Life Update

It’s been a while that I’ve posted anything personal on here.

Almost 2 years ago, I sustained a near fatal injury that I still haven’t fully recovered from. One of the lasting impacts of this was brain damage. Although this path was painful, there was a large part of me, my intuitive knowing, that reassured me that this was the path. We can’t expect “the path”, meaning, our spiritual path, to be a smooth one. It’s meant to be one filled with challenges and events that look like terrible things at the onset, but later reveal a greater wisdom.

Yes, my last 2 years were extremely extremely difficult. But yet, even in the darkest days I found a certain beauty. I found a path to awakening, a path to healing, a path to deeper self love, self care and commitment. I learned truly how to put myself first and set clear boundaries around my time. The amount of self work I’ve been able to complete I couldn’t have done in 15 years time had this not happened. And, it’s in a strange way, set me up for the rest of my life- I now have a foundation of nutrition, biohacking, sleep hygiene, exercise that is so meticulous that I would never have been able to put together had it not been a life or death situation. I mention biohacking because what happened to me was something that on the physical side, makes someone lose their hair, destroys DNA (so then your body can’t synthesize protein or collagen) and changes body composition and contributes to obesity. So in essence, it ages you and destroys your metabolism, but I was able to reverse age and get my body nearly back to its original composition through research, trial and error and a deeply committed approach to cleansing and healing.

On the emotional/mental side, what happened to me not only destroyed my brain chemistry and hormones, but also causes intense anxiety and depression. My baseline for happiness dropped so much that in this difficult journey to regulate it, even the smallest joys or the hour long windows where I feel nearly normal are celebrated. I don’t take anything for granted anymore, and that in itself is a liberating state however hard it was to come by. You can’t appreciate things if you don’t have the right state of mind, after all.

In the past 6 months at least, I’ve struggled with symptoms that look close to early on-set dementia. That’s been something that’s very challenging to cope with, however, I have also noticed that my intuitive abilities, spiritual abilities, extrasensory abilities however you want to address them, have increased exponentially. Intuitive hits used to come in fast- but now it’s like a race car and the depth to which I can perceive and synthesize the metaphysical have reached a level that I’m even having difficulty comprehending.

It hit me like a lightning bolt yesterday- I remember in my studies of psych/neuroscience that sometimes when people experience head trauma they will suddenly be able to access psychic abilities they previously didn’t have. Or, sometimes after a car accident someone will have a life changing kundalini awakening that induces phenomena (I’ve met someone this happened to- he developed the ability to see auras). Or, sometimes people have what is called savant syndrome where one part of the brain is damaged and that activates (or lessens the inhibition) another part of the brain that suddenly breathes life to dormant high level abilities. The ever famous Phineas Gage who had a metal rod run through his head had a total personality makeover. In all of these cases, damage was done to the left frontal lobe.

The parts of my brain that were damaged include the frontal and the parietal lobe. I have a sense that because of this, my brain overcompensated by rewiring and activating other parts of my brain that are not damaged, one of which is the center of intuition. When I tune in, I can actually feel that the lower part of my brain feels much more active and energized that I’ve ever noticed before. With each day, it feels stronger, too.

That may not be the main purpose of this pathway that I travelled, but it is one of the purposes, I’m told intuitively. I also know that this is a permanent change, as my brain trauma heals the wiring will also repair, but the networks will already be established in the lower regions and stay active.

Upon researching, I found confirmation from neuroscientists, and to me this is such a revelation.

Just like any type of trauma for which I’m not thankful for, what results is a cataclysmic chain of events that are as much of, or more of, its contrast (should you be a beauty seeker, a healer, someone who can stay the course and use it as such). I’ve been stuck in moments of self-pity or wallowing in the unfairness of it all as I have about traumatic events from the past, but until we “zoom out” we can’t see what it’s all for and why we had to endure it. In fact, we might not even be able to see that part of us selected it. Because it’s meant to make us better.

So here I am today, with a full head of hair, with my body in probably the best shape of my life, with a level of self-unity that I’ve never come close to before. I may not be able to think straight still, and still feel sick most days, still have a pounding headache and brain fog, but what I do have is a rapidly healing brain that is accelerating past what is considered “normal” abilities (not that I ever considered myself as someone with “normal” abilities nor I’m sure, does anyone who is reading this blog). I can now see that there was no other way for me to get here in as short of a span of time as this has been, despite it feeling way too long. And I can see that the joy, the health, and the success that I’ll experience for the rest of my life is due in part to who I am today and the path of fire I was able to walk through in one piece. And to get here, this is due in part to the little girl I once was, who bravely walked through the fires of her childhood too, alone, but always whole.

10-Series Testimonial

Working with Gigi and to watch her bloom into her next phase in life, a phase of life marked by independence and spiritual sovereignty is so wonderful. Our “meeting” was marked by tons of synchronicity and resonant symbols. It’s very common for the highly gifted- spiritually speaking, to be born into systems that don’t support us, and part of our spiritual journey comes from liberating ourselves from the past so we can move forward in all ways as a pure being, unrestrained by the energy and the conditioning of our systems past.

Sometimes we are told certain things about ourselves and we learn to believe them to play our “part” in the dysfunction of those around us. It can impinge on our own belief about ourselves and our capabilities, when in reality it is not true- it is just a learned behavior to stay “in-group”. Of course these parts are not always easiest to recognize, nor are they to heal and release. That’s where I come in.

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“It feels like an impossible task to even begin to put into words the kind of experience or impact this 10 series had on me/my life...so impossible it's funny.

I have been in and out of therapy for a decade, I've read almost every lauded self-help and spirituality book that exists, but it wasn't until the sessions Maria helped facilitate did I start to feel like I could actually see myself for the first time....ever! in my whole life.

i feel changed. i feel like a me that finally is on her way to a life i knew i always felt could be mine but i felt soooo far away from. and didn't understand why. and didn't know how to get closer. maria helps you bridge those gaps.

there was and continues to be SO MUCH about myself i didn't know. it isn't a cure all, this work is continuous and life long. but i feel like the forest has cleared a bit and i can see a path AND i'm excited to walk it and even tho i am alone, i feel for the first time, capable, unafraid, and excited.

i don't know. if you're feeling called to this work and you're looking for assurance that this will mean something or make an impact...i don't know if i or anyone can really give you that but it meant a lot to me. it made a huge impact on me. i feel closest to myself than i have ever been and this work + therapy has been doing wonders for my ability to show up for myself and create a life i love and don't want to escape from,”

Perfectionism

I myself am guilty of perfectionism. There is always an unrealistic standard that I’ve set for myself that I somehow fail to meet. In my mind, it’s realistic because I’ve been exposed to this standard before, it’s not born of nowhere.

I won’t go into the mechanics of how perfectionism is created through upbringing, since many of you already know what goes into this and how it’s modeled.

What this creates in someone who lives with this is a deep fear of “not good enough” and secondly, a developing well of self directed frustration as well as feelings of failure that are semi-repressed. It’s semi-repressed as long as there’s some metric of success that you must score high on. Perfectionism is fear based, and for those of us who’ve lived with it, we’ve turned that fear (and anxiety) into something that motivates.

It was always very conscious for me as a teen and young adult that if I let go of this, and just suddenly realized I was “good enough” that I’d stop trying. I felt that the alternative was apathy, which I have experienced before. I didn’t know what to substitute the fear motivation for, or that there was another form of motivation.

As I’ve grown, I’ve come to face that fragile ego that’s underneath all of this. The one that took in the programming of deep unworthiness. I remember being very young and in situations where I felt failure, how much I couldn’t handle it because it brought out deep shame. In classes that I wasn’t the best, the stakes felt so high and so intolerable. I somehow couldn’t take it in stride like all the other people who were not the best, who were not good. People who could fail at something or not be good at something and not have it affect their sense of self seemed to have a healthy self-esteem that made them know that just because they weren’t good at this thing, they could keep trying and get better. They also knew that just because they weren’t good at this one thing, it didn’t mean that they were flawed as a person. These were thought processes that I didn’t have even if I identified them consciously.

As I’ve gotten older and done a lot of healing and integration, I’ve specifically challenged myself to do all the things that I’m not particularly gifted at. Sure, other people might argue that I’m not that bad, in fact, that maybe I am better than I think (because in my mind I think I am just awful which is a particular trait associated with perfectionism as well- that my assessment of myself always tends to be worse than what’s “real”). What this challenge does is it forces me to grow- it forces me to confront those shadow elements and fear. It shows me that there’s nothing to fear, and to be more lighthearted in my approach- that just because I can’t do a particular jump or my brain isn’t as quick with a quippy response in improv doesn’t mean that the world is ending, which it often felt like it was when there is a perfectionism that is expected of you, and performance is everything. Most importantly, it shows me to have fun which is something I had long been lacking in childhood.

I remember when the darkness of perfectionism hit me the worst, it wasn’t that long ago. My ego was still in control then and it needed above all else to bolster itself from its feelings of inferiority and frailty. So, I chose to only do things that I was the shining star in. And then my world became so limited, my ego was satisfied but my soul wanted more.

Overall, we’re here for the experience. That means, the totality of life that we get to experience in this human form, with this human intelligence. It’s not about good or bad, it’s about how we meet those experiences and what we take away from them. In the end, I’m. not going to care that I was the best in this one class or one thing, because I care more about growth and process, truly. Success of course is important, and I plan to succeed at the things that I’ve chosen, but I’m also learning to re-assess the bar that I set for myself. I want to do my best, not be the best.

Emptiness

I had this memory surface today of being at dinner with my mom and my siblings. That night, we were having dinner and I invited my friend to join. She was flakey by nature and not the most accountable when it came to time, so of course halfway through the meal she told us she wasn’t coming. It felt normal then, but I remember how we just waited on her and that’s it. The focus of our dinner was waiting on her. And then when she cancelled, the whole focus was still on her and her absence. That’s how my mother taught me to be- always focus on other people. We didn’t talk except for my mother asking “when is she coming?” we didn’t order. And when we finally did, it was, “why isn’t she coming?”

Getting to this point in my life and through my own healing process, it’s remarkable to look at it from a distant lens where I realize we had no genuine Homelife. It would seem normal for me now, for a friend who was maybe joining for dinner to fade into the background and for the family to be talking and engaged with one another. And for the absence to just be an annoyance, if that. I would imagine that it wouldn’t even matter as a detail. But back then, we had together a very real emptiness.

The reason for this comes down to not just because of narcissism, but because of martyrdom. In my mother’s mind, a good virtuous woman (and these ideas were from her very traditional Chinese upbringing) was one who sacrificed her own needs for those of others especially her husband. That was her duty. As a young child I believe she wasn’t properly cared for at a young age, and to gain any sort of identity or value in the home she took on the burden of the family always caretaking and controlling her younger siblings. This created a very fragile ego in her that was fear based. She needed to always be in control or else the fear would take over.

With this lack of interior sense of self and no healing work, she of course attracted my father who was an overt narcissist with a strong match to hers. Where she was covert, he was overt, so they could create a codependent dynamic unconsciously where both of them reaffirmed certain insecurities, shame, and also reinforced a sense of ego-ic value. When these counterparts meet, there’s usually a huge emptiness in both of them that need to be filled in various ways. The failure to look at and address this emptiness then becomes projected out onto each other and onto other family members, namely the person who then becomes designated as the family scapegoat. I was that person who received the backlash of their unconscious desire to not actually be parents (but their fragile egos needed to abide by cultural and familial norms to be accepted) because they weren’t ready and were too immature. Also, the whole family structure revolves around this emptiness and creating an external image that functions as smoke and mirrors to gain other people’s envy, so they can somehow fill this emptiness with that.

As a child who was born into this and abused narcissistically, I also learned to adopt that emptiness. In fact, my whole identity since I was a child was based around that. Because no one could mirror my needs, my emotions, at a young age, or validate my existence in necessary formative stages, I learned to overcompensate by directing all my focus onto them just like they wanted. With narcissistic and self absorbed people, they want the focus to be on them- I’ll post a video discussing this soon. If these are your parents, they form your basis of value and also your orientation. Because my sense of self was not formed, it was formed in relationship to other people’s needs and to this curation of approved of characteristics. My parents were achievement based, so that achievement became the foundation of worth in my household especially since my real human sense of worth and value were diminished and taken from me when I was little through words and abuse.

As I grew older, I noticed that for certain friendships where I had to be performative, there was a cut off point. One day I couldn’t keep up with the friendship anymore as it entered into more intimacy because that intimacy was not one I had with myself. The whole crux of that emptiness is based on avoiding oneself and so situations that required more openness, vulnerability and intimacy touched on that feeling of emptiness within that was so painful for me to feel. But looking back, my life did revolve around other people. It was always waiting for other people. Anticipating other people’s needs. Giving, doing. It was like I did not exist when other people were not in my proximity, nor needed me. Alone, I still defaulted to my trauma behaviors of dissociating, so I wasn’t home even when I was home alone. I noticed that I always liked to put the attention on the other person so I didn’t have to share much about myself, but this also led to conflicting feelings where I felt like I wasn’t heard, I wasn’t seen, yet it felt more comfortable for others to dominate the conversation because then I didn’t have to be vulnerable and I didn’t have to disclose that underneath it all, there was nothingness.

The long healing journey has been one of reclaiming my authenticity. Underneath all the things I learned I needed to do for love (which was fundamentally empty because it was conditional) and approval and attention was the core part of me that learned it was not okay. I stuffed into my shadow normal things that humans have: their own wants, needs, desires and a healthy level of selfishness. Part of the narcissistic tactic is to gaslight their victim into thinking that any needs they have are selfish. Any time that is “available” that isn’t given is selfish. Anything that can be given and done when someone has the capacity to even sans desire should be done. This is also where the martyrdom comes in, because I watched my mother martyr herself over and over for everyone, to feed her codependency and her need to be validated in being a “good woman”, and also to be a functioning co-creator in a marriage with an overt narcissist.

At the beginning stages of healing I didn’t know tangibly what “putting myself first” even meant. I spent a lot of time alone, self-isolating, so I thought that was enough. But it wasn’t, because I was still actively dissociating and playing into the image of what I thought I should be. I thought that was my authentic self, but my authentic self was hiding without any permission to express herself truthfully. For those of us who are more attuned to our higher chakras and have abuses like the ones I’ve just written about, the focus is on the lower chakras and healing those aspects of us that didn’t form in early development, the healthy ego-self, boundaries and the like. I was punished for having boundaries because those didn’t serve my caretakers. I thought I was putting myself first when I was putting myself last because I still did receive a certain level of validation that my ego needed to know that I existed. My ego had prioritized validation because at the root of it all I just needed to know that I was alive, that I had a purpose because it wasn’t reflected to me at all as a child.

I still have programmed responses and I feel them very strongly. These override my own instincts, but it’s been a long long time that I was conditioned to people please, to put my needs last, to self-abandon at every turn. Now, I take a pause and I really check in with myself. Do I want to do this? Do I even want this person in my life? I used to be afraid of people entering my life because in my mind it felt like they wanted something from me and I would then need to take care of them, did I want an added responsibility? My idea of friendships and relationships was so skewed to me needing to give, and not receiving anything in return which mirrored, emotionally, how I was received at home. This created the unfortunate trauma pattern of attracting those very people I was afraid of, because not only was this energetic, an imprint, but also because they fulfilled an expectation cognitively and therefore my nervous system was habituated to that feeling of familiarity.

I remember when I was maybe 7 or 8, I had a friend Lisa who would come over sometimes. We were out playing in the backyard, and we were muddy. Her dad came to pick her up and Lisa ran across the new Persian rugs that my parents just bought. My dad told me that friends are my responsibility and then punished me for the rest of the afternoon when I didn’t do anything. I remember crying, because at that moment he broke my spirit and programmed me to think that all things that my friends do becomes my responsibility and that I don’t have a separate identity outside of that. I noticed that that made my mental boundaries very penetrable, like I had no ability to fully think for myself- I adopted the thinking patterns of those around me, as well as their attitudes and beliefs, which happens so unconsciously for empaths who haven’t yet healed.

I also noticed that I had a tendency to take things to heart when someone didn’t respond to me, or didn’t consider me, because it put me in touch with the feeling of emptiness internally, of “I do not exist”. There was this big part in my identity that was like a black hole because I literally did not have the permission to explore it like a child normally does. And so, this healing journey is one of coming back home and figuring out what really does fulfill me in a way that is true, and not one that is performative. It’s one that I really allow myself to savor and to have, and doesn’t require me to change my plans or alter my space to make someone else feel comfortable when I don’t even want to share the experience. And that, when I’m home, and I feel fulfilled on my own, means that I look at others as additives to my life, not because they help me reaffirm my identity in the roles I was assigned, as caretaker or healer or giver, but because we can lift each other higher.

Betrayal

The thing that hurts the most isn’t even the betrayal itself, it’s the aftermath.

It’s in how we then start to trust the fear and go looking for evidence. And when looking for evidence, the confirmation bias applies- we will always find what we are “seeking” because our minds will fill in the blanks based on our past experiences.

I remember the times when I was betrayed, I learned to tune out what I thought was fear. I interpreted the caution as overreactions, the hyper vigilance as irrationality and the small alarm bells as nitpicking. It’s an interesting thing how fear and intuition sometimes blend together in personal situations, so much that it blinds you from seeing where the delineation is. I thought I was getting better at sorting, or at least tuning out the fear, until you find out the truth of the betrayal and learn to trust the fear instead of intuition.

Those small lies did add up to something, even if you convinced yourself they were each isolated incidents and not such a big deal.

I believe that we then try to control outcomes by relying on the fear as a preventative. Although I can detach and observe my own mind, I still see that I’d rather be fearful sometimes in situations that can trigger the same feelings from a past betrayal because when we act out of fear we are often times trying to control an outcome.

I see this playing out mostly in romantic situations for myself, because romantic situations trigger a certain insecurity in me. It also tugs at self worth, not enough ness, and all of the shades of self concept that were or were not well formed growing up. It’s been shown to me over and over in several healings recently how there is a formula. In childhoods that were chaotic, or that had abusive dynamics, the child isn’t given the proper care, nurturance, attunement for him/her/them to feel a grounded, secure sense of self. This creates a fragile foundation that then later becomes highlighted as insecurities in places where we think we have more control, where society holds value and this is gendered. For instance, for women it tends to be insecurity displaced onto physicality and for men, on wealth and status. And of course more than anything these areas are both highlighted in romantic situations regardless of whether our partners actually care any of those things, but those of us who have these insecurities do and project that onto others. And/or we match with people who do care about those things and scrutinize us the same way.

There was one karmic situation that I had end of last year, and it was something that triggered such a huge amount of expansion in me, but it was beyond painful. I knew that he projected his fear onto me, his betrayals, and thought that I would hurt him because he felt vulnerable around me. He did say that to me, but he didn’t tell me why he felt vulnerable, but it’s easy to fill in the blanks. I was receiving certain intuitive messages/images related to how he really felt for me even if he acted distant and disinterested. Literally continual images of him wanting kids and marriage with me. I had multiple healers look at the cording between us because it was extreme. And they all said, “whoa, his energy is around you all the time. And this cord comes in with ‘you’re the one’ energy,” At this age it’s kind of obvious when someone’s playing it cool and the level of “detachment” is correlated to how interested they actually are, but when I’m triggered, I’d rather take things at face value, well because, fear. I’m also likely to doubt the intuitive messages and the images even if I am very secure in my intuition otherwise.

I feel that he really saw something with me and we had an unusually strong connection recognized by both sides. I remember one of the first times we spent time together, it feeling so important to tell him out of nowhere, “I won’t hurt you” with the purest, cleanest energy possible. I was surprised that these words came out of my mouth but they were guided. When I don’t have as much emotional attachment, it’s easy for me to see. But when I get emotionally involved, subjectivity takes over and with that is the lens that I’d long forgotten in childhood. My own fears started to take over and I projected onto him. I think that especially in cases when people are perceived a certain way, it can cloud how they are inside. He was, in my mind, gorgeous. I mean, he was a model, so yes, but I started projecting onto him that he was a player and wouldn't choose me. I was also going off his mask because that was easy. These of course stemmed not just from my own fears, but from truths of betrayal. I then started acting out of that fear, and he started acting out of his own that I would hurt him because I didn’t realize at the time, he had me on a pedestal and most certainly had a match to me- he thought I wouldn’t choose him even though I would have. In fact, what I didn’t tell him was my dream about him early on, or what I felt was singular. I’d never in my life felt the way I felt/feel about him- I felt like my heart welled up with so much love that I wanted to give to him that felt so mismatched based on how well we’d actually known each other. I’d been in serious relationships where I didn’t feel close to that. I knew that we were together in a past life, and that overwhelm of “oh no this is completely irrational, where are all of these feelings coming from?” was shared. When I’m very triggered in romantic situations, it’s like everything about me that I’ve worked towards disintegrates. I feel like a small fragile child with no “right” in the world— I forget about what I may seem like to others, what I have done and what I have become, and all the foundational pieces I’d built for myself in lieu of the one that wasn’t built for me.

I have a belief that the men I’m seeing are sleeping around. I mean, it’s kind of culturally suggested that men behave that way, but I do feel that it became a real fear of mine after one relationship. But in subsequent casual relationships, when we did have an open discussion far into the relationship, most times they weren’t seeing anyone else except me. It makes me wonder where this fear fantasy comes from and why it feels so real, and maybe it triggers the same fight/flight sensations in me that I grew to know as a child in an unstable home so much that I create it. In the one instance I started to convince myself that it wasn’t real, and looked for tangible evidence that it was false, I was cheated on many times over. So, it feels safer in some ways to believe it now. But the strange thing is, although I never had direct confirmation from him, there were a few intuitive people I really trust who all told me no, he wasn’t, he’s not actually like that, after I’d ended things with him and could start to see clearly again.

This experience triggered something from the deepest, core wounds. I’d never fully looked at them before, the fears of abandonment, betrayal, of literally not existing or having any value, that I would argue all of us have in different ways. I was seeing very clearly, and feeling, all the ways in which I used to give away my power and the treatment I was willing to settle for in a toxic situation. I felt shades of strong anxiety, neediness and desperation that I’d never experienced before because I’d never been in the unfamiliar energy of the chaser. They were parts of me that I never even allowed to exist. It made me see my own avoidance and emotional unavailability to myself. Outwardly I didn’t hit rock bottom, at least no one would’ve thought I did, but internally and spiritually I did. Sometimes the greatest pain is regenerative even if it feels like it’s going to kill you. Because at one point, that feeling of “I’m going to die” was very real if you were abandoned, and I mean these stem from infancy. If we are abandoned we literally die. When presented again as a healing, which mine was, it gives you a chance to update your nervous system to one that recognizes no, you won’t die. In fact, you’re the one who walks away so you can live.

No one else had gotten that deep in my psyche before, and he didn’t intend to. I doubt that he even knows what his effect, or at least, his reflection, did to me. I can only imagine what my reflection did to him as comparatively I have a lot more light in my field than he does. I recognize that it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with me and what I saw in him, what he represented to me. I don’t think I even knew him, but I got acquainted with my own fears and my own shadow aspects that I’d ignored until then. That experience broke me open so that more light could come in because it forced so much healing and integration, and it made me choose me. It made me refocus, recenter, and work on where those weak spots in my self worth still were, that I was distracting myself from through validation I was receiving.

So, my lessons with betrayal have taught me, you don’t always know. There are signs and sometimes they are innocuous- yes, I’ve walked away from situations in which there was no actual harm. And, the opposite is true too. Some people are amazing at hiding and get off on it, and you may find that the dismissals were mistaking oversensitivity for evidence. There are psychological reasons we stay in situations even if we’re being betrayed and our unconscious knows it because it’s self protection. Not just emotionally, but it also protects our investments of energy and time if we’ve invested so much thus far. But one thing is true, that no matter what you go looking for, you’ll find evidence for, so if you go looking for betrayal, you’ll find it.

I don’t believe it’s possible to act from a trusting place all the time especially if you’ve had experiences that betrayed your trust, but I think it’s reasonable to protect yourself and recenter during triggering situations and take some space for yourself. I think it’s important to then clearly distinguish what is your fear and what is your intuition, and sometimes that takes time to distill. I think it’s okay to give someone the benefit of the doubt, open your heart but with eyes wide open.

Addictions

We’re all familiar with the obvious ways addictions can show up: recreational drugs, alcohol, food, sex and drugs

Those can bring us into dark territories and serve to numb and sedate us, and fill an inexplicable void.

Then there are the innocuous ones like coffee and work which are typically normalized and not so extreme

But what about the ones like love, sugar, social media, technology, adrenaline or feeling bad about ourselves?

In the past few years, my diet has become a lot cleaner. As I venture farther on my spiritual path I’ve stopped imbibing in alcohol and any sort of drugs as my body becomes more sensitive and as I stop partaking in normalized social behaviors. When I worked a full time job, it was expected of me to grab a drink with coworkers, or friends after works, or even clients. Alcoholism seemed so embedded in our social etiquette and in our coming of age narratives too. Everyone thinks of college as the time of experimentation with drugs, alcohol and sex.

Although I’ve gone months to a full year sometimes cutting out alcohol, drugs and/or sex, as my life becomes cleaner it forces me to re-evaluate where “softer” addictions still occupy spaces in my life and why it is that society normalizes these addictions, as well as what I’m trying to distract from by using them.

For instance, I’ve recently cut out sugar as part of a preparatory cleanse. This made me conscious about how sugar is literally in everything. For a day or two I felt depressed because I couldn’t engage in my life normally. With cutting out caffeine entirely, too, (I haven’t had any coffee in years but I do like green tea and matcha), my life drastically change and took on a new consciousness. I had to read food labels carefully. I couldn’t go to “grab a matcha” whenever I was feeling antsy at home or to distract from how tired I was some days. Without sugar, I quickly realized how hard it was to eat out, even at healthy vegan restaurants. Even my salad dressing has maple syrup in it!

Beginning in January I also stopped dating entirely and deleted every dating app. I started to realize how much of my time/energy/attention was being sapped by just scrolling through dating apps when I was bored. This was time that could’ve been spent on myself, instead it was spent swiping. I also took a break from all social media for a few months and did a technology cleanse for a few days. It became more apparent how inextricable it all is to our functioning- our addictions become essential to being productive in our lives.

I noticed I also had a habit of trying to make myself feel bad about myself. I used to be codependent, and codependency is an addiction. When we are addicted to narcissistic dynamics, we are obsessed with feeling bad about ourselves or finding ways we are dysfunctional or unlovable. This pattern felt so much a part of my life because it was modeled after caregivers that I didn’t even recognize it as an addiction I could free myself from.

All of this is making it clearer for me to see where it is I’m still “dependent” and where I have absolute autonomy in my life. The wonderful thing is that the more we take control over these aspects and clear our more addictions, more ways we give away our power, the more confident we feel in our lives. It is directly related.

I write this to encourage you to take inventory of your life too. How much of it is based on forms of addiction? What is it that you’re distracting yourself from, and what is it filling in your life? Often times we default to addictions because of unhealed patterns, not to mention addictions fill the spaces between the connection with ourselves. When we avoid things, we usually opt for addictions, even if it’s just anxiety that we’re smoking or drinking away. Maybe it’s loneliness and emptiness that fuels someone to engage in compulsive sex or dating. Some of these patterns of behavior feel so normalized in modern day, but that doesn’t mean that they’re adding to our health and happiness. In fact, I’d argue that they’re drastically decreasing our wellbeing. These mechanisms serve to sever our connection to ourselves more.

The more addictions I clear out, the more I notice more of what I’m suppressing in my emotional body. Although I’m well aware of my internal processes at this stage of my life, I get to see more nooks and crannies so to speak, the more I rid of these coping mechanisms. This is difficult, but this is the challenge of being human and the clarity, self control that’s achievable on the other side is well worth it, in my mind.

Stepping Away from Family : The Taboo of Estrangement

I am estranged from my family by choice. I chose to do something as extreme as this for my health and wellbeing, so you can imagine how difficult this choice was, how deliberate it was, and what must’ve happened to make this a necessary outcome. Within that choice are layers holding all the years and attempts I’ve made to shift the dynamic. All the self-work that was met with the same toxic reactions, all the attempts to destroy any self-esteem I was building. Eventually, I reached a point: enough is enough. I cannot grow with this in my life. And, I let go.

To me, this marks a huge stride in my own empowerment, self-sufficiency and self worth. I didn’t realize it at the time I committed to this choice, it was just a fact of life. I’d been pushed way past the point of pain and suffering. However, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have my qualms about it.

Especially because of the cultural piece— family’s are a huge part of Chinese culture, and because of our general, collective attitude towards the family unit, it’s a doubly hard endeavor. I think all I ever wanted as a little girl was a happy family. I have a tendency to romanticize and idealize sometimes, and of course, I always had the fantasy that my familial relationships would be fixed, people would come to realize their contributions and take responsibility. But that’s wishful thinking. A lot of people don’t, that’s a fact of life. It’s much better to believe that and be pleasantly surprised than to expect someone to change who doesn’t want to, and then to be disappointed over and over, in my opinion. So, I can step back and accept the reality and let time show me what I need to know.

I will just say that in our society, and I’m speaking for American culture specifically, there is a tendency to exalt family. It becomes the centerpiece. Anything that deviates from the family unit is unacceptable. While I was struggling, I had a therapist (who I terminated at a later point) who continued to tell me that family is part of someone’s framework of wellbeing and it’s our responsibility to make things work. My family was falling apart at the time for many reasons and she continued to insinuate that it would cause damage to my wellbeing if I didn’t fix it. She continued to try to push her agenda on me, her belief on me, instead of seeing my situation for what it was. Abiding by her framework, yes, and, sometimes wellbeing means family needs to be out of the picture entirely.

If you’ve experienced the same abuse and toxic behaviors in a family no matter what you do, how much you feel over responsible, how much you become over functional, the truth remains the same for this and any toxic relationship: you cannot fix it if the other person (people) aren’t willing to do the work. They will never realize unless you LEAVE otherwise your presence continues to enable their behavior.

Shutting the door for now does not mean shutting the door for good. Sometimes, people return to their families years later to shift the dynamic after they’ve come to a certain point in their healing. Sometimes, there’s more and more distance as people come to more and more realizations for why the relationship is damaging. I am not at the point of contemplating a return, yet, and I will admit it is painful for me to know that there are years passing that I won’t see, or know, in the lives of the people that I love no matter what. My love for them makes me want to know how they are, to watch them grow older, to fight for them at all costs. My love for them excuses them for any bad behavior- but, loving without realistic limits is unhealthy and we can have all that love for them but choose to love ourselves, too, instead of needing to be the one who constantly sacrifices their own self-love and respect for the other. Notice if ever you are in a dynamic that forces you to choose either you or them. That’s already a big red flag.

If something in this post is resonating for you- just know that if you let society’s expectations outweigh your own wellbeing, if you’re afraid of what people might think or say if you deviate from the norm, then you will never find what you’re looking for. You may put up with the pain and suffering in avoidance of the pain and grief of loss if you made that cut, but the second option allows opportunity for growth. You get, along with it, several gifts of strength, resilience and self worth.

For all the people out there who are estranged from your families and either are open about it or find it hard to talk about- I just want to say that I understand. I may not know the whole story and it may not have been similar to my experience, but I can only imagine what took you there. And, you are so brave. You are not alone.

For those of you who are thinking about making this choice but are still holding on out of unconscious fear- here’s your reminder that you have the permission to make those hard choices, and to take care of yourself.

The best response I’ve ever gotten from someone when I said, “I’m estranged,” was, “good for you for taking care of yourself,” let’s all normalize this conversation and shift it over to that response and attitude.

A note to clients: I will NEVER try to enforce that estrangement is THE way to go. It is what I chose to do and I consider it a last option, but it is not what is right for everyone and when I look at your situation, I look at it as YOUR situation and do my best to mediate any unconscious biases and clear my subjective filters. In the past I’ve worked with people who projected themselves onto me, who got overly and inappropriately involved in my life choices, and I know how harmful it can be so I am especially careful about this.