*Note: For some context, I posted a story about struggling with depression and suicide attempts on February 13, 2019, on my Medium blog where I share personal stories, experiences, and lessons learned. For Mental Health Awareness Month, I wanted to reshare this article on The Habitual Rabbit and offer guidance on resources that have helped me heal. I hope you’ll find solace in my survival journey.
Discovering Self-love, An Update
To know that you live with a mental health condition is one thing, but to really know is another thing. And I didn’t really know until I hit rock bottom, not just once, but several times. Each time, sinking into a deeper depression. Needless to say, I learn the hard way.
Over the years, I’ve made a conscious effort to work on myself, understand my past, grow into my potential, embrace change and uncertainty, and most importantly, love the pieces of me that I felt were so unlovable.
Writing has always been my outlet, my own therapeutic way of making sense of who I am and the world around me. As I take some time to reflect on how far I’ve come, I’m grateful for the strength and compassion I’ve shown myself these past few years, and I’m reminded of an unknown but exciting future, one where I get to see what else I’m capable of.
It has been five years since I published this post on Medium.
Since then, I’ve…
- Gained a newfound sense of self and resilience
- Learned to build good habits and trust the process
- Come to terms with things that have weighed me down for so long
- Worked with my mom to break the cycle of trauma that plagues our family
- Embraced all of life’s challenges and uncertainties
You might be wondering how I did all that. Well, I went inward… very deeply inward.
And with the help of a lot of books.
3 Books That Changed My Life
When I embarked on this healing journey, a path towards self-love and self-compassion, I didn’t know where to start. So I began researching and consuming as much information as I could. But I soon realized that there was a lot of information to sift through, so I decided to focus on a few things, which led me to a few books that completely changed my life.
Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis
“Women are taught that to be a good woman you need to be good for other people. If your kids are happy, then you’re a good mom. If your husband is happy, you’re a good wife. How about a good daughter, employee, sister, friend? All of your value is essentially wrapped up in other people’s happiness. How can anyone successfully navigate that for a lifetime? How can anyone dream of more? How can anyone follow their what if, if they need someone else to approve of it first?”
Girl, Stop Apologizing taught me to understand my self-worth, gain self-love, and go after my dreams unapologetically. I’ve always had ambitious hopes for the future, but this motivation was often dampened and drowned out by depression and anxiety. I was wrapped up in a cycle that looked like short periods of inspiration, hope, and productivity followed by dark periods of despair, drawn curtains, and withdrawal from people.
I used to do this thing where I would beat myself up if I felt like I wasn’t being productive (which at the time, looked like being busy all day every day). If I didn’t complete certain goals by an impossible period I set for myself, I would drown in a wave of guilt and shame for not pushing through. I would take on endless tasks and try to do everything, always putting myself last, until I was burnt out and just checked out of life. Then I would lay in bed and feel bad for not doing anything at all. I would call myself names and tell myself I’m not doing enough. Sometimes it was a joke, but I realized that even when you’re joking, your mind doesn’t know that. So how you talk to yourself is so important for developing a certain mindset.
After I read this book, I started to reframe the way I think and talk to myself. I started to incorporate small habits of self-care, like exercising more often and staying hydrated. I started to prioritize myself just a little more, stop saying yes to everything, allow myself the time to recharge… and not feel bad about it!
This gave me a newfound sense of self-awareness, one that helped to deepen my connection with myself. I’ve gotten so good at healthy self-talk that now when a “negative” thought pops up, when I’m using harsh words, or when I’m being hard on myself, my mind immediately catches it and I flip a switch. I reframe the thought and assess whether what I’m thinking is really true.
Then I give myself a little pep talk and go on my merry little way towards my goals.
To this day, I still journal. And all that journaling is really just talking to yourself. I use my journal as a way of reflecting, reframing, and building a relationship with myself. I see meditation and journaling as ways to spend time with myself, like hanging out with a friend and getting to know them better. And a lot of times, I learn something new, something insightful about me.
The moral of the story here is to talk to yourself, spend more time with yourself, and get to know you better, so you can go and crush your goals, unapologetically.
When you own who you are and live authentically, embracing all the parts of you without a need to be understood by others, it’s the most freeing feeling in the world.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.”
Sometimes I feel like I barely recognize the person I was 10 years ago, but that’s not entirely true. There are days, still, when I’m reminded of old wounds, when I don’t show up for myself, and when I let myself slip into a tiny corner of darkness. That part is still there, it just doesn’t happen as often as it used to.
This is because I learned a very important and valuable lesson from Atomic Habits:
You have to put in the work to change and grow. And a lot of times, that work is small, mundane, hard, and uncomfortable. But that work, those small actions you take to better yourself, is necessary for your becoming.
This book helped me get started on the smallest actions that have led to the most monumental changes. I remember when I started my healing journey; I told myself, I’m going to learn to love myself and I’m going to start with these 3 things (I love doing things in 3s):
- Make my bed every morning
- Stay hydrated throughout the day
- Practice gratitude and write in a gratitude journal daily
And I still do these things.
It always seems like daunting work when you’re starting out; learning something new, incorporating it into your life, and trying to be consistent. It’s hard. You fall short. Maybe you do it for a week and skip a few days. I’ve definitely done that, and I always felt so bad whenever I missed a day. But that’s also something I had to learn in the process; it’s okay if you miss a day, it’s okay if it’s not perfect. I used to see this as a failure and give up entirely, but I started to reframe my language to be more supportive and encouraging, especially during these stages. I had to learn to be my own coach and cheerleader, balancing encouragement and motivation with nurturing support.
And after years of just doing the damn thing, it stuck.
Once these habits became engrained in my life, I was able to add new habits, even difficult ones that would require me to rewire my brain completely. Because I’ve been successful with smaller habits, this gave me the momentum and confidence to take a bolder step.
My self-love journey hasn’t been easy. Learning to love yourself means practicing self-care, it means changing your behavior and doing things to care for yourself. And no, not drinking your problems away or giving in to your wildest temptations. I’ve been there. That’s not caring for yourself at all. Indulging in guilty pleasures and engaging in self-destructive habits is following your emotions and going wherever your ego is directed; true freedom is having the ability and control to stop and think about what you really want, what brings you joy and happiness, and what is sustainable.
Atomic Habits emphasizes the importance of taking small actions, being disciplined, and creating a system of consistency that allows you to thrive. This helped me realize that caring for myself just means doing the work that gives me more mental and emotional freedom and clarity.
After all, “all big things come from small beginnings.”
Calm Clarity by Due Quach
“Too many parents are so traumatized that they get trapped in Brain 1.0 and can’t help transmitting their pain and suffering to their children just by role modeling what for them are normal behaviors and expectations.”
I always thought that healing and finding self-love was something you had to do by yourself. But that’s not entirely true. One of the biggest game-changers in my journey, to my surprise, has been working with my mom, the one person that I believed was the root of all my issues. Growing up, I had so much resentment toward my mom; we had a love-hate relationship that brought out the worst in me, and I know it was like that for her too. This is how deep generational trauma runs.
Calm Clarity helped me understand deep-rooted trauma and how prevalent it is in immigrant families, especially ones from war-torn countries. Before this, I was not aware of how damaging and pervasive generational trauma can be, and how little control we have over the trauma that we inherit, if we even know of its existence. This book connects personal struggle, generational trauma, and neuroscience to bring to light not only how our parents have come to be but where we can go from here, together.
Working with my mom to confront the generational trauma that plagues my family has helped me in my journey, but more importantly, became the catalyst for my mom’s healing journey. Depression and anxiety run deep in my family, and it took more than 30 years for my mom to realize that. As I was on my own journey, I quickly learned that I could help break the cycle for my family as well. And it all started with sharing this knowledge.
I started having more conversations with my family about their upbringing, what it was like growing up in Vietnam during the war, and their mental health. Working with my mom, and talking with her about mental health, trauma, and healing has really changed our relationship for the better, but most importantly, it has helped her in her own journey to reconcile with her childhood trauma. I think this has been the most beautiful part of my journey; watching my mom grow into herself and love herself more and more each day, even in her 50s.
As I spend more time with my parents, I’ve come to realize that they’re just normal human beings, just like me and you trying to make it through. And there are a lot of parents out there who haven’t quite healed yet but are doing their best. Knowing this has been so impactful and has changed my outlook on what I think I know about life. It’s true what they say; we really could be the one in our family to break the cycle.
I am not alone in my journey of self-love, growth, and progression; it is the culmination of the knowledge I’ve gained, the resources I’ve gathered, and the systems I’ve created that have helped me mend broken relationships and work through life’s challenges with a different lens. Because of this, I’m not only able to change my own trajectory, but I’m also able to chart a new path for my family, one where they can embark on their own journey of self-love.
