Billy Cao

Tag: mental-health

  • A quick note on finding happiness despite not having what I want

    I want to keep this blog post brief because one, it’s late and almost bedtime for me and two, I don’t think I have anything profound to say about this topic. All I want to write about is the coping skills that have helped me in the past week or so.

    The past week has been a challenging one. There is, first of all, the prospect of starting my first postgrad job amidst growing uncertainties about international students’ ability to obtain and retain temporary employment authorization. Then there is the pressure I feel to continue growing through a breakup while planning to relocate to another part of the country later this year.

    The more I reflect on these things the more I experience what I perceive to be a complete loss of control, a lack of agency over my life circumstances. It is as if this year has been the year where I find out that everything I want in life could be taken away in the blink of an eye and against my will (as always, my mind has a taste for dramatizing things). And these experiences have led to a great deal of obsessive rumination, wrestling with reality and, for lack of a better term, general depression about where I’m at in life.

    What have helped me the most are the following practices. The first has been to catch my negative thought patterns and reframe them one by one, CBT-style. The second involves the mindfulness practice known as “radical acceptance” (here is a New York Times article written by clinical psychologist and assistant professor in psychiatry Jenny Taitz that delves into the five steps of radical acceptance).

    The point of radical acceptance is to accept reality as it is and to accept any feelings that might arise in response to it. Too often I hold judgements not only about the reality that confront me but also about my feelings about said reality – be it the more “socially acceptable” emotions like sadness and fear or the supposedly “unacceptable” and presumably “secondary” ones like anger, envy, and jealousy. But to hold judgements in this way, I think, is a sort of defense against experiencing what is disagreeable to me, an avoidance strategy that amounts to a refusal to process and work with what I am actually given. There are moments when such refusal is necessary, but more often than not, I’m willing to say, it achieves little other than holding me back from living life in the present and causing me unnecessary suffering.

    It has been my experience this past week that I am most receptive to happy moments – and things I ought to be grateful for – when I am simultaneously most open to the realities of anxiety and pain. This has been an odd but ultimately hopeful lesson.

  • Building community, as an adult

    One thing that I’ve been working on since my breakup five months ago is building communities around myself. For most of college I had quite a small social circle as I adapted to life in North Carolina. During my last relationship, my ex’s family was my primary support system. But now that the relationship’s ended and I’m moving on to a new stage of my life, I realize that it’s time for me to take a more active role in creating meaningful connections.

    Here are four lessons I’ve learned so far.

    Showing up consistently to events / shared experiences

    This is the single most important advice. Adult friendships take genuine effort and commitment, even if they are formed on the basis of shared interests. In college, we are guaranteed to have shared intimate experiences with a large group of people. This is no longer the case for college grads, for whom it becomes important to be intentional in creating shared experiences with new people on a regular basis.

    The best way to expand my world has been to show up consistently to places and events. For me it has looked like joining volleyball rec leagues, signing up for beginner ultimate frisbee lessons and for a night class, and going to silent book club meetings. It is much easier to form connections when I see the same people over an extended period of time. It gives me time to get to know people better and assess whether I enjoy spending time with them.

    Deepening preexisting interests and aspects of identity

    As an introvert, always going to new events to meet people is not always sustainable. I’ve found it easier to connect with people who share a preexisting interest of mine and/or an aspect of my identity (e.g., having grown up in multiple cultures). This way I can find like-minded people while doing something that I already enjoy.

    Deepening my interests have also helped create value and meaning in my life. For example, captaining for my indoor volleyball team has challenged me in ways that I did not expect while revealing to me aspects of myself I did not know existed. This experience has, for instance, reaffirmed my interest in bringing people together and creating spaces where people feel welcome.

    Diversifying the type of relationships

    Connections with different people may look different, and that’s okay. The relationships I have, say, with my literature friends look different from those I have with my volleyball friends. I value these connections differently, and they have worked to enrich my life in very diverse ways.

    Not all connections have to be “deep”

    This is a big revelation for me. I’ve lived most of my life thinking that what I needed was one or two “deep” relationships. I’m not saying that deep connection don’t exist; rather, such an expectation often places an unrealistic pressure on a handful of people to satisfy my needs. In a community there are bound to be casual acquaintances, and they can be a huge source of love and support as well. It can be tremendously helpful, for example, to be on a first name basis with your neighbors, something that I am trying to build as I move into my new home.