Week 11 2026

It's been a week of thought, self reflection, sacrifice, indulgence, and busyness.

In my world of constant desire for stimulation, I can say there was no shortage of of it.

After two (or was it three?) weeks of missing appointments with my therapist, I finally got to meet with him and catch up about what's been on my mind. Talk therapy, no matter what context, with friends, family, my therapist, nearly anybody but myself, seems to help me make realizations I would not discover on my own. I find myself fortunate and privileged to have these avenues to call upon when I need to learn or change.

I have always been a strongly opinionated person. Sometimes, these opinions of mine, I feel so strongly about, can cause great distress throughout my day even when the targets of my thoughts have literally no effect or action upon my life in real-time. These thoughts or opinions with heavy emotional weight are borderline intrusive and begrudging. I've been unnecessarily allowing these thoughts to consume much of my emotional energy for pretty much all my adult life. The pattern that I'm only now realizing is how abnormal it is feel this way and that I do not WANT to feel this way.

The pattern was realized this week because I sensed a slight annoyance from my therapist apart from his typical demeanor. I was probably bitching and whining about some issue that was draining my soul for like X'th time. I was the broken record that was playing the same broken tune on repeat for many weeks in a row. The tone from him wasn't sarcastic or even tired, I could just see it on his tense facial expression that I hadn't yet come to any acceptance or any cognitive change in my mindset.

One of the most important lessons I've learned so far about any mental health therapy is that the best indicator of good mental health is the ability to adapt. Adaptation requires change, and change is often very painful. Learning, in of itself, is also quite painful especially when there's truths in front of you that you don't want to face. The people who avoid this kind of pain never learn and never really become better or heal.

I don't want to be that person.

The words discussed in therapy have been lost at this moment but I haven't forgotten the feelings of disappointment from myself or my therapist. I've been actively trying to break the patterns of trauma, unreasonable judgment and assumptions, stubbornness, and selfishness for the past ten years and I know I've made some humble progress but the pain of change never gets easier. Mental health takes practice, years, if not months of intentional practice, overwhelmingly more effort than I had ever imagined. My therapist still, after 15+ years of sobriety, still attends regular AA meetings to continually practice what he's learned and to remind himself of what he has been through.

Stoicism

Stoicism is a way of life, a philosophy, a cognitive method that I hadn't really given much thought to in a long time. Some of my best friends exhibit a great deal of stoicism, a trait that I lack in my way of life. I feel like this should be common sense to me but I hadn't given it a lot of my attention; a lot of my Asian identity is just putting up with shit and shutting the fuck up. Work hard, never play the victim, stay in your own lane, keep moving the fuck forward. I don't know I'm built this way to live in my own head all the time with the hurricane of unproductive, emotionally painful thoughts. It's a bumpy journey to navigate through but I'm hopeful that with practice and mindful stoicism, living like this becomes a little easier everyday