Chickadee

About Chickadee

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June 7, 2024

How to Keep Going When No One Gives AF.

I love immediate gratification.

That’s why most of my hobbies revolve around things I can see a result of quickly. Things like chess or art work that takes a LONG time to complete makes me twitch.

As much as I love to write, and do it multiple times daily in my private journal, sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to move forward online. Especially as a newbie that even google doesn’t want to acknowledge the existence of.

So what to do? I’ve tried sitting in my bed eating ice cream, with inner critics circling around my head.

OR try these steps that actually helped me get writing this post and drawing my pic:

If your brain is adamant about wanting to numb out with distractions, try watching Youtube about other creators who have struggled before you.
I watched “create even if no one cares. practice in public // Black Girl Creative Podcast” by Alecia Renece The Artist (while eating said ice cream bed) and found my self literally living the point she was making:
“in the beginning, no one is going to care.. because the truth of the matter is you are (impacting). Someone is always watching”. I was watching, and she made a difference in my day. Watch her video here.
See no one caring as a double edged sword. Yup, it sucks that you spend all this time putting things out into the world only to feel like you threw a tiny pebble into the Atlantic Ocean. But! For people pleasers/perfectionism prone folks like myself who freeze at the thought of being judged (more about that here) this can also be a good thing. Tap into the feeling of freedom to stretch yourself creatively. I’ve worked at both one of the biggest corporations in the world and a smaller company. The amount of creative fun we could have without constantly watching our step to avoid media backlash was amazing.
Acknowledge other benefits of building your craft slowly. Yes, being broke sucks and we need money. Facts. However there are other really important things that we need in life for your mental health.

~ Learning that your worth doesn’t come from other people’s applause. Hard, but life altering skill to learn to feel warmth and encouragement from your own approval.
~ Acknowledging the fact that we live in an instant gratification society where our brains are over stimulated with endless scrolling and “viral videos” that often have no additive value for other people’s lives and sometimes are just clickbaits. Learning to be patient, take time and put meaningful content into the world may not feel good in the moment but it’ll feel like chicken soup for the soul over the long term.
~ Challenging perfectionistic tendencies: especially if you weren’t taught that you are allowed to not be good at something immediately.
Be gentle with yourself. If you need a minute to bum out, give it to yourself without a guilt trip or hatred. There’s a lot of things our heart has to endure when we put a piece of our soul out there and no one responds. Imagine all the inner talk that happens with that. Be your very own advocate, speak to yourself so lovingly, and be your own cheerleader. This is one of the biggest learnings of my life.

And there we go. All those steps later, I finished my icecream, opened up my laptop and wrote this blog post. I hope this does the same for you.. whoever you are, where ever you are. There’s someone in the world rooting for your dreams.

June 4, 2024

Undoing the Curse of Time Anxiety

Chickadee Uncategorized

One of the hardest things that I struggle with is always being chased by time. It’s not a surprising side effect of a life ruled by the fear. That was the narrative I was constantly surrounded by.

“Don’t waste your life”, church said.

“You’re only thing young once, don’t regret it later”, father said.

I even know by heart a kpop mega hit “Road” (meaning better translated as “path”) sung by Korean legends g.o.d:

나는 왜 이길에 서 있나
이게 정말 나의 길인가
이길의 끝에서 내 꿈은 이뤄질까

I wonder why I am standing on this path
Is this truly my path?
At the end of this path, will my dream become true?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pondering this. Maybe it’s natural when we are young to want to answer these questions. Here’s a question though: What happens if you put an anxious, melancholic child (with an added downpour of high anxiety, negative family members) with a never ending loop of this message, and what do you get?

Answer: Someone who gets anxious of time.

Terrified of an unproductive life and desperately wanting to make something of myself, it actually made me become like a car with the parking break on, constantly pressing down on the pedals.

I was doing EVERTHING, but not actually getting anywhere. Just burning my engine.

Also time seemed to pass so quickly. When I would lay in bed “resting” aka trying to drown my anxieties with shows because of the Sunday Scaries, I noticed time would pass by multiple hours. I’d wake up in the morning, the next thing I knew it was time for lunch, and then by the time I looked up, the sun was already setting. Uh-oh, more anxiety, my weekend is pretty much over. More eating/binging. Next I look up, it’s 1 am and now I’m anxious because I can’t sleep. Time went from 9am -> 1pm -> 6pm ->1am. Like it was going double speed.

I’ve slowly gotten myself out of this curse.

The secret: I teach myself how to LIVE life, instead of worrying ABOUT life.

Then it becomes filled with moments. “Lesson learned” moments. “Caring for myself” moments. “The sky is beautiful today” moments. “I’m so thankful I can walk” moments. “A little bit everyday” moments.

Then the time doesn’t seem to go double time. I exercise for what I feel is two hours, only to realize only 20 minutes have gone by. I have a morning filled with moments, and by the time I look up it’s not even noon yet.

June 3, 2024

Perfectionism and Frustrating Self Filters.

Chickadee Uncategorized

I usually have meaningful thoughts that I get excited to write about. By the time I sit in front of the computer to share them with the world, they turn into a fumbled mess of less coherent words. Even now.

You can imagine how hard it is when the thoughts you have does not come out the way you want. As if a part of my brain shuts down, and all the wonderful flow of thoughts now have to try and squeeze through a tiny straw. So as always, I started to get curious.

I noticed a lot of effort and editing even before I send an email. Or a text message. Even an instagram reply. I also noticed less effort when writing in my private journal or to close friends.

Ah.

I realized this automatic shut down thing happens when I am afraid of making a mistake with people I don’t know so well. The reason? I grew up in an environment where saying the wrong thing, and making a mistake brought on condescension, ridicule, and belittlement, gossip and cruelty.

“You don’t even know that??!”

It makes sense then that my negative experiences at home, unkind educators, societal messaging, and my own low self esteem each became “filters” over my mouth. This is the mental image I have, made by collage:

“Must be careful. Double check. Are you sure that’s what you want to say? You don’t want to come off stupid. You don’t want to give someone a reason to belittle you.” – These are the thoughts that pass by so quickly that it went undetected. I only noticed the action, and finally started understanding the why.

When I started realizing that was what was happening, it gave me the tremendous courage to try to show up and write on this blog. Most of the time it’s frustrating to work through the “hands”. But I will keep trying. Over and over and over again. Until the unnecessary perfectionism filters are gone, and I am free to express myself. To make mistakes. To grow and to exist.

May 30, 2024

Is it Self Worth, or Just Your Pride Talking?

Chickadee Uncategorized

About a year into my healing process, I can better hear my inner voice. These are all the honest thoughts that I had barricaded so deep beneath that I couldn’t hear for a long time.

So when I was confronted with a suspicion that a lot of my life decisions were based on the fact that I thought myself unworthy, I was confused.

“That’s weird..” I told my therapist “I always thought I was really great. If anyone asked me how I felt about myself, I’d say I’m kind of awesome.”

I have finally solved this riddle. That this was my PRIDE speaking, not my SELF WORTH. How can I tell the difference? PRIDE needs outside participation. It is constantly seeking to validate – the proverbial “the lady doth protest too much” moment where you are constantly needing to convince the self and the world (in one way or another) how great you are. In my experience they are things that sell a self narrative to hide something else: looks, relationship status, job, whatever you need to advertise your value to the world. One huge tipoff that it’s pride not a genuine self worth: it gets triggered easily at any notion or suggestion in its contradiction.

SELF WORTH feels very different. It is a powerful, calm inner knowing. It doesn’t need an audience with an outsider; it needs no approval, nor applause. If someone feels differently, it is more likely to say “oh well, they’re entitled to their opinion” and move on. It gets its fuel from the self; a self acceptance and trust is all it needs. I have never felt such an inner power in all my life until now.

May 14, 2024

Is Your Emotional Health Neglected? (+Journal Prompt)

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Consider these two scenarios:

1) Your kid comes home to you with a black eye and a cut up lip.

2) Your kid comes home saying her classmates were mean and ended up eating lunch alone.

Perhaps you might react differently to the two situations.

Most of us know that we have an emotional side that inevitably comes out from time to time. We’re happy to see our friends. Our coworker is being an ass and we feel outrage. There is an accident on the road, and we are stressed. We often live believing that this is the full scale of our emotional landscape- the bursts that happen from time to time.

Because it is not visible, it is harder to recognize its enormity and the impact it has on us. This makes it harder to give it as much importance as the physical. Perhaps that’s why we might be more inclined to get more alarmed and prone to act upon the first scenario in comparison to the second.

We might also be more inclined to set aside time to get into the gym and spend money on expensive workout gear, versus setting aside time to spend with ourselves to reflect on how we are feeling. We often just don’t put the same importance on the emotions, leading to its inevitable neglect. Just to be clear, when neglected it doesn’t go away. It is still ever present, manifesting in distressing ways, until we are ready to listen with compassion. More on this on a coming blog.

In one of the most significant books on my healing journey, “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving”, Pete Walker dedicates an entire chapter called “What if I was never hit?”, helping us understand that the same amount of pain and trauma can happen on an emotional level. Sometimes the effects are even more devastating because it’s hard to understand the gravity of hurt that can happen that are invisible, making us deny to ourselves or even to loved ones the pain we are in.

While physical health is important, today I wanted to bring awareness on the not-so-visible aspect of our health. A lot of us weren’t taught to consider it, so here it is: an invitation for you to spend a moment checking in on how you’re doing. You deserve it. If you don’t know how to do this, I have provided journal prompts below for you to write about somewhere.

Advocating for your inner self,

Chickadee chickadee_bird

Journal Prompts to ponder:

What are your beliefs about the emotional landscape?

Do you prioritize your emotional well being as much as it deserves?

If not, why do you think you neglect it?

May 7, 2024

On “being your authentic self”: what does it really mean?

Chickadee Uncategorized

First, the why on the deep dive into authenticity: I was clearly having an issue on forming the kind of healthy, meaningful relationships I’ve wanted in my life. In fact, I’d say in some way we as a culture are. There must be a reason why we have a prevailing loneliness epidemic across the nation.

Trying to get to the bottom of it, I discovered:

AUTHENTICITY & VULNERABILITY -> MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS.

So clearly this authenticity piece is rather important to get there.

When I started my healing journey, I saw some form of “Be your authentic self!” plastered all over social media. I really don’t like conceptual words like “authentic” being thrown around without some kind of anchor to how it shows up in the everyday life. We can get into a rabbit hole of intellectualizing the hell out of it, but ultimately avoid any real personal connection, where healing happens.

I decided to get really honest, asking myself “How does the word authenticity show up in YOUR head?” My mind tells me “Well, I know what INAUTHENTICITY is:

Interesting. In the deepest, most honest places, my mind equates inauthenticity as kind of this over the top, dramatic fashion of “fake”. We are getting somewhere.

I’d say the vast majority of us are no Regina George. We aren’t often like the characters in reality TV and don’t walk around being “over the top fake”. Not consciously, anyway. So how does it REALLY show up? In the most stripped down, simplified sense, my therapist defines it as:

Authenticity = When your inside matches your outside.

Meaning authenticity is NOT:

When I’m sad but don’t want others (or myself) to know I’m sad, so I put on a smile or act overly something else. Like bubbly.
When someone close to me does something that is upsetting but choose not to say anything, giving some reason like “maybe I’m over reacting” or “they can’t handle it” because deep down I’m afraid of things like confrontation or their reaction.
When I’m “super easy” to work/be with because deep down I don’t want to be “that gal” that rocks the boat, acting very agreeable.
When I go on a date and spend time playing the character I’ve had temporary success with.
When I edit texts and emails over and over again because deep down I’m hoping to portray a certain image of myself.

And many MANY more.

For me, what authenticity looks like is not hiding behind a lot of people pleasing behaviors.

I will say that this work has had some “prerequisite” learnings before I was able to make these discoveries, which were 1) being able to sit with myself to honestly have these thoughts and 2) learning to commit to acceptance of whatever I find inside, so I could actually “hear” what’s happening. But we’ll save that for another post.

If this speaks to you in some way, I encourage you to ponder/journal about the following.

Deep inside, what does your mind believe is authentic/inauthentic?

How does it actually show up in your life?

May 5, 2024

Bushy pits, and the art of not over apologizing.

Chickadee Uncategorized

I went to my weekly physical therapy session the other day, but ended up with a different therapist than the usual. When asked if I was ok taking off my shirt for the massage, I obliged; I was wearing my sports bra after all. I usually keep my arms glued by my side, but that day she wanted to get my upper arms as well.

And that’s where it got hairy (pun absolutely intended).

I’d gone in au naturale = not having shaved my pits. She started lifting my arms, and I started wanting to apologize profusely for my faux pas. Something to the tune of “Oh God, I’m SO SORRY if I knew I would be doing this I would’ve shaved..” I guess I must’ve healed enough to be able to take a beat to think, because laying on that massage table, think I did:

Had I actually done something wrong to warrant an apology?

A while ago I worked with a trainer who would stretch me out at the end of every session. I would often say “oh man, sorry I’m so sweaty!!” She then said something I won’t soon forget. She noticed people so often apologize for sweating after a hard workout, even though if you take a second to think about it, it’s normal. What was most meaningful to her observation was that by far most one of those apologetic folks were women.

So this time, I bit back my apology and worked hard through my hateful thoughts. “Oh geez, she’s probably appalled”, “I’m so gross”, “What’s wrong with me?” and all the variety of ways my mind wanted to apologize for being human. Instead, when she was done, I gave her a smile of appreciation with a well deserved “thank you”, and walked away. I gave my brain another experience to reinforce that I don’t have to apologize for myself when I don’t feel “perfect”, as if that is an inconvenience to the world.

To be absolutely clear, I’m not saying that all it takes to heal a worthiness wound is to apologize less in general. No, we know far too well that working in absolutes is never the answer. In some cases I make the case that we need to get better at putting our ego aside and learning to apologize. This over- apologizing because we feel we owe it to others when we clearly don’t, is another beast. And learning to do it less sure helps support the work I’m doing on the inside, and the message I’ve been teaching to my inner child.

Do you ever find yourself over apologizing?

May 5, 2024

Coming out of a not-so-rainbow, dark closet.

Chickadee Uncategorized

I’ve been hiding out, too afraid to be myself in the world. Afraid? No, it’s not strong enough. Utter soul shattering terror.

“Programmed” with different protocols of what to say and how to behave in different situations, I always hoped to be liked and therefore “safe”. In the last year of healing I learned that in doing so I have long abandoned my SELF in a dark closet, hoping never to be discovered.

Well hello world. It’s time to come out.

This blog is my equal to jumping out of the plane for someone who fears heights, swimming in the ocean for someone who fears the depths, or singing in the middle of Time Square if stage fright is your thing.

In sharing my honest experiences, I unapologetically choose take up space in the big vast world. My deepest hope is someone feels seen, feels understood, and walks away with a little bit of healing.