Update #2

In this episode: I say a lot, so I won't waste words here.

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Heyooo gang, I know I said I'd try to post once a week, but this past week I just had too many realizations and I got excited. So let me update you all on what's been going on. Last week I talked about my discovery that I have low self-esteem, which was kind of both a blessing and curse. It was a curse in that I found out that I did indeed have low self-esteem, and that upon further inspection, I realized that it was ingrained in every aspect of my life. More on that later. It was a blessing in that I did realize it, even though it took 23 years (yikes), but pinpointing that and just accepting that was so liberating in a sense. It was liberating to know what I'm working with, even though that discovery in and of itself made me a little uncomfortable. But isn't that the catalyst for growth? Being subjected to uncomfortable situations, and pressing forward into the unknown. But yeah, I was a little discouraged when I found that out. I'm honestly surprised with how easy it was for me to accept it though. Usually I spend a good bit of time in denial but this made so much sense to me that I'd be silly not to accept it outright.

It was also liberating because it provided me the opportunity to try something new which was to forgive myself for my past shortcomings in order to move on. For example, I was a pretty mediocre undergraduate student in engineering, and though I tried my best my grades never reflected that. Any time I did badly on an exam or a lab report, I took that L personally which translated to me feeling like I wasn't good enough. It's a vicious cycle, and I really believe that the first step to breaking that cycle is coming to the realization that I have low self-esteem.

But I'm the kind of person who likes to get down to the root of the issues, so I can understand at a fundamental level what I'm working with and really understand the nature of the issue. I mentioned before that I realized that my low self-esteem had been ingrained in every area of my life, but I wasn't content in just knowing that was the issue. I wanted to really dig into that and see where it came from, how it manifested itself in my everyday life, and how to correct that in order to have truly robust growth that would endure time. I've been reading a ton of self-help books, and I was really skeptical at first because I always thought that those were for people who didn't know what they were doing and I thought I didn't need them. I realized that this pride was keeping me from getting to the bottom of the issues that afflicted me, so I decided, with some hesitation, to buy some of these books. I did this in an effort to understand and make sense of all the trauma that had happened over the last few months and process it in a healthy way. (Note: Notice that I say trauma which most people consider to be big events, but in both of the books they consider trauma to be anything which could've disrupted the flow of your life and caused distress. It can be a big, life-changing event or something small.)

I've really been focusing on two books, which have given me a world of wisdom within like 100 pages of each book. One of them is called Getting Past Your Breakup by Susan J. Elliott. She's a grief therapist and writes from the point of view of her own experiences in dealing with a failed marriage of her own as well as case studies from her counseling experience, and she helps you understand the grief process not as stages, as it is commonly considered, but as three phases, which are: 1) shock and disbelief, 2) review, relinquishment, and much emotion, and 3) reorganization, integration, and acceptance. She goes on to describe each phase and their interplay in detail, but basically that set the groundwork to lead me to the next chapter on just starting to improve my self-esteem. That kind of annoyed me, because it went from "this is what it is " to "let's change that" without even considering "where did this come from and why" in terms of having low self-esteem. I wasn't content to just start improving my self-esteem without first analyzing why I was feeling that way and where it came from, and how that manifested itself in my life. I had to do more reflection and introspection on my own to really get to the bottom of it. I started out by thinking, "what are some immediate things I can come up with that make me feel inadequate?" So in my handy-dandy notebook, I wrote down all the things that I could think of. The first thing that came to mind was when I was on the high school crew team in my first two years, and I wasn't particularly fast and did not have particularly good rowing technique. I loved the sport, being with the team, and working everyday to get better, but I always found myself being one of the last picks to be in a boat. I took that pretty personally, because I had given my best effort everyday and I felt like it wasn't good enough. The coach did end up putting me in a boat but I still felt "less than". So I thought okay, what else? Whenever I'd use dating apps way back when, I wouldn't get too many matches and that made me feel like something was wrong with me. Why weren't people swiping right on me? I like to think I'm a decently handsome guy, I'm caring, I have a lame but witty sense of humor. So what gives? Obviously people can't see anything beyond what's on the dating app profile, but I kept looking for something beyond that. Again I took that personally, and I kept letting it bring me down.

So now I had started to see a pattern of trying my best, not performing up to my expectation, and feeling badly about myself for it. But I wanted to go even further than that and discover where it all began. In the other book I'm reading, Getting Past Your Past by Dr. Francine Shapiro, she talks about a method of therapy that, at first to me, sounded like hypnosis or some crazy kind of voodoo therapy that doesn't work in real life. I saw this book on my therapist's bookshelf and thought, that sounds kind of cool. Dr. Shapiro is known for revolutionizing a type of therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. I'll explain it a little and you'll see why I thought it was nonsense at first. So EMDR therapy is predicated on the idea that memories are processed during rapid eye movement (REM) or deep sleep. Pretty straightforward. What she then goes on to say is that we all have unprocessed memories from traumatic (again big or small) events in our lives that live in our subconscious that cause us to behave in certain ways. It makes a lot more sense when you read the book, but this is just my recap of it as a guy who knows little about psychology. The part that was crazy to me was when she said that in order to tap into your subconscious, you do a series of eye movements that mimic eye movements that occur during REM sleep, which allow the brain to have all these seemingly unrelated memory associations. Once those associated memories pop up, you can desensitize and reprocess the memories in a way that allows you to learn from them and discard the bad parts. This part has to be done with a therapist who is trained in EMDR therapy, but digging down and finding an unprocessed memory that could be tripping me up, as she calls it the "snake in the grass" memory, was something I tried to do on my own. Nothing is more base level than the subconscious, and even if I couldn't do EMDR therapy on my own, I could at least dig down to deepest levels of my conscious memory to find the snake in the grass that is causing me to be the way I am.

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It kind of happened all at once, because after having sehri (suhoor, breakfast, morning food, whatever you call it) I went to lay down and go back to sleep before heading to volunteering. I had a thought about one memory, which led to another and to another. So I challenged myself to think back to the first memory I could have of feeling inadequate, because that's probably the one that started the low self-esteem cycle that's present today. I managed to trace it back to a memory from when I was like 5 or 6 years old, when I was hanging out with a friend of mine at his house. This friend was a good friend of mine, and we had gone to preschool together and our families were close. His parents were always welcoming to us when we came, and they treated us like their own kids, which is what all good brown parents do. I remember going to his house one day and his mom wanted us to stop playing whatever we were playing and read Quran for like ten minutes. No big deal. Back then to me, that was annoying. I mean c'mon I came to play with my friend not read Quran! Obviously as a 5 or 6 year old, I didn't have a say and I didn't realize that that event would later make me feel inadequate. Being that young meant I really didn't know anything about what was going on, let alone have the foresight to know that that small thing would affect me in such a profound way. Looking back at it, it made think that I was an underachiever for not reading Quran in my daily routine, and that probably was the snake in the grass that I was looking for. I wasn't 100% sure if that was the one I was looking for, but I couldn't think of anything earlier than that where I felt or would have felt that way, so I was satisfied with that answer as to which unprocessed memory was causing me trouble. Maybe there are more, but for now that one seems to work for me. But at the same time, it was kinda whack for me to just accept that this one non-event in my life caused me feel like I have low self-esteem in everything I do. But when I thought about it more, I thought that the low self-esteem had been present in many things after that, so I was okay accepting it.

So I came to that realization yesterday morning. I've been going to individual therapy for about a month now, and it's been good for me. The next step for me is to start with seven to twelve positive affirmations about myself, whether those are things that I currently like about myself or that I want to become. In a sense just training myself to realize my worth by consciously putting in effort to acknowledge the things that I like about myself and the positive things that I aim to be. Those labeled "current" are what I currently like about myself, "goal" is what I aim to be, and both means I like those things and want to keep them up. So far, this is what I have come up with:

• I pray for my family, my friends, and myself (current)

• I am patient with my family and friends (goal)

• I love my family, my friends, and myself (current)

• I admit when I make a mistake or when I am wrong (current/goal)

• I make solid financial decisions (current)

• I apologize sincerely when I wrong others (current)

• I am confident in my ability to make my own decisions (goal)

• I challenge myself to be better everyday (current/goal)

• I journal everyday to keep track of and regulate my emotions (current)

• I keep my head down and stay humble in my successes (goal)

• I reflect on and learn from my mistakes and failures (current/goal)

• I seek to always do right by everyone (current/goal)

• I admit when I make a mistake, apologize for it, forgive myself, and learn from it (current/goal)

As you can see, I've got quite a comprehensive list of affirmations. The book recommends twelve as a maximum, and to re-evaluate after thirty days. Our priorities are always changing, so that makes sense to me. Today was day one, so let's see how it goes.

Thinking about this really made me realize how fickle self-esteem is. It's a lot like trust: it takes time and effort to build up, but can be brought down very quickly by small perturbations. The goal for me is to bring myself to appreciate myself and love myself better than I have done up till now. As I get ready to venture to a new city in a few weeks and start a new job, I'm excited for this new chapter of life. God has given me so many opportunities that I'm thankful for. I want to put myself in a place where I'll be set up for success in all areas of life. I'm also excited at the prospect of just chipping away at it everyday. I'm the kind of person who gets demoralized when things are too difficult or take too long to the fruits of the effort. This is part of a mentality shift that I'm trying of understanding that good things take time and effort, and I'm ready to put in the work.

Part of me is also scared to leave the old me behind. While I realize that this is healthy and for the better, I can't help but be nervous to leave the old me behind. I just want to make sure that I continue to stay true to my values and what I stand for. I made a list of those so I could be certain that I keep them in mind as I continue to grow throughout life. They are (in no particular order): honesty, hard work, love, patience, and faith. This is where the real work begins, and I just need to stay relentless in my pursuit of growth.