Being a people pleaser is exhausting. Thank God therapy definitely helped me realize this because I cared a little bit too much about other people. As the only child my life has been centered around making sure everything I do keeps my parents happy. I get good grades. My parents are happy. They stay off my case and don’t egg on my anxiety as much. The problem with this little system I started is that I subconsciously started applying it to every human encounter in my life. The less of an inconvenience I was to others the better. The happier and more pleased I made sure sure to keep people around me then I “believed” that my life would be much easier. I catered to everyone’s emotions and let me tell you this resulted in me picking up little pieces of emotional baggage everywhere I went. What I thought was making the world a better place was really draining the life out of me. This is why I am the best, but I also the worst in customer service jobs. The best because I always want to make sure the customer is happy and satisfied and I can keep situations under control. The worst because sometimes I just need to grow a backbone and stand up for myself. Being so understanding is so exhausting and I now make conscious efforts to be a little bit selfish. It’s still a work in progress.

TW: suicide 

Mental health wasn’t something that was introduced to me until my junior year of high school. Growing up I knew about things like depression and anxiety, but the way it was presented to me was that those things only appear when something severe happens to you. Like it’s only normal/okay to be depressed when someone dies. My family pushed the idea that when you’re young with little to no responsibilities and all your needs are met then there is no reason to have mental health issues. So when my friend in his senior year of high school, who lived down the street from me, in a nice suburban neighborhood, headed to college, in band, with a dog, nice family, swim team, with a car committed suicide I had difficulties processing. Like everyone else my number one question was “why?” You can list a number of reasons why he didn’t fit the “could possibly commit suicide list”. You could also list a number of conspiracies that possibly could have been the reason why he did it. Now that I’m older I’ve realized that those are just questions and answers we search in order to make ourselves feel better because in reality there could be no reason why. Not everything needs an explanation and that’s okay. Realizing that has personally helped me navigate through hard days. 

Phenomenology & Trauma 

When it comes to literature that isn’t required for school, then best believe I will finish a good book in a day. Except for one book. “The Body Keeps Score” by Bessel van der Kolk. A book I picked up in hopes of understanding the root and healing process of trauma without realizing how triggering and difficult it actually is to read. One of my coping mechanisms (which by the way I do not recommend) is to bury memories and store them in a place that I don’t ever want to revisit. Realistically speaking you cannot erase experiences. Experiences no matter how small or how big the impact will always stick with you. 

When we first approached the topic of phenomenology my brain immediately went to how I am struggling to read this book. I am struggling with my own journey of phenomenology. Identifying an experience is one thing, but having to dive into its structure or the meaning within that experience is a whole other level. 

For the sake of this blog I’ll dive into a pretty recent experience of what I would describe as phenomenology. Whenever I am walking and someone is coming towards me in the exact opposite direction more than likely if they are a white man they will not move out the way. Two things usually happen; I move out of the way or we bump into each other. Even after bumping into each other I often will not hear the words “sorry” or “excuse me”. This experience has been happening for years. Recently I have explored the structure surrounding this experience and how it shapes my actions. In the moment of this experience I become tense, uncomfortable, and start overthinking. Very similar to the way my body automatically reacts to walking into not so diverse environments. It feels threatened and unsafe. Before diving into the layers that surround this “phenomena” of coming close to a white man on the street, I would just lightheartedly say, “some people are just rude”. When in fact it has shaped my subconscious reaction in experiences to follow. 

Now that was a very real example. But also not something with that big of a magnitude in my life that I would feel the need to bring up in therapy or would associate to the trauma recalled when reading, “The Body Keeps Score”. Take that example as an outline of what happens when I turn the pages of the book and begin to revisit past traumas and realize the layers of complexity behind them. Oftentimes overcome with heavy emotion and dark moments of enlightenment I shut the book and put away my memories. One day I will do better with studying my own phenomenology.