Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.

Since I was a kid, I’ve been a worrier.

The first time I remember worrying a lot was in the second grade. In reading class, we often had to do book reports. At first I didn’t understand what a book report was. I probably wasn’t paying attention (often the case) when the teacher explained it, and since that teacher was very scary – often yelling out of nowhere at a few kids, including me, she decided she didn’t like – I was afraid to ask for clarification.

For some reason I thought the report had to be on a book kept in the classroom. I read my selection once but couldn’t remember it enough for the report.

On the day it was due, I scribbled a few words on a page – “The book was weird” – and handed it to the teacher, who immediately said, “You have to write more than this.”

I worried and worried without telling anyone. (My mother, like my teacher, was rather scary.) One night I couldn’t sleep – insmonia at age 8! – my insides in knots. Crying uncontrollably, I told my father my stomach hurt, and he was finally able to pry out of me what was really wrong.

My parents, being new to the country, didn’t know what a book report was either, and took my word that it had to be on one in the classroom. My father wrote a note asking the teacher if I could read the book again.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m not that mean.”

I can’t remember the details, but presumably with with my father’s help, I was finally able to write the report.

From then on, I was filled with dread every time she mentioned a book report, though I got to be quite good at them later on, especially when I had teachers who didn’t hate me for no reason.

The point of all this? Just trying to understand why I worry so much. I’m tired of it, especially when it’s about something I can’t do anything about it. Maybe it’s a passive way of trying to control a situation. If I worry, at least I’m doing something. Taking action means meeting up with obstacles and possibly failing.

I don’t think I have something like generalized anxiety disorder. While I do at times exhibit the behaviors listed, it’s by no means on a daily basis. It’s hardly ever about nothing. But when I’m faced with a stressful situation – deadlines at work, a new relationship, a possible health crisis – I find my worrying overwhelming. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I get that same twisty feeling I did at 8.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing though there’s nothing in particular that’s wrong. It’s the unknown that scares me and, like the linked website says, and feeling that my worry “will keep tragedy from occurring.”

I also worry about making mistakes and coming off as imperfect. I assume that everyone will react the way my mother does: like it’s the end of the world, that making a mistake confirms what kind of person you are, assuming a malicious intent behind pure accident.

I have to realize everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect, and not everyone will react like my mother. Some will be understanding. Some will realize you’re human and that human beings are complex. Some will understand there is no malicious intent, only fear and presumptions.

I’ve decided I’m tired of worrying. Life is short and I don’t want to waste it being stressed out and thinking about stuff all the time. So what can I do to turn off my brain?

Since my worries and anxiety aren’t daily occurences, I don’t want to head down the medication road, though that’s tempting. So it’s cognitive behavioral therapy for me, which sounds a lot like Buddhism. According to this website:

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the important role of thinking in how we feel and what we do. Cognitive-behavioral therapist teach that when our brains are healthy, it is our thinking that causes us to feel and act the way we do. Therefore, if we are experiencing unwanted feelings and behaviors, it is important to identify the thinking that is causing the feelings / behaviors and to learn how to replace this thinking with thoughts that lead to more desirable reactions.

According to Brother Thay, Zen master and poet (whom I’ve quoted from before):

If you tarnish your perceptions by holding on to suffering that isn’t really there, you create even greater misunderstanding. One-sided perceptions like these create our world of suffering. We are like an artist who is frightened by his own drawing of a ghost. Our creations become real to us and even haunt us.

Basically, “we suffer because of wrong perceptions of ourselves and others, which is why communication is so difficult and so important.” Even more bascially, it’s not the situation itself that causes our suffering, but our perception of the situation, as well as how others might react to it. This is something I need to drill into my head again and again.

Maybe I’ll get a book on it.

I love to bitch.

Having a low tolerance for stupidity, I love calling out the idiots of the world, whether it’s the person standing at the top (or bottom) of the subway stairs, reading her Blackberry, blocking the rush hour crowd; the tourists who feel they must walk five across the sidewalk; or the taxi driver who thinks I give a crap about his theories of when he has better business.

But does this negativity eat away at me?

Overall I think I’m a positive person. I don’t think bad things happen to me despite everything that’s happened. I’m quite lucky because of lessons learned. I’m healthy (knock wood), financially comfortable, I know what I love to do, I have friends and family who care about me, and I’m pretty.

Haha, just kidding.

What gall would I have to have to complain about my life? I’m not a child prostitute in Bangkok, nor a war widow in Iraq. I’m not an oppressed woman living in mainland China or Japan. I have all my limbs.

In high school I developed this persona as an angry girl. I was angry, especially when people were jerks to me for no reason, but it was a defense mechanism as well. I was so shy, I could barely talk to people. But I didn’t like coming off as shy so I decided to come off as angry instead.

As I got older, I honed this anger into a pseudo-toughness that only in a blue moon transformed into real courage. I loved cursing in front of people who found it shocking, telling off assholes who said rude things to me on the street, not caring what people thought.

I’m a petite woman who looks younger than she is. As kids my brother and I were called chink and chingchong every day. My mother bosses me around. And so how do I make up for all these things? I’m tough with the idiot strangers on the street. I don’t hide my disdain for their inane cell phone conversations, roll my eyes when they bump into me, sigh audibly when they take forever at the subway turnstile.

Also, hey, it’s New York.

But maybe it’s not necessary for me to be so impatient, so negative about these little things. My reactions don’t make the situations any better. I don’t get worked up over the super crowded subway anymore. I’ve accepted it and push right into the middle of train. True, I totally bump into people – it’s the Chinese in me – but I do say sorry in a sincere way.

I was talking to YP about this, and after we agreed it’s probably better not to be quite so negative, I bitched about this group on Flickr called Happy Couples.

I mean, c’mon! Blech.

Anonymous Writer posted about this interesting article from Psychology Today.

What struck me most was this:

The extraordinary fact is that you can create a crisis of confidence by overreacting to your own normal heightened alertness. . . .Increased activation is not a sign that you’re failing, but that you want to do well and your body is ready to help.

Reading this made me realize that maybe it’s not so much the actual situation that freaks me out – giving a presentation, speaking in a meeting with people who I perceive to be judging me, attending a party where I know no one – but my reaction to it. Increased heart rate, sweating, blushing. I’m become very conscious that I’m turning or may turn beet red, which makes me even more nervous, which I perceive as a sign of failure.

There are other times I use that adrenaline rush as just that. When I was kid, I had to do piano recitals every year. I always got very very nervous beforehand, mostly because we had to memorize the piece and I’d worry that I’d have brain freeze.

I almost always managed to use that nervous energy in a good way, to put every ounce of it in my performance. I remember people coming up to me afterwards and complimenting me, even though I knew I had made mistakes.

I did the same thing with teaching. Unlike presentations, teaching is much more extemporaneous. I didn’t have to worry about sounding like I didn’t know what I was talking about. In that way I could use my nervous energy almost like a can of Red Bull to jump over the hurdle of shyness.

Unfortunately with presentations it’s different. For some reason, I always feel unconfident about the material, even if I know it inside and out. You can hear the shaking in my voice, see my flushed face, witness the tremor in my hands. Stumbling in talking is a lot more obvious than a few wrong notes in a musical piece.

But that’s not to say I should continue to perceive my physical reaction to a social interaction in a negative way. Just knowing that it’s not “bad” to feel my heart thumping may make a difference. Though I guess I won’t know till I try it.

I feel like I’m the worst procrastinator. Some days at work I put off tasks off for the longest time, and get caught up in mindlessly surfing the web. Then I wake up in the mornings stressed out, thinking about the things I haven’t done, but once I get to the office, the stress goes away, and again I’m wasting time.

Not every day is like this, but there are those more than occasional ruts. If something urgent comes along, I’ll do it lickety-split. It’s those things that people aren’t hounding me for, that aren’t urgent, and that involve some unpleasantness – whether in the activity itself or in association with unpleasant individuals – that I put off.

I don’t think I’m this way with my writing. Although I’ll go for long stretches without writing, there isn’t the same stress involved. And if I have a deadline, even if I wait till the last minute, I don’t have that same feeling of procrastination because I’ve gotten it done. For some reason, there’s not that feeling of dread.

When I was writing my novel in a month, there were times I felt like I was procrastinating but really I was just taking a break. Breaks are needed. And besides, I got in my word count.

In college I was horrible about waiting till the very last minute for papers, and since I was an English major, I had to write a shitload of them. Once – and my friend SB can attest to this – I waited till after midnight to begin a 25-page paper that was due that morning. All night I wandered in and out of SB’s room, and each time she’d say, increduously, “You still haven’t started it?”

I got an A, by the way.

There were times I’d try to start earlier, but then it still took me up till the last minute. I probably fussed over things too much, thought about it too much, and usually ended up doing worse. With last minute, you’ve no choice but to fly by the seat of your pants, and if you don’t do well, then you can attribute it to doing it at the last minute.

Again, I wasn’t that way with creative writing. Clearly I’m not that way with activities I enjoy.

According to Wikipedia, there are two types of procrastinators, the relaxed type and the tense-afraid type. I’m definitely the former, viewing my “responsibilities negatively and avoid[ing] them by directing energy into other tasks” (um, like this post). Also, the “procrastinator avoids situations that would cause displeasure, indulging instead in more enjoyable activities.”
The tense-afraid type is more of a perfectionist, which I’m definitely not, and “feels overwhelmed by pressure, unrealistic about time, uncertain about goals.” My roommate sophomore year was like this.

I like this website. It has a test you can take to see to what degree of a procrastinator you are, possible reasons behind your behavior, and how you can overcome it. I’m not as bad as I thought, a Moderate Procrastinator:

That is, when it comes to putting things off, you do so at times even though you know you shouldn’t. Likely, you are about average in conscientiousness and self-discipline. Probably, your work doesn’t consistently engage you or perhaps you are surrounded by a few easily available and more pleasant temptations. These temptations may initially seem rewarding, but in the longer-term, you possibly see a few of them as time-wasters. Though you likely still get your work done, you could probably do it sooner and experience less stress.

The tips offered are around goal setting, stimulus control, and routines. I know about goal setting and there’s not much I can do about stimulus control at work, but the suggestions on routines is helpful:

Things are much easier to do when we get into a habit of them, whether it is work, exercise, or errands. If you schedule some of those tasks you are presently procrastinating upon so that they occur on a regular schedule, they become easier. . . .Eventually, like brushing your teeth, it will likely become something you just do, not taking much effort at all. . . .Your routine gets stronger every time you follow it. It also gets weaker every time you don’t.

I’d never connected the routine of exercise – which I almost always do without thinking – to the routine of work. There are certain work tasks that I despise and consistently put off, and end up spending a full two or three days every few months completing them. I need to integrate them into a regular routine so that I’m working on them a few hours every week instead.

When I have tasks that I know will probably involve roadblocks, whether with a system or people, I put them off so that things that take a long time because of the roadblocks, end up taking even longer because I put them off. It’s horrible.

But once I start the task, I’ve no problem concentrating and keeping at it till it’s done. It’s just a matter of starting.

Guess I should get to it.

The other night I went to a lecture by a famous author. He had interesting things to say about writing and politics, but what really struck me came from a question from the audience:

“You’ve often been described as both a genius and a narcissist. What are your thoughts on that?”

Obnoxious, sure. So I heard you’re totally full of yourself – what’s up with that? While the author didn’t answer if he thought he was a narcissist or not, his ideas on narcissists themselves were intriguing.

Essentially he said that narcissists are so caught up in themselves, it’s hard for them to fall in love, but when they do, usually it’s with another narcissist because they see something in that person that’s like them, and then the energy between the two is very intense but short-lived.
This made me think of DK. He told me how he has trouble falling in love, that his relationships are either just sort of nice and skimming along the surface, or obssessive and usually with someone who turns out to be “not a very nice person.”

So I did some research on narcissism and was disappointed to find that DK most likely didn’t have full-blown NSD. For some reason, I get reassurance being able to name or categorize some type of behavior. Oh, so that’s why Whomever is such an asshole. He has Whatever Personality Disorder.

Remember those commercials for Social Anxiety Disorder? They’d show some poor guy with his forehead pressed against the wall, unable to leave the house. The description of the symptoms convinced me that I had it, and rather than worse, I felt better. There’s a name for what I have! I’m not just painfully shy! Doesn’t everyone get heart palpitations, stomachaches, and the sweats before speaking to a group? Just me? Hey, so I’m special. There’s something wrong with me but I can’t help it, see, because I have this disroder.

In my further research on narcissim, I found this article on “co-narcissim” and coping with narcissistic parents. Not that my mother has NCD, but a lot in the article describes her to a tee:

There are. . .many behaviors that can stem from narcissistic concerns, such as. . .an inability to emphathize with other’s experience, interpersonal rigidity, an insistence that one’s opinions and values are “right,” and a tendency to be easily offended and take things personally.

I’m sure we all know people like this.

Something else:

To the extent that parents are narcissistic, they are controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, intolerant of others’ views, unaware of their children’s needs and of the effects of their behavior on their children, and require that the children see them as the parents wish to be seen. They may also demand certain behavior from their children because they see the children as extensions of themselves, and need the children to represent them to the world in ways that meet the parents’ emotional needs.

Hm, so are all Asian parents narcissistic? Is it culturally inherent?

In addition:

The children are punished if they do not respond adequately to the parents’ needs. This punishment may take a variety of forms, including physical abuse, angry outbursts [check], blame [check], attempts to instill guilt, emotional withdrawal [double check], and criticism [check].

Maybe I’m not being fair. My mother is concerned about me out of genuine feelings and affection, but so is my father and he’s never controlling, blaming, or intolerant of my views. He never demands behavior from me because of how the world perceives me, and therefore him, but out of concern for my well-being.

More:

Co-narcissitic people, as a result of their attempts to get along with their narcissistic parents, work hard to please others, defer to other’s opinions, worry about how others think and feel about them, are often depressed or anxious, find it hard to know their own views and experience, and take the blame for interpersonal problems. They fear being considered selfish if they act assertively.

While I’m not depressed, I do have a tendency to the above behaviors and as a result sort of “lose myself” in relationships.

And still more:

Children of narcissists tend to feel overly responsible for other people. They tend to assume that others’ needs are similar to those of their parents, and feel compelled to meet those needs by responding in the required manner. They tend to be unaware of their own feelings, needs, and experience, and fade into the background of relationships.

While I’m single, I feel strong and independent, but when I get into a relationship, I tend to become over accomodating, always thinking about the other person’s feelings first, which could get annoying for the other person too, although he is most likely the dominant one (like my mother), as that seems to be what I’m attracted to.

What to do? Being aware of this is the first step, then to take steps to remedy the behavior. But it does worry me that I won’t ever be able to have a healthy relationship, that I’ll always tend to go for these dominant men and lose myself in the process.

Part of the reason I’m not dating is that it’s just easier. I’m strong enough to be on my own, but I’m not strong enough to be in a healthy relationship. Meeting my own needs is easier. Meeting my own needs in addition – I was about to say in addition to my significant other’s, but that’s the pattern again, isn’t it? That I feel have to meet someone’s needs. I mean, I should to some extent, but it shouldn’t be this obligation, this chore.

Wow. That just occurred to me.

And in conclusion today, class:

When we feel guilty or anxious because we fear that we are not meeting someone else’s needs or expectations, we are being co-narcissistic. . .

It is often helpful. . .to realize that the other person’s behavior is a result of their own views and experience, is not a reflection on oneself, and one’s self-esteem does not have to be affected by their behavior.

I’m sure my mother had a co-naricissistic relationship with her parents. She was blamed as a child for ridiculous things, her father was probably emotionally distant, and her mother, my dear 90-year old grandmother, probably always thought she was right. Plus the whole “children as an extension of the parents” thing.

Before trying all this “self-therapy,” I thought I was much more together. Words like “co-naricissist” or “co-dependent” never entered my language. I thought it all hooey. Ironically, as I learn more about myself, I’m realizing I’m more fucked up than I thought, which in a weird way is a relief, to realize that I don’t always have to be strong, that I don’t always have to show that I’m holding it together.

For the first time, I’m thinking about seeking a therapist, not to repair a relationship or to repair another person, just for me.

This blog helps too. :)

Saw YP Thursday night. One of our other coworkers was celebrating having paid off her student loans and so we met up with her and her friends for drinks. We stayed for less than an hour – I nursed a sake to death – then grabbed some eats. It was great to catch up and reconnect. In a way, it was better than at work, more relaxed and open.

I’ve come to realize though while I love my alone time, it needs to be balanced with enough social activity. Having the right amount of each makes me appreciate both even more.

I love the article that Zerodoll posted about last week. One bit that especially stuck with me was about solitude and God. I find those times I enjoy, usually very early in the morning when the world is still, hard to explain. Peaceful is an easy way to describe them but it’s more than that. It’s feeling full but not full of static like memories and worries and outside noise.

Just in that moment, whether it’s a moment or an hour or a whole night (like New Year’s Eve), feeling that the inside me and the world outside are perfectly calm and balanced, but at the same time I’m buzzing with some sort of energy, and after reading that section in that article, for the first time I understood what people mean when they say they feel a connection with God.

I’m not saying I’m all religious now or something, and I mean “God” like however you want to call it, Buddha or Allah or Jesus. And I don’t mean an ALL-POWERFUL BEING either. I mean something bigger than me, bigger than the puny world outside my window, but at the same time not overpowering or scary. Something that fits in the air around my skin.

It’s sort of odd how I’ve come to accept things. I feel relieved to know now that this is who I am and I don’t have to change. This doesn’t mean I won’t always try to be better, to keep learning and trying new things. I’m just saying that for many years I was pressured into trying to be someone I wasn’t, living a life I was supposed to want but didn’t.

Of course it was my choice to go down that path, and it wasn’t like it was the wrong one. I wouldn’t know everything I know now if I hadn’t gone that way.

I’ve realized that I may always be single and may never have kids, and weirdly, at least as of now, as of the past few months, I’ve been okay with that. This doesn’t mean I’m closed to anything if it should happen, but I’m okay with being on my own and relieved not to have to struggle to meet whatever expectations, mine or a significant other’s or society’s.

This doesn’t mean I won’t run up against people who’ll think this is weird, to want to be, for lack of a better term, a spinster, but you know what I say. FUCK THEM.

I’m in a unique situation. I’ve been married. I’ve tried all that. I’ve been hurt, devastated, etc., etc., and in that way, weirdly, I’m lucky because those assholes who have the audacity to judge will judge only for a millisecond before backing the fuck off. It’s like I have a force field of misery to protect me. Little do they know the misery is only their perception.