I decided not to live with shame anymore

Maybe the move exhausted all my energy, and coupled with winter, I hit rock bottom in the first few days after arriving in Vancouver.

I saw someone post that when you finally reach a safe state, end "survival mode", and start to have the time and energy to focus on yourself, your mental state is likely to get very bad before it gets better.

So I did something I had never done before, which was to go see a psychologist. I had never been to a psychologist for one reason: I had a prejudice that psychology was probably metaphysics. I believe that a person's state is affected by the external environment, and that people need to go outward to expand and adjust their relationship with the environment. If you focus too much on your inner self, you will easily become narcissistic. Second, because I am good at writing, I am too used to looking at everything from a third-person perspective, including myself. I feel that I can sort out and digest everything, and I have indeed never encountered any obstacles that I cannot overcome.

But after the epidemic, my heart has changed profoundly. Something has been lost forever. I fell into endless chronic sadness and it was hard for me to feel happy from the bottom of my heart. Even when I was happy, I would pour cold water on myself behind my back and dare not get carried away. When the daily life in front of me switched like a slide, in the black gap, my heart was sinking. I felt that I would fall into the abyss in the next second, and I had to cheer myself up to pull myself up.

I still think about death often, and feel it camping out in my consciousness. It's as if once I've been stared at by death, I can never get rid of its shadowy gaze.

What followed was a sense of emptiness. I began to feel that nothing was meaningful, and my heart was filled with fatigue and exhaustion. I had no energy to do the things I thought were important - no, maybe I no longer thought they were important. This state was not painful, but just an overly negative calm.

For a while, I reflected on the beliefs that had supported me all the way and built my spiritual fortress, such as liberalism, feminism, and progressivism, from the bottom up, and found that they could be easily deconstructed by my experience. The tangled threads could no longer be integrated, and I followed these threads to search for new ideas, and raised questions that I had never thought of before, but they became more difficult to integrate. At these moments, I found that my brain was blank, and I lost the coordinates I could rely on. I didn't know what I should believe in, and I didn't know who I should be. It was as if I was standing on the edge of "completely overthrowing" my past self, shaky and at a loss.

It is worth mentioning that I am not a devout "believer". I like to remain open and question, and I am always observing the "dark side" of feminism and progressivism, but this has not hindered my participation. The setbacks I encountered during the immigration process have nothing to do with them. On the contrary, community partners provided me with important emotional support. The really weird thing is the experience of being close to death, which triggered my question about the nature of life. Before this question is answered, I don't seem to have the spare time to care about other things.

I tried to step away and understand what I was going through, but I couldn't break through and could only go in circles. So I realized that maybe I needed the help of another perspective.

The counselor was introduced by a community partner. She is Chinese and a first-generation immigrant in Canada, so she is very familiar with the context of psychological problems of people who grew up in China. She is different from some counselors who only listen but do not intervene. When she finds problems in my narration, she will decisively raise questions, express opinions and suggestions; this requires experience, but more importantly, we have to be compatible people. In the short consultation period, she said many things that touched my heart. Before she said it, I may not understand it, but when she said it, I knew that this was what I needed and the confirmation I longed for from another person. She laid a new anchor for my inner world, so I wanted to record it.

“I feel like I’ll never be the same person I was before the pandemic,” I told my counselor. “It’s hard for me to feel happy on a deep level, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to fully recover.”

“What were you like before the pandemic?” she asked me, after I described how light and ambitious I had been. “That means you were living in an illusion, and now you’ve broken that illusion. Not only will you be able to feel happy again, you’ll be able to reach places you couldn’t reach before.”

I told her in detail about my experience with depression, the terrible somatic reaction, and how I got out of it. She said: "In my counseling career, I have met many people with depression, and their symptoms are similar to yours, but you are the only one who got out of it this way. You don't realize how difficult it is. Some people may be like you, trying to go out or exercise, but they can't go out the second time. But you felt the effect when you tried to change for the first time, and you persisted. This is very rare. This is not accidental, nor is it because of your friends or skiing, but because you have this ability. You are the kind of person who can get up with just a little stimulation from the outside world."

No one had ever told me such a thing, and I was stunned at the time, as if a beam of light illuminated me from above my head. The heavy sense of shame that I had always attached to this experience - feeling that I was "useless", "wasting my life", "incompetent", and "shameful" was powerfully overturned - I turned out to be a hero?

From that moment on, my perspective on my experience changed. I no longer focused on how helpless I was when I was trampled by the immigration system, but on how many ways I used to save myself, to persist in completing this arduous task, and to regain my freedom. What a huge initiative I played in this! I used all my strength, money, time, energy, psychological endurance, and luck given by God, and there was no place that was left out.

I gave such a bad review of my immigration experience that I felt regretful for a long time and turned it into self-attack - I thought if I was stronger, I wouldn't have taken such a detour. Later I realized that this ridiculous self-esteem was what hurt me the most. In fact, everyone messes up everything all the time because everyone is very fragile. I think I should be superior to others, so I will break so badly when I fall.

I told her a lot about my own "problems", but she said that the words you use to describe yourself are full of your personal characteristics when you understand yourself, that is, harsh judgment. "You beat yourself up and ask yourself why it hurts? I don't understand why you are so cruel to yourself."

I said, "Really. The person who caused me the most damage was myself. When I was at my worst, I criticized myself with the harshest words. I wonder if this is a bad habit for writers? I am always good at self-censorship from a detached, external perspective, which leads to a lot of self-blame and self-control."

"Your self-blame and strong sense of responsibility did not emerge in the past two years when you were in a bad state. They have existed for a long time. While it makes you successful, it also hurts you. We need to find a way to make your personality traits make you successful without hurting you."

We explored the influence of my family of origin on me. Looking back on my childhood, my mother was a very strong and strict woman, who had high demands on herself and others. She always pushed herself to learn new knowledge and skills at the forefront of the times, and she was a lifelong learner. As I grew up, she always existed as the one who criticized me, making me realize that I was not good enough in all aspects. But when her voice disappeared, I replaced her and became the voice that criticized myself, which made me feel a sense of shame that was difficult to get rid of.

I have a very good relationship with my parents, especially after I went abroad. They love me very much, and gave me everything they had, providing unconditional support when I was in the most difficult time. I willfully quit my job to study in the United States, and then wandered around for two years after graduation, and then went to Canada to study and immigrate, spending millions of dollars from my family. Although I also have a part-time job, it can only barely cover my living expenses. This actually left me no chance to resist and eliminate the sense of shame, but instead made the shame worse and turned into guilt, and I felt sorry for my parents.

The counselor said, "This sense of shame is implanted in you during your growth process. You have been told by others "who I should be" and "how I should behave", which is inconsistent with "who I am in essence". This inconsistency causes pain."

"Think about why you always need to control yourself. This behavior is to satisfy your feelings. Whatever the outside world makes you feel the most will become your priority. It is the expectations of others that make you want to control yourself. You need to understand how this feeling of needing self-control is formed, rather than responding to it, rationalizing it, or finding any reasons for it. You need to start practicing. The moment the impulse of self-judgment appears, catch this feeling, don't be carried away by it, and don't let it stamp you. True mindfulness is self-observation and increasing courage. This is the key to cultivating courage."

I wonder if the habit of self-control is really to meet the expectations of others, or is it purely because of lack of self-confidence? I am not a person without opinions. On the contrary, I have independent thinking ability and firm values. But I also realize that I am born with strong empathy for others. I can keenly perceive and understand other people's emotions and state changes, and be affected by them, which makes it difficult for me not to care about other people's feelings.

Maintaining boundaries is always a challenge, and I have always struggled between the pull of empathy for others and being true to myself. So I often choose to distance myself. My self does depend in part on how others (especially those I care about) see me, but I also cherish such connections, which are part of my growth and even part of my existence.

I mentioned my psychological barriers to writing. I was not satisfied with the articles I had written before, and I didn't even want to read them again. An independent publisher had agreed to publish a book for me, and I agreed, but from last year to this year, I couldn't edit these articles. It seemed that I had lost interest in them, or that I no longer identified with myself at that stage.

The counselor felt that my writing was too influenced by emotions. "You should learn not to write based on emotions, especially when you have a lot of self-doubt and self-denial. This self-doubt is not based on rational questioning. It prevents you from feeling the world and using reason to see deeper insights. You don't have the mind to control this calm state yet, and you can't stabilize long-term, stable emotions. This calm should be unconditional."

We talked about perfectionism and how it held me back. "Whether you do something well or not, it's not a reason to reject yourself. Perfection doesn't exist. It's a fantasy. The reason you pursue perfection is because you don't approve of yourself. If you use fantasy to prove yourself, you will never approve of yourself."

Your value is your existence itself, not the pursuit of some external things to support your existence. The value of your existence is already determined. The core of depression is low self-worth, which is the result of your total denial of yourself. You carry a heavy burden of low self-worth and will hit your ceiling prematurely. "

When I heard this, my heart trembled and tears burst out, as if the hidden and elusive inner demon was suddenly pulled out. For the first time, I really understood why I was hurt and why I was hurt so badly. My shame kept asking me to "get better" and made me worry too much about my performance. This was not fatal in normal times and even helped a little. But when I encountered major setbacks, its destructive circuit was greatly strengthened and knocked me down.

And my self-esteem wanted to cover it all up. Under the surface of normalcy, I was still in a very low energy state, full of shame, self-blame and fear, almost close to death, which forced me to care about my own struggle and be overwhelmed by its noise.

When I understand this, I can recall those moments of great freedom - when I was curious about feminism, always writing about topics that interested me, and constantly entering a flow state. There, I was focused and forgot about the passage of time, and I forgot about the self and the universe. It was the peak experience of feeling the value of my existence, driven by love, without asking for results or rewards.

I have had similar experiences in nature, which are not for the purpose of possession or acquisition, but pure joy of existence. After I got my ID this year, I went around. In the spring, I went to the Philippines to learn diving. When I was swimming with sardines in the depths of the sea, for a moment, I forgot that I was a human. Although I came to my senses the next second, the absolute freedom in that moment made me excited.

What I have always been looking for, in fact, I have already found it. I just lost myself again and again because of self-doubt, but I remembered it again and again.

Over the years, has the feminist community become my comfort zone? Is it because it provides me with a reason to justify my self-shame? Because in this community, people never advocate self-prominence, self-praise, or fame for good deeds, but rather equality, silent dedication, support for others, selfless dedication to the movement, and constant reflection on their privileges. So I can feel at ease - for the greater cause, for more people who are still suffering, I should belittle myself and be willing to bury myself. My shame has given me a lofty sense of morality and justice. We use this sense of morality and justice to produce judgments. I criticize those selfish people, and I also criticize the "selfish" me in my subconscious. How immersed I was in this self-touching.

I had decided not to write any more self-exposure articles, not to strip myself naked and let others judge me. But if a writer doesn't write about her fears and experiences that she feels deeply, what kind of writer is she? I'm tired of castrating and whitewashing my true thoughts because of concerns about other people's opinions, until my desire to express myself is completely extinguished.

Even if I want to avoid it, my continued depression is related to the loss of initiative on public issues - I have been away from China for too long, and I am no longer familiar with the domestic context, so it seems that I have no qualifications to care. Whether it is actions or speeches overseas, I can neither find a place to intervene nor a landing point. Everything is just about how we should deal with ourselves. Before the epidemic, only people in China would curse, what are people abroad talking about? After the epidemic, even the stratosphere will curse, why should people who are safe abroad be brave for people in China? I once resolutely accepted that I could not return to China in order to be able to write articles without self-censorship, but now I am speechless again.

When the feminist movement still had such a grand vision of "changing the country", perhaps I was reluctant to wake up. However, when structural change is no longer possible and the movement can no longer gain new knowledge through external practice, the closedness and internal friction of the community become unbearable. This has to be said to be a collapse of idealism. But what I want to say is that feminism has given me an important journey. It has repeatedly helped me break illusions, but it has become more and more an illusion, repeating clichés. After leaving the agenda of activism, its excitement has nothing to do with me. I can no longer listen to a word of its preaching. People always have to choose between honesty and correctness. After all, I have to complete the important lessons of my life by myself.

I decided to stop living with shame and embrace curiosity and love.

The reason why I didn't realize the destructive loop of "low self-esteem" is because we all grew up immersed in this, right? Parents' "conditional love" and capitalist society have made us look at ourselves and others in a utilitarian way, not to mention that this totalitarian country has been working hard to make individual lives meaningless. "Effort" based on negative emotions is the reason why many Chinese people are excellent, but it is also our ceiling.

I have seen some Chinese people who have spent most of their lives using their own initiative to heal and overcome the trauma and deficits caused by their original families and original societies. The "achievements" they have continuously achieved are used to fill their own sense of lack and insecurity. Once they encounter setbacks, they will directly lead to self-denial. It seems that we have never been affirmed to discover and accept ourselves as we are.

But the other people I met in Western society use their initiative to explore and transform the outside world, and reflect on their own methods when they encounter setbacks. The initial setting is very different. Some people are loved from the beginning, and then slowly learn to love others, while others need to work hard to be loved, so they love others in order to gain love for themselves.

This is a pathological narcissism, a state anchored by trauma. When your ego is firmly implicated in the success or failure of the outside world, no matter what good or bad things happen, they will be fed back to your ego. People are self-centered, and the world becomes an unlimited projection of the self. It is impossible to love in this state.

The low sense of self-worth caused by lack of love can only be repaired by establishing a loving relationship. This "love" is not a narrow romantic love, but the understanding and unconditional acceptance of others, and the interest, love and appreciation of something from the heart. In this kind of nourishing relationship, people can see the value of their own existence and fundamentally adjust their views on themselves and their relationship with themselves.

Finally, let's get to the "ultimate question." I said, "I feel a great sense of emptiness, and most things no longer make sense to me, which bothers me."

She said, "As your cognition develops, your wisdom will also grow. At a certain point, the meaning will easily be eliminated because you have learned to look at things from different angles and heights. When the meaning is broken, it will trigger a crisis and the whole building may collapse. If you want to move forward, you will face innovation, which is the process of re-understanding and redefining yourself."

Why is it that after approaching death, I immediately face nothingness? What is the reason for the feeling of nothingness? How to look at it? Why me? The process of finding answers is scattered and slow, but so far, what I have learned is that I have always been deeply influenced by liberalism and have been striving for freedom, which has made me overemphasize my subjective initiative and hold on to myself very tightly. When faced with the challenge of death, I do not accept the extinction of myself, and I do not accept that others do not accept my extinction. My strong anxiety about death - and shame, yes, even the idea that "I might die of depression" made me feel ashamed of myself - may be due to inner resistance, but this resistance is doomed to fail, because death is an unnegotiable and unshakable boundary.

Nothingness is not something that appears at the end of reason and freedom, but is embedded in both. Because freedom emphasizes the initiative based on perfect self-awareness (reason also serves this purpose), which simultaneously distinguishes and opposes the self from the universe. We regard ourselves as "exceptions", and death becomes the other that cannot be "surpassed".

In order to gain more freedom, a person's self-awareness continues to grow, enough to overcome many obstacles, but it will inevitably crash when facing the proposition of death. To overcome this crisis, we need to upgrade our cognitive system, transcend the entire modern construction of the meaning of "being born as a human being", break the illusion of subjectivity from the bottom of our hearts, and return to our limited existence itself.

This also involves our misunderstanding of "freedom" in capitalist society, thinking that freedom is the expansion of the self (desire). In fact, this is only the lowest level of freedom (even false freedom), and further freedom is based on the confirmation of boundaries, so that a person can coordinate with others. But the highest level of freedom, in Hegel's words, is to recognize the unity of opposites in the universe.

I read some spirituality and then found Sadhguru, who was very helpful and cleared up a lot of my misconceptions about spirituality. For example, he said: Spirituality is not about finding yourself, but about losing yourself. You are willing to lose everything that you call "myself".

One of his words had a decisive influence on me:

"Unfortunately, today in this world, most people, when the final moment comes, when they die, they are not afraid, they are not in pain, they just become confused, have a confused look on their face, because they have lived their whole lives only in their thoughts and emotions, they never lived their life. You have to understand, this is very important: there is a psychological reality in your mind, and there is another existential reality, which is life. Most people mistake their psychological reality for existence itself. Your thoughts and emotions have become more important than the universe, haven't they? Has the mess that you think and feel become more important than the universe? You have made your creation more important than the greater creation, and that means you are bound to suffer.

You are so controlled by the mind that even what is in your mind is not yours. The whole spiritual process is the transformation of mind activity into life. Are you a life with a mind or a mind with life? You are a life! Life can be poisoned just by a wrong thought, or a wrong emotion, a wrong concept. Or a wrong view of life for you.

If you are resonating as a life, you will know clearly that your life is not independent, it is connected to everything in the universe, and you cannot miss this. Only when you pay too much attention to your mind or get too involved in your body, you will become an isolated existence. You have to be involved in the process of life, not the process of the body or the process of the mind. "

Recently, Xiaoxi and I talked about Gautama Buddha (she was surprised that I had turned my interest from social science to spirituality so quickly, despite my disdain for religion). Gautama Buddha was originally a pampered prince who lived a life of luxury and did not care about worldly matters. But when he saw the birth, aging, illness and death of poor people outside the palace, he was deeply shocked and left the palace to start a long ascetic life, trying to find out the cause of death. After a long, long time, after going through untold hardships, he finally realized that the cause of death is life. It's that simple.

Xiaoxi said that he insisted on using hunger to temper himself, determined to find the cause of death. When he was starving to death, a kind girl gave him a bowl of milk, and he drank it. You know what? I think he reconciled.