and now, this.

It’s really hard to look back at the last year and not be filled with despair. I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t think it was going to go to hell in a handbasket so quickly and so starkly.

Early in 2024, I had to get my driver’s license renewed. When I went to the DMV in order to do so, I was pleasantly surprised to see that nonbinary was the third gender option (it had only been male and female before). We are one of the most progressive states in the country–at least the Twin Cities are progressive. Not so much so the rest of the state (like many states).

And yet.

My heart sank when I saw that third option. Why? Because I knew there was a very real possibility that we would have the return of a certain president as president once again, and he had made it quite clear that he would de everything in his power to discriminate against queer people of all different stripes*.

Nonbinary is not my chosen term, but if I were twenty years younger and if *gestures helplessly at the world around me*, I probably would use it instead of woman. Or maybe not. It doesn’t really fit me, but it’ll do in a pinch. I default to not calling myself anything, really. I don’t mind so much when others call me ‘she’ or a woman, but it’s not how I think of myself.


Continue Reading

The good and the bad

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Here we are at two in the morning once again, and I’m just starting this post. I have gotten into a bad rut with my sleep (and awake time), and while I know what the problem is, I can’t make myself change it. I end up frittering away so many hours during the day, and then only when I should be sleeping, do I buckle down to do what I should be doing.

Sigh.

I know this is part of my depression. I know my mental health is really shaky right now. I know I should be doing something about it (therapy), but I just can’t make myself. Much like the other issues in my life. I know what needs to be done, but I have such a hard time making myself do it.  Even when I know each step, I can’t make myself do it. I’m fighting myself, and it’s so hard.

Plus, my brain is having intrusive thoughts. Nothing too bad, but just thoughts that make it harder for me to sleep. The last thing I need is to have my sleep be more difficult than it already is. Oh, we did hav an inch or two of snow yesterday. That was nice. It was so light and fluffy. Most of it didn’t stick, and it’s all gone now, but it was a nice respite. We’re supposed to get flurries tomorrow, too.

I just feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. And that no one loves me. I know the latter is not true as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, but it’s still in my brain. Again, I know it’s lies. I know it’s the brain weasels. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel real.

I just looked at one of my issues with Comcast. And how it could actually be something I’m doing. Sigh. The solution (if it’s truly what I think it is) isn’t that big a deal, but it’s still a shift in my thinking and behavior. And it feels burdesome, even if it doesn’t end up being so. I’ll have to wait and see because it’s a billing thing, and I won’t know for sure for at least a week.I need enough time to gauge whether my efforts are working or not.

I am still working on my weapons, and it’s the one good thing in my life on the  daily. I mean apart from the people I love. It’s so damn hard, though. I just have this voice in the back of my head berating me for all sorts of things. It’s not as bad as it used to be, and I know it’s talking shit, but it’s still diffifult to ignore.


Continue Reading

The face of my depression

Posted on by • 0 Comments

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.”


Continue Reading

New gooals for a new year

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I have tried them in the past, but I find it too much pressure. It’s because the tendency is to go big and to go hard for a week or so and then fall off. It’s why gyms sell so many memberships in the first few weeks of the year (and probably why they make them yearly.  Or at least did. I’m hoping that’s an outdated mode of operation).

In addition, it’s artifical to set it up to do things differently in a new year. I get it. It makes sense to have a fresh start in a fresh year. And there is something about mentally tearing off that December page that signifies the end of an era. Especially since for me, last year was the first whole bonus year that I had.

The beginning of 2022 was me coming to terms with still being alive. Then, Elden Ring was released at the end of February and that was the next six months sorted. Time flew and before I knew it, it was the end of the year.

2023. It seems so weird to write that. I do have a few goals that I would like to reach in the new year. It may just be a matter of semantics, but I have decided that goals are better than resolutions. The latter are too declarative and like a fait accompli. It feels much more like pressure, which I don’t need. The latter are more like suggestions or rather, something to aim for. Plus, it can be year-long rather than just doing it in discrete moments. Discrete, not discreet, by the way. That was one of my pet peeves when I was using Craigslist personals, by the way (yes, I’m that old). People saying they wanted ‘discrete’ lovers, not ‘discreet’ lovers. Not that I was going to help someone cheat on their partner, but if I were, I certainly was not going to do it for someone who could not discenrn discrete from discreet.

So. What are my goals for 2023? I have three. Well, more than that, but three serious ones. The not-so-serious ones are to get laid and get paid. Well, the former, anyway. I have not had sex in quite some time, and I started thinking about dating before I ended up in the hopsital. Seriously, it was a few months before my medical crisis that I was girding my loins to return to the apps. Obviously, that was put on the backburner after I left the hospital. I had other things I needed to concentrate on.

Now, however, it’s been over a year and I’ve gotten a clean bill of health. I’ve had it for a year. I’ve been back to my old self (or some facsimile of) for nearly a year as well. I have no desire to be with someone because that brings out the worst in me, but I am ready to have sex.


Continue Reading

The way forward is obscure

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m depressed. I have to come out and say it because I’ve been downplaying it for over a year. Maybe two? I remember when it hit me, and I thought, “I’ll just wait it out. It won’t be that long.” My days of crippling chronic depression were behind me, or so I thought. I haven’t felt anything as mind-crushing as the depression I felt in my twenties, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear. I was passively suicidal in that I wasn’t trying to kill myself, but I wasn’t trying to prevent it, either. I would drive without my seat belt on short trips just to tempt fate, for example. It was a bad period of my life, and I tend to compare any current depression to that one to gauge how bad it is. That’s good on one hand because it reminds me of how bad it has been in the past and hasn’t been since. It’s bad on the other because then it’s easy for me to dismiss whatever I’m feeling now because it’s not like it used to be.

Side note: I have so many things I need to do that I have been putting off. Have a dead tooth taken care of. Find a new doctor because my old one left the network. Find a therapist because I know that I’m struggling. The downside of depression is that it makes reasonable tasks seem insurmountable.

Side note to the side note: I’m not doing well physically, either. I got a raging cold Christmas Eve, and I’ve been more sick than not since then. I had a week and a half of being relatively healthy, and then three or four days ago, I got slammed with a host of issues. The first being me sleeping eight or nine hours a night. I normally sleep six to seven hours a night, and one way I know I’m getting sick is when I hit eight or more hours. I’ve also had random chills, and I do not get cold. The only time I get chills is when I’m sick. The last three days (including today), I’ve woken up with a burgeoning migraine, and I’ve slammed two generic migraine Excedrin tablets the last two days, but I recently read that you can build up a tolerance to the meds and should not use more than ten doses (2 caplets in a 24-hour period) in a month, so I’m trying to ration them out. Today was not quite as bad as yesterday, so I did not take the Excedrin. I’m regretting it right now, though.

Side note III: Comorbidity is a thing, and I’m pretty sure my physical and mental health issues are interacting. Or rather, they’re making each other worse. One part of my depression is castigating myself for not doing whatever it is I need to do. My family is very industrious, and it’s hard for me to not see how I’m failing, even if I physically can’t do more than I am. I remember the last time I was in Taiwan, everyone wanted to walk to the top of a mountain. I knew I wasn’t going to make it, but I kept pushing on. I got hot and sweaty, and my heart started pounding. I didn’t want to say anything, and I suffered for longer than I should have. I was nearly in tears by the time I said I had to stop, and I felt so ashamed. And, I knew my parents put it down to me being fat (which they wrote to me about later in excruciating detail), but it wasn’t. Yes, I was fat. I still am. But even when I was at my fittest and walking four and a half miles a day, I still felt like shit while doing it, and I always ran out of breath going uphill.

Side note IV: I have the lungs of an eighty-year old. My last doctor told me that, and it was a relief to hear. I’ve always had a problem with breathing–I mean, I breathe, therefore, I am–and it was good to know that it wasn’t just my imagination. I’ve gotten better with the aid of taiji, but I’m still short of breath more often than not.

I have to push myself to do anything other than my normal day routine. Even then, I have to push a bit. I don’t want to do anything but just sit and stare blankly at the ceiling. There is little joy to be had in Whoville, and I pretty much just want to let everything go. Again, I’m not suicidal, though I have flashes of it, but I’m tired of trying to live.


Continue Reading

I’m my own worst enemy

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m tired. My sleep is fucked, which means at least I’m not sick. My sinuses are still all over the map, and I’m squarely blaming that on the weather. It’s been 50 to 89 and everywhere in between. I’m loving the former, but not the latter, and my body really doesn’t like the rapid changes. I’ve also become even more intolerant of heat, and my love of the cold is gradually diminishing as well. I used to be able to keep the car windows open until it was well in the sub-zero temps. Now, I close it when it’s zero.

I have said that the problem with getting old isn’t that I can’t do what I used to (though that is starting to be a problem), but that it takes much longer for me to recover. I used to be able to get by on four hours of sleep a night (barely); I could go out until the wee hours of the night and sleep it off the next day. Now, I could go out all night, but it would take a few days to recover.

I also have to admit that my depression is back and not going away any time soon. It’s low key, and it’s not paralyzing the way it has been in the past, but it definitely permeates my mood. There’s an ever-present feeling of ‘why bother’, which seeps into everything. It’s frustrating as hell, and I know the only thing I can do about it is to go to therapy.

*deep sigh*

I do Not want to go to therapy. Not because I think it’s worthless; I don’t. I am a big proponent of therapy, and I have been in it many times in my life. I have learned a lot from therapy, and I know I could learn more. However, the thought of finding a new therapist makes me want to curl up in a ball and never get up.

Continue Reading

Depression is a tricky bastard it is

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’ve been experiencing a medium-grade depression for roughly six months, and it’s time to admit it isn’t going away on its own. I gutted it out the first few months because I thought it was temporary, but now, I fear it’s not true. I want to mention that I always have a low-grade depression. Always. Some days, it’s very minimal. Some days, it pushes the line between low and medium, but it never goes completely away. There is an argument to be had whether it’s depression or anxiety or a combination of both, but whatever it is, I’ve come to accept it in my life.

I do not want to accept the medium-grade depression, though, because it’s actively hindering me. When I have a low-grade depression, I can still go about my life and do what needs to be done with little problem. With medium-grade depression, the intrusive thoughts are more intrusive, and it’s harder to ignore them or brush them away. In addition, the depression knows me and my weaknesses very well, and it uses the knowledge against me. Once I catch on to its manipulations and become immune to them, it changes its tactics.

For example. When I used to be severely depressed, an entity I called The Dictator would tell me that I was toxic, worthless, and no one would care if I died. It told me that the people I thought were my friends weren’t really, that they were just being nice. Why would anyone want to be my friend? I didn’t have any redeeming qualities. I was fat, loutish, uninteresting, and unattractive. I firmly believed this, and no one could tell me anything to the contrary.

Now, I don’t believe any of that. Well, I am fat, but that’s just a descriptor and not a pejorative. I also think I’m boring, but I’m willing to believe that’s just me being hard on myself. I no longer think The Dictator is a part of me, but I haven’t gotten rid of the depression. It’s changed its attack, however, because it’s a sly and sneaky bastard. Now, instead of telling me the above, it tells me that I’m worthless because I’m not doing anything with my life. I don’t have an office job. I’m not moving up in the world. I don’t have many friends. I’m not putting out content in a way that is meaningful, and no one gives a shit about my writing. I’m never going to be published unless it’s self-published. Maybe ten people will actually give a shit if i die, and I’m not counting online people in that number. Not because they’re not real and not because I don’t care about some of them (and they probably care about me in return), but because it’s simply not the same.

All of this is true. Well, most of it is true. Some of it is more a feeling thing than an actual thing, but it leans on the side of being true. It’s hard to argue with any of it, except for the content part. That’s on me. I haven’t done what needs to be done to even have a chance of being a known content producer.

Side Note: I hate that phrase, ‘content producer’, because it’s simultaneously pretentious and antiseptic. But, it’s become an accepted phrase, especially for YouTube/Twitch.

I don’t like the term ‘creative’, either, for someone who produces artistic content, but it’s better than content producer. I like artist, but I understand that it’s not very inclusive. In general, I just like to say I’m a writer.


Continue Reading

Ignorance is Bliss–and Sometimes Necessary Escapism

Posted on by • 0 Comments
relaxation is my game
Chillest cat ever.

Today, I woke up for the first time in two weeks not feeling an all-encompassing sense of dread. That’s not to say I don’t still think we’re fucked (I do), but I didn’t want to repeatedly bash my head against the wall for hours on end. It helped that we were supposed to get snow today, which we are now getting. Fat, fluffy flakes falling aimlessly to the ground. I hope it sticks. I love snow more than almost anything, and seeing it everywhere makes me happy.

I avoided most of the news today. Not because I don’t care, but because I was making myself sick reading about the new presidential team. I have very political friends, and they’ve been diligent about posting the latest news. I can appreciate that, and I think it’s necessary, but it can be overwhelming to see post after post about the horrors that is Trump. I’m still having difficulty accepting that this is the new reality, but glutting on the news isn’t the way to acceptance.

Wanna know what I did instead? I did my morning routine, which calmed me a bit. Then, I started a new Dark Souls (original) playthrough, this time as a tank. Those who have read my posts about Dark Souls know that I love the games* and play them pretty much exclusively now. I’ve tried other games, including Shrouded in Sanity, which is definitely Souls-inspired, but they all pale in comparison to the Souls games. Shrouded in Sanity tries so hard to be Souls, but with a few strange control changes. The heal button is Y instead of X, which is puzzling and too foreign for my brain to grasp. Plus, the camera is manual in a way it’s not in Souls, and there’s no shield. You get a sword and pistol, much like Bloodborne, which means you have to rely on parrying and dodging, rather than blocking. I am horrible at parrying. I’m too old, and my reflexes are too shitty for that. In addition, Shrouded in Sanity is a pale imitation of a Souls game, and the whole time I was playing, all I could think was, “I’d rather be playing Souls.”

When I’m a caster, I can stay a safe distance away from the enemy and keep backpedaling from them. When I’m playing melee, I use my shield to block and count on my high poise/endurance to tank the hits. This works very well except for a certain optional boss in Dark Souls 3 who shall not be named, mainly because he doesn’t have a name. No, seriously. He’s the Nameless King, and he’s my personal nemesis. I’ve soloed every boss in that game except him, and I am struggling mightily with him. Part of the problem is that I’m maining the Greataxe, which is very short. He flies around on a dragon, so a longer weapon would be more useful. I’ve tried other weapons, but nothing is as comfortable as my Greataxe, so I’m trying to make due with it. I don’t know why I’m being so stubborn about it, but it’s a point of pride at this point.

Continue Reading

I Don’t Want to Talk About It

Posted on by • 0 Comments
i can't stop crying
Raining tears

I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was fifteen years old. That’s two-thirds of my life for those keeping track at home. I’ve been severely depressed since I was seven, which is, coincidentally or not, the same time I became aware that I would die one day. Once I realized that, I became obsessed with death, alternately horrified by and attracted to it. I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I’ve been suicidal most of my life as well. Suicidal is too harsh a word for it, though. It’s not as if I wanted to kill myself, per se; I just didn’t want to be alive. I was terrified of what was on the other side, however, so I stopped myself from crashing my car into the divider on the highway, from sitting in the garage with the door shut and the engine running, from submerging myself in a bathtub and never come out again. It’s been a long time since I’ve actively had to stop myself from doing something rash, but the thought it never far from my mind. Whether it’s, “I could end it all right now,” or, “Holy shit, I’m going to not exist one day,” death is hovering over me. I know it’s coming for all of us, but it feels so intimate and personal. When I was getting my MA in Writing & Consciousness fifteen years ago, my thesis was death, and every story I wrote for it had some element of death to it. It wasn’t as if I made a conscious decision to write about death, but that’s what interested me at the time.

To be honest, it’s still what interests me. I like reading and writing murder mysteries, and most of the fiction I write these days still centers around death. There might be some romance in it, but it’s secondary. Don’t get me wrong. I like writing a good sex scene as much as the next person, except, most people don’t write good sex scenes. They’re not easy to write, and it’s further hampered by the fact that many publishers won’t let you use the actual words for genitalia. Any time I read sex scenes, it’s ‘throbbing member’, ‘loins’ (sometimes even moist, which is so fucking gross),  and ‘nether regions’ all over the place. Nary a penis nor a vagina in sight, let alone a dick, cock, or pussy. I don’t even read ‘tits’ much in literature. When I write sex scenes, I use explicit language because I think the euphemisms are silly. They take me out of the moment because who the fuck says, “I put my hand on his hardening member”?

Continue Reading