Mar 5
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I read a lot of self-help/counseling books about parenting, family dynamics, relationships, etc and sometimes I’m embarrassed by how new age-y and touchy-feely all that stuff can be. (yes I’m aware that this skepticism and aversion to talking about feelings was instilled in me by my upbringing.) but honestly I think that even though the rhetoric of self-help type lit can feel a little cliche or simple sometimes, some of those concepts have genuinely been so transformative for me and have moved me so much closer to being an emotionally healthy adult. some of those things I didn’t know you were allowed to feel, and some of them I didn’t even know you could feel—as in, I had never really seen an adult person model those things and had no idea that they should ideally be part of a healthy adult’s inner emotional repertoire. I think the concepts that have been most powerful for me are:
1. practicing active listening with yourself.
ie, consistently checking in with yourself and asking yourself open-ended questions (what are you feeling? why are you feeling it? what do you want right now? what do you need? what would you like me to know?) and then attentively listening to the answers with empathetic, nonjudgmental curiosity. just the whole idea of being curious about and attuned to your own inner emotional life, and consistently making time and space for yourself to process what you’re feeling. also: as in active listening, not jumping to fix something or propose a solution, but understanding that sometimes what is most valuable and fulfilling is just being allowed to work through a thought, to talk through an experience, to gently work loose the different threads in a tangled knot of feeling.
2. practicing self-compassion.
not forgiving yourself everything or having no standards for yourself but just, like, being warm and caring towards yourself, especially when you have failed or messed up in some way. just not being merciless with yourself, you know? I think what blows my mind the most about this one is that I always thought that if you forgave yourself too easily or went too easy on yourself you were just encouraging yourself to be a lazy, self-rationalizing, self-justifying piece of shit. but, amazingly, it turns out that when you extend compassion to yourself, it seems to put you in a better position to pick yourself back up, look at the situation again, and think what you want to do next time to reach a different outcome. it’s almost like humans can think, work, and learn better when they are not being flooded by waves of shame and self-loathing.
3. reparenting / learning to parent yourself.
this concept came latest to me, but I kinda sense that it may be the theme of my early 30s. I am still learning to let go of the need to receive certain things from my parents: affirmation, acceptance, meaningful engagement, recognition of my autonomy, loving curiosity about who I am as a person. I am also still learning to accept that no matter how much I try to offer those things to them—trying to model those behaviors, in a sense, as if they’ll suddenly pick up on what I need from them—they are not really able to hear me or to accept those things from me. I am still making peace with the fact that I can’t fix their damage, and that I may never be able to have a real relationship with them—they love me in the ways and to the extent they are capable of, and no further, and that hurts but it also isn’t my fault. It isn’t because of anything I did or anything I am; it happened a long time before I was even born.
that is tough! that is tough and there is still a lot of grief bound up in that—I feel it and I also feel that I am not quite ready to unravel that particular tangle of feelings yet! but I think that the concept of learning to parent yourself has been really freeing for me, really powerful for me, because it helps soothe the yawning-abyss feeling of blank despair and panic I feel when my brain kinda whites out and starts yammering if I can’t get it from them how will I ever get it / how will I ever be loved / who will ever make me feel accepted and seen / if the people who are supposed to love me unconditionally don’t even like me that much how will I ever feel okay / how can I ever let anyone know me if not even the people who have to love me accept me—etc etc.
but yeah. idk the idea that you can give yourself those things—and in doing so, sort of retrain or recondition your brain—has been really powerful for me. you can give yourself another chance. you can be for yourself the person that adults in your life should have been, but were unable to be. you can, for instance, give yourself a language to express and interpret your own inner emotional life. you can teach yourself—calmly, firmly, and lovingly—how to regulate your own emotions so that you are recognizing them as real but not letting them burn you or destroy your relationships with other people. you can accept yourself as you are (as opposed to what your parents thought you should be, or really, what they thought their friends thought a “normal” child should be). you can be interested in your own thoughts, feelings, and passionate interests, instead of dismissing them or apologizing for them or treating them as embarrassing. you can take care of yourself physically, by preparing food for yourself and moving your body, not as punishment but because it makes you feel better. you can teach yourself to make healthy choices—to stop engaging in physically and emotionally self-destructive behaviors as a way of escaping from or burning down your own life. and you can change the way you talk to yourself, replacing the inner voice you internalized (from your parents, your church, whatever) with the voice of a compassionate adult who recognizes you as an autonomous person with inherent dignity and worth.
idk man! it’s pretty lifechanging stuff!! a big part of me has always been terrified of raising a child, because I keep thinking god what if I just get trapped in the same cycle, what if I dump all my unprocessed baggage on my kid, what if I wake up one day and realize that my child is a complete stranger to me in the way that I am a stranger to my mother, and what if that doesn’t bother me, what if I don’t even seem to notice what’s happened? I worry a lot too that even with the best of intentions, even if I am trying so so hard, there will be things I fail to do or give to or teach my child just because I’m not even aware that those are things that healthy adults naturally are able to teach/offer to their children. I see in my relationships how often I’ve failed to be a good partner because I don’t know what being a good partner looks like, I don’t have any model of what attentive, present, secure emotional intimacy looks like—and the abyss yawns again! that white-out panic: how can I do the thing I was never taught? how do I learn to see something whose absence I don’t even register, because I never knew there was supposed to be something there?
but no: slow down. slow down. I can learn these things—even if it often feels like learning a second language in adulthood; even if I will never be as fluent as a native speaker, will never have full command of the idioms. I can be a better parent, just as I can be a better teacher and mentor than many of the models I had (toni cade bambara: I can rise above my training; I can teach better than I was taught). and I can also accept, I think, that the work of undoing generational trauma is not going to be work that one generation alone can repair. I can work at patiently unraveling my little piece of it—can do the best I can with the tools and the time I have—even if, inevitably, I will hand the greater part of that tangle of feeling and pain onto my child, who will have to continue that work in her own way, in whatever way she sees fit. and even if I don’t have a child—it is still good and right and important, this learning how to be human. this patient work of discovering less damaging, less destructive ways of being what I am.
Represent, Represent.
Lately, I’ve been fortunate to be part of some speaking engagements where I can be in front of college and high school students. This experience has been very good to me so far. I’m reading a book called “Latino Leaders Speak”, as I’ve been going through it has been very clarifying in terms of what my goals can be to younger people.
Students need encouragement and they need to see people that they can relate with so cool things. Even though I’m only 5 years out of college, I still have experience that matters to them. As we move on in life, we have the opportunity to speak into other people’s lives. Let’s learn to accept and use our experiences and our identities as useful elements of learning and encouraging. As people see our lives, they get a glimpse into what they can inspire to be.
A Little Time
How difficult to breathe,
Take a moment, step away,
When something is a challenge,
Causes your wits to fray.
So many uses of some time,
Give us some distance to unwind,
To look for that other view,
Which makes simple what we could do.
But how much would be lost then,
All the quick actions of never again,
Options there only for quick thinkers,
For the instincts to make decisions,
And the people willing to judge them?
Both in moderation are needed,
Momentary choices for consequence unknown,
And well thought out, informed decisions,
That still can’t always be predicted.
How difficult to recognise the times
When either is the one you need.
Either way it’s just a little time,
Human’s can’t hit pause on that.
9:04 pm
A friend just told me on the phone that I have the ability to make a bad decision seem like a good one.
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I feel super duper negative. I’m working out to fight it, but oh boy.
Been smoking cigarettes this week, and I have non today, so I bet that’s part of it. Also probably need food.
I’m not going to complain about the things that I kind of want to complain about. They wouldn’t matter to me if I didn’t feel so bleh. I’m pretty sure it’s all in mah head.
However, no sugar, no green, no tobacco, no alcohol. I just need to spend time with me in my head today.
Why I can’t Roleplay Anivia
// Hiatus post. I don’t know if anyone cares or can help, but some thoughts under the cut.