Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: trust

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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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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A question of trust

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I’m the keeper of bad familial memories, which is not a pleasant role. My brother and mother both tend to forget the bad times. My brother said someone was asking him about his bad realtor experiences and he couldn’t name any. My mom will flat-out deny the negative things she’s said to me in the past. My brother and I were recently talking about our family and he said he hadn’t remembered most of the things I commented about (from our childhood) until I brought them up. So in his case, it’s self-defense and a way of protecting himself from the unpleasantness. It’s also self-protection for my mother, but in a different way. For my brother, it’s protection from bad things around him. In my mother’s case, there’s some of that, but it’s also a way for her to shield herself from the bad things about HER. none of us like to think badly about ourselves, but she takes it to an extreme–in part because my father is so critical of her.

The one example I always give is when I graduated from college. I graduated magna cum laude, for which I was pretty proud. My mom said after the ceremony that if I hadn’t gotten a B in Intro Psych, I might have graduated summa (not true). I was pretty crushed when she said it because I had worked semi-hard to get the magna. Years later, when I confronted her about it, she denied saying it. Then she added, “If I did say it, I must have meant it as a way for you not to feel bad about not getting summa.” Which, again, I didn’t!  I didn’t feel bad until she said what she said. The thing is, though, I believe her when she says she doesn’t remember saying it. Or rather, I believe that she’s vested in not remembering things she’s said or done that make her look bad.

It’s not gaslighting because she truly doesn’t remember it–just as my brother truly doesn’t remember the negative things that happen to him. It’s a defense mechanism and now that I understand what’s happening, I don’t have to think I’m crazy because I remember things my brother and mother don’t.

It makes family dysfunction even harder to deal with, though, when I’m the only one who remembers what happened. Before my medical trauma, I was low-contact with my parents. We talked on the phone maybe once a month and emailed sporadically. That was really about all I could deal with. When I woke up in the hospital  and saw my mother, my heart sank. Even all drugged up, I knew it was going to be a problem being near them 24/7.

And, boy, was it. It was terrible and I’m still scarred from it. I told my brother that the medical scare didn’t really affect me that much (which was being a bit facile), but being around my parents did. He said I didn’t complain at all about being in the hospital or any of the medical stuff–my only complaints were about our parents. In the last month of their visit, I had a running count of all the times they annoyed me. I was donating a dollar a time to Planned Parenthood and sent a nice amount after my parents left. I was going to make it double every time my father said something sexist, but I’m not made of money.


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