Confessions of a happy person

Definitely not posting as much anymore but still keeping up with the bi-weekly posts. Thanks for reading! -------------------------------------------- Back in high school, we had to read the ancient Greek play Oedipus. The story was about this guy Oedipus who kills his father and marries his mother without knowing that they were his parents. The reason he didn't know was because when he was still a baby, it was prophesied that this would happen, so the father trying to run away from this destiny left the baby on a mountainside to die. Of course, some couple finds him and raises him and then he grows up to do all those things.  Whenever I hear stories like this, I'm always left thinking... well what would've happened if the father didn't believe in the prophesy and raised his own son? Would Oedipus still have killed his father? Or did the father basically commit himself to his fate the minute he tried to kill his baby?  I don't think any of us believe ...

Maybe it's just me but it seems we have something controversial going on every other week. Whether it's a racist joke at the Oscar's, another white cop shooting a black kid, or Donald Trump running for President... tensions are running high and it seems like everywhere you look people are really angry on either side.  As usual, I've been thinking a lot about everything that's going on and I'm always hesitant to have an opinion... But it doesn't feel right not to say anything either.  And then I was thinking about what I had been through this past year and started thinking that perhaps our country is going through a growing pain much like the one I went through. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but to me, Trump running for president just shows how desperate and how hard certain groups are fighting for the way America "used to be". Because they know that it's dying.  Metaphorically speaking... it's like how forest fires are ...

I've been somewhat vague in my posts when I mention how I've been "struggling" with things . Now that I'm doing a lot better I feel like I'm ready to talk about what I meant by that. The past year I started having these mood swings. I think most people would generally agree that I'm a really happy person but looking back, even the ups felt out of my control. Like, I'd just get so excited I could hardly contain myself. Or I'd have to mentally remind myself multiple times to calm down and let it go. Like I couldn't stop myself from thinking about things that got me excited. Which doesn't sound like too big of a problem, I mean, as long as you're happy right? But it'd last for something like 3 days, where I'm just constantly running my mind over the same subject and even though I'd feel exhausted... I just couldn't stop thinking about it.  And usually after that would come the crash.  During these downs I'd ...

It's been almost six months since I started this blog! I originally started this blog because I felt that there was a lot going on my head that I needed to express. But I didn't necessarily feel like talking to people about it either. I also realized that a lot of people I knew were struggling with their own issues but even though these people were some of my really good friends, and we both knew that the other was struggling, we still rarely ever talked about them. We'd mention stuff but never really go into the details. Or it'd be like, "well this thing kind of sucks but I'm dealing with it..." It's like that one time in 8th grade where I had a crush on this guy in my class, and he had a crush on me, and we both knew we liked each other (practically everyone knew) and even though we talked on instant messenger every day... we never actually talked about how we liked each other. I don't know if it's a good thing or not that we have tr...

This week's post is a little late... I've been busy and tired and let's just face it, happier. Which is good for me but bad for my blog. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This trip I took was exactly what I needed in a lot of different ways. It gave me a chance to get away from all the things that were stressing me out and be able to figure out what was really going on. It's funny how we don't realize that we're going through something until we get out of it. It's like, you don't know how lost you are until you figure out where it is you were actually trying to go because now you have some point of reference.  What I'm trying to say is, I didn't realize these past months what I was really struggling with was my own self-identity. Like I was discovering all these new things about myself and trying to let go of the negative self-images but somewhere in the process I think I lost sight of who I ...

Life really works in mysterious ways.  On the third day into our trip we were visiting the Long Shan Temple and I was inspired by the people praying there to also make a few prayers myself. I consider myself more spiritual than religious and lately I had started to pray in order to remind myself the things I'm grateful for and to help with the things that are bothering me.  Long Shan Temple While I was there, I boiled it all down and came up with the four most important focuses for myself which I also wanted to reflect on as like some sort of theme for my trip. Or maybe like my New Year's Resolutions even.  They were:  Family- for their safety and happiness Strength- to have faith that it'll be alright Patience- for myself and the journey Peace- to live without judgement, anger, or fear During my trip, I was able to reflect on a lot of different things that were bothering me this last year and I felt more secure about having to deal with my...

I made a video blog post! It's a 15 min video where I talk a little about why and how I started this blog as well as reflecting on my life this past year and some of the things that my blog posts were about.  This'll be the last bi-weekly post of the 2015 year because in two weeks I'll be in Taiwan visiting family!  I'll probably still post some small things here and there before I leave and I'll be back in January.  Thanks for reading and hope you guys have a great holiday and a safe new year!!! 

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday! (for those that celebrate it) So this past year has been a crazy year for me. My next post (12/14/15) will be more of a reflection on that but this week I wanted to just focus on how I've been learning to love myself. Learning to love myself.  What does that mean? It's not like I think about hurting myself or ending my life, so why would I say I didn't love myself? Well like they say, love is unconditional. It doesn't tell you that you're stupid, crazy, weird, not pretty enough, going to fail, be a disappointment, that people don't like you, a bad person... And the funny thing too is that I told myself that I wasn't being negative. It was my motivation because I could always work on myself. I still believe that I can always work on being a better person. But now I've learned I can do that through loving and understanding myself rather than criticizing and trying to fix all my flaws. If you love...

Before I started my blog, I used to avoid posting anything controversial. It wasn't because I was afraid of offending anyone, I just thought it was unnecessary because people are going to see what they want to see (and I believe this now more than ever). So I didn't bother because it wasn't going to change anyone's mind that didn't want to be changed already. At this point in my life however, I see more and more how everyone has their own struggles. And how much everyone just needs and wants support. So voicing your opinion became more about helping and getting everyone to listen to each other. When I first started seeing all those Facebook posts about Paris, I had multiple reactions including: 1. Sadness. For all the friends and family and the people who lost their lives. 2. Pain. For the fact that people can do this to one another and how it must feel to be terrified for your life 3. Shame. For knowing that there are acts of terror all over and the world...

About a month ago, I wrote about how we could all work on being "mentally healthier." The problem with this is a lot of times we don't see how we're being "mentally unhealthy." We definitely see it in other people though, and then we tend to get self-righteous and think, "oh if everyone worked on themselves as much as I do, the world would be a much better place". Which is why I think everyone would benefit from going to therapy, even if it's just for a few sessions. Because for me, therapy was having an unbiased person who helped me see my "mentally unhealthy" behaviors which I feel has made me become a better person. We don't usually think of therapy as a tool to become better people. We think of therapy as a place for people to talk about their problems, which is true. But what makes therapy really hard is that it forces us to address exactly why we are having these negative thoughts and actions which stem from our inse...

Today's post is addressing something that has been a little unsettling for me ever since I started this blog and I don't think I knew exactly how to confront it until now. I come from a well-off family that has loved and supported me my whole life, I'm educated and working on my doctorate at a prestigious school, I make friends easily, and I'm also young, healthy, relatively thin and attractive. So who the hell am I to be saying that life is so hard? I'm talking about privilege.  Yes, I do know that life could be a lot worse. But I think it's important to appreciate our lives for what it is, not for what it isn't. And none of it changes the fact that I still have feelings and things that can hurt me. We all think we can solve each other's problems ("if the poor weren't so lazy" or "you're choosing your unhappiness") but a lot of the times, I don't think it's the problem that's the problem. What I mean ...

Last month, I wrote an entry comparing mental illness to cancer ( http://honyinchiu.blogspot.com/2015/09/what-do-cancer-and-mental-illness-have.html ) which led me to start wondering if our immune systems (which helps our body fight against disease and the area in which my graduate study is in) might be involved in mental illness.  Digging further, I then spent a crazy two days reading scientific research reviews and papers (even in prominent journals like Nature and Cell) and uncovered this whole field of study that has been around for 20 years known as psychoneuroimmunology which studies the interactions between the immune system and the nervous system (our brain, spinal cord, nerves and sensory organs) and how these interactions affect both our mental and physical health.  I was surprised to find that it's actually been pretty well established for about 20 years that depression is an inflammatory disease. ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0...

Let's have a discussion on mental illness. "We need to stop the stigma" "We need to be more supportive" "There are people that you know who are suffering from depression too" .........? I don't mean to downplay the efforts of mental illness advocates but personally I think these things are already pretty well established. And so there's no discussion because is anyone going to contradict those comments??? And while it's great when people or even celebrities suffering from mental illness come out and share their stories, it doesn't help with the fact that we all tend to treat it as a "it's them, not me" problem. We think, oh it doesn't affect me so how can I even help? And thus there's no discussion. But if we start having an internal discussion, we'd realize  "it" is affecting us every day and we just don't notice it until either we or someone we know has a breakdown. "It...

"Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there." - Meryl Streep I've been taking acting classes for over a year and from my experience (which isn't a lot but this is what I've been taught), acting is not about being a good liar and it's also not about pretending to be someone else. Which means I'm left with just being genuine and being myself. And while it takes a lot of work to get over the fact that people are watching and being able to connect with your emotions on the spot, the end result is really liberating. Because then (for me anyway) "acting" just becomes this process of believing that the situation is real and then having the freedom of being myself in that situation. This is the part that makes acting so therapeutic for me. Having the freedom of no right or wrong to just  being me. I get to be myself/as my character, with real emotions a...

Update 11pm: Now that I feel like I've established a foundation for the purpose of this blog, I'm going to stick with posting once every other Monday. Feel free to subscribe by email as well! So until my next post... :) ------------- I know I previously alluded that this post was going to be about my acting but I decided I wanted to talk a little more about why I think we need to have honest and open discussions about mental health issues. ------------- How many times have we looked at someone suffering from an eating disorder and thought, how could they do something like that to themselves? And then go and feel guilty about eating a donut.  How about telling someone suffering from depression that you know, things could be a lot worse? But then let a critical comment bother you all day.  While one is labeled a mental disorder and the other is considered more "normal", both situations are driven by our emotions. And a lot of times, because we judge those tha...