Category: Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

To be selfish and to feel guilty are universally two things that are meant to be negative. We as a society look down on selfishness; we think those who are selfish are incapable of caring about other people’s feelings, are narcissistic, and are all-around toxic human beings. We are taught at a young age to always be nice to people, and to the key to being a good person is being good to those around you, no matter what. We are taught to always do the right thing, even when it doesn’t always feel like we are truly doing the wrong thing for ourselves.

And then you grow up to be a people-pleaser, pleasing everyone around you because you were taught that was what made you a good person. Being selfish makes you a bad person, according to society. So when you find yourself putting your foot down to take care of your own well-being, knowing that what was ultimately bringing you down was the idea that you had to please everyone around you, you start to be labeled as selfish. Self-centered. Narcissistic, even. How do we live in a society that accepts self-love, but is so quick to call you selfish for doing just that? After a while, you start to feel guilty for the decisions you make. You think that every decision you make for yourself and what you may possibly need to do for yourself is considered selfish.

If you feel guilty for making decisions depending on what you want and need out of life, then you are doing it right.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I am learning that feeling guilty for being selfish with yourself does not make you a bad person.

A couple of weeks ago, I went into my therapy session talking about all the fun and amazing things I’ve been doing lately. I told my therapist that I went to a taping of The Kelly Clarkson Show back in October, and I even went to my first adult Halloween party and wasn’t severely anxious. She was happy for me, telling me that I was now doing the things I told her all of these years I eventually wanted to do when I was ready. In true Cathy-fashion, she asked me what do I think was the shift in me; when do I think was the changing point in which I felt like I was ready to do these things and not second guess myself doing them?

I told her it was when I stopped feeling guilty for doing things for myself, for the intent of making myself happy.

The thing about being in a transitional phase of your life is that you will feel guilty for leaving the people that you have been with when you were stagnant. The people that met you in the time of your life before your transitional phase begin to see your progress as abandonment to their relationship with them. People will be happy for you because they should be, it makes them look like a good person. But, they will make sure that you know that while you’re bettering yourself, you’re leaving them behind.

I felt guilty for most of the decisions I made; going to concerts by myself, going out for the night with friends and staying off the internet as much as possible doing so. My life was not only transitioning emotionally and physically, but it was also transitioning to be in a more present state of mind. That didn’t include my online persona anymore.

I felt guilty for showing up for myself first instead of showing up for others, pleasing those who were stuck viewing me as I once was.

I had to learn that the guilt didn’t come from me making bad decisions; how is showing up for yourself a bad decision? The guilt, however, came from the influence of society’s view of what it meant to be a good person. Put others first. Be considerate of other people’s feelings despite how much they contrast from your own. Always show up for people and attend to them before you do the same for yourself. I was constantly being told I had to do things and be a certain way to be liked and to keep people in my life, despite how I felt or what I was personally going through.

And let’s get one thing straight: I am not bitter nor am I saying the people around me needed to respect and understand my transitional phase. As I get older, I am learning that not everyone will see things the way I do or react to things the way I do. Some will, most will not.

But one thing that should be universally understood is that any steps made towards being a better version of yourself should be accepting. We shouldn’t feel guilty for letting things that do not serve us anymore go or simply doing things that nurtures our soul.

It’s why I ultimately let penpal writing go for good after doing it for two years. Granted, I should’ve stopped doing it a year ago when I fell out of love with the hobby, but the level of guilt for leaving people behind and letting go a part of my identity was too strong for me to do it sooner. Sure, I still have some guilt behind the decision, but my soul feels lighter. It feels excited to fill in that spot with something that truly excites me. I know eventually the guilt will go away, as it did for everything else I left behind this past year, and I know that in the end it was the right decision.

Because like I said: if you are feeling guilty for doing something for yourself, it means you are doing whatever you doing right.

Picture this: It’s the end of a long workweek. You take off your work clothes and hop into something more cozy for the night after taking a hot shower. You look at your phone– at this point, it’s just habit– and see your social media followers post how their night is going on their IG stories. Some are at a small concert somewhere in the city. Some are posting boomerangs of the cute drinks they bought at a bar. Some are just hanging out with their friends, celebrating the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend. You don’t feel like you’re missing out on all the fun and cool things happening in the world, and you don’t feel the need to force anything you’re really not up for doing. You feel content. You feel okay. You feel… well, at peace.

What? Since when?

Well, I guess this is what it feels like. What chapter are we on now? Oh! Right. Chapter eight: peace.

Chapter Eight: Peace

It was a particularly cold and rainy April day, yet I felt like I needed to leave the house before I drowned in my thoughts. My eyes were puffy, and my head hurt; nothing I deemed as a coping skill was working. I have to go for a walk before I lose my mind. I walked for about 2 miles before deciding to sit in a Dunkin Donuts; of course, I bought myself a hot coffee and decided to write a blog post to distract myself. It didn’t work.

It wasn’t until I decided to walk home and listen to WOODZ’s new album that everything hit me at once. Why was I allowing other people’s actions to control my mental health? Why was I solely blaming myself for the failed friendships, making myself feel like I deserved all of the bad things happening to me, and telling myself that I was nothing but a bad person.

I was tired of feeling the way that I did, and I was tired of history repeating itself in stages of my life where I knew better. This time, I wanted to get over this funk differently. Instead of allowing myself to feel like a victim in everything happening, I wanted to change how I viewed my role in these situations and learn from it. It took some ups and downs to finally realize that I needed to change my mentality in order to live a peaceful life. I was simply tired of allowing myself to get sucked into feeling all these negative things and running from them when it got too hard.

By the summertime, I had set boundaries with the toxic traits embedded in me; traits that I knew were just a part of my psyche and too convoluted to understand and work through. I needed to accept the fact that I was not this perfect person with perfect character traits. I had to accept that some of my toxic traits played numerous roles in the clashing of both past and current relationships and friendships. The same way I would set boundaries with the toxic people in my life, I needed to do the same thing with my own toxic self.

I started eliminating the things that caused me to revert to my toxic traits. I started to restrict my time on social media platforms, filtering the context that made me feel anxious or impulsive (i.e blocking people I had falling outs with, muting stories and posts that were negative, etc). I stopped caring about what other people thought about me by doing things that made me feel good, and I (finally) stopped feeling guilty for doing things I wanted to do and doing them at my own pace.

I went to my second-ever Kpop concert. I went to a taping of The Kelly Clarkson Show. I went to a Halloween party. A Halloween party? Me? I know! Once I started to do things for myself without doubting whether or not I would be okay, I found myself being a very active and busy person. I wanted to do nothing but spend every night after work doing something fun just to celebrate the hard work I did that day. I wanted to go to every concert of every singer and band that I liked, even if I needed to travel to big venues and busy parts of New York City to attend them. I simply wanted to do things that nurtured my younger self, the one that spent decades second guessing everything their worth and their ability to do anything they wanted to do. It was about time I did things solely for the purpose of making the little me the happiest she could possibly be.

A time when things were simple. A time when I always felt at peace, before life got too complicated.

Perhaps this new era of my life is just about me closing a chapter of my life before 2024 comes and I turn 30. Maybe all of this soul-searching and practices to become a better person to myself is me wanting to end my 20s on a good note. I entered my 20s in a good place, and the years in between definitely were not the greatest, nor the easiest for me. I’ve been told for the longest time by women older than me that the 30s are your best years because something just clicks in your head. A lot of the things that were important to you, like vanity and people-pleasing and having huge friend groups, aren’t that important to you anymore. You develop your own style outside of what’s trending, you don’t say yes to everything if you truly feel uncomfortable doing them, and you start to realize and appreciate the things that you have versus wishing on the things that you want. I guess it finally clicked with me, and perhaps having a peaceful life simply comes with age and maturing. Maybe I’m finally maturing.

Whatever this era symbolizes or means in the long run, I just know that when I sit down, take a deep breath, and begin to reflect on this last year, I smile and simply say, “Finally”.

The year is 2018. The newly-opened laundromat opened a block away from my apartment building, and it was my turn to do laundry with my mother on this cold, winter day in February. It was during the week, so the laundromat was empty that afternoon. As my mom and I waited for our clothes to be done in the dryer, the owner of the laundromat decided to put on music videos of various Asian artists. It wasn’t until this one video came on the screen of 9 girls in a very colorful setting. I wasn’t sure what language they were singing, but the song was super catchy. After seeing the name of the song appear on the TV, I learned that the cute and catchy song playing was called “Knock Knock” by TWICE. TWICE; I feel like I heard of the name before… After listening to a couple of other songs from the group play on the TV screen, I was interested to learn more about the group and see what other songs they had out. Me, thinking that “Knock Knock” was their most recent song, I learned that even though this song was only released a year ago, it was their 3rd most recent song to date. These girls are working hard, huh? I went home and decided to do some more research on the group, and from there, well, the rest was K-pop history.

Until K-pop became a part of my own history.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m here to explain to you all about the stages of being a K-pop stan, as told by someone who was once a K-pop stan herself.

The first stage: the discovery.

Discovering K-pop is always something exciting, especially if you are not naive to its origin country, South Korea. Sure, you’ve heard of Spanish music and other music genres related to their native countries, but K-pop songs have a different appeal. They’re colorful, they have young and talented artists, they’re all gorgeous and fashionable, and if you were lucky enough to discover K-pop in its later generations, you would even have some English lyrics to sing along to just so that you had their songs stuck in your head all day. K-pop in a whole has something that many of us (especially millennials) miss in music: successful boy and girl groups. Our first taste of it was with groups such as The Spice Girls, TLC, Destiny’s Child, Boyz II Men, N*SYNC; the list literally goes on. It’s something that western music hasn’t mastered since it’s very cringe but highly successful Fifth Harmony days a decade ago. To see these different groups live their lives as one and to treat each other more like family than band mates gives us that feeling that we experienced with groups we grew up listening to.

Plus, these K-pop groups were young, fresh, which makes us relate to the genre even more, and yes, even in older generations when K-pop debuted artists in their late teens. The genre as a whole is fascinating, and with something fascinating, you learn more about it.

The second stage: the research.

You search on Spotify for the group you’re currently into to listen to their discography and to your surprise, they release new music every 3- 6 months. What? You’re trying to tell me that these groups can release multiple albums a year? We were lucky if we got a new album from our favorite western artist once every two years. You have a lot of music to catch up on now. You’re vibing, you’re putting songs on repeat, and now you’re interested to see if these songs have music videos to them. So, you go on YouTube and before you know it, you are down the rabbit hole of music videos, funny “iconic” moments of the group, and the infamous “Guide to [insert group name here]”, and now you’re sitting there watching a 30 minute video about each of the members in said group. You get to know the group and its members a lot more, and now YouTube recommends you videos of music videos from other K-pop groups; mine was BlackPink. At this point, you’re well diverted in a couple of groups thanks to YouTube and the K-pop encyclopedia, K-Profiles.

The third stage: Bias choosing.

There are two types of people in this world: the people that like every single member of a group equally and think everyone should be treated equally… and then you have those who only really like one person of a group, which is something K-pop encourages listeners to do. Pick a bias, but that member’s version of merch, album, and anything that is member specific to you bias. Maybe you like the main vocalist of a group. Maybe you gravitate towards the rapper of the group. Perhaps you are always rooting for the underdog of the group, the member who doesn’t really have a set position, but is still super talented. You start to realize that this bias is now one of your favorite K-pop artists, so you start watching content of the group just to watch your bias. You coo and you smile, calling him/her cute and catching all the Korean lingo that you hear them say. This group is now your favorite K-pop group of them all. You know their discography by heart. You’ve watched every video and variety show of this group to exist online with English subtitles. If the group was created through an “American Idol-esque” talent show, you watched every episode of that. You know each members MBTI and birthdays and ages and even blood type. Listening to their music isn’t enough anymore.

The fourth stage: The identity crisis.

Annyeonghaseyo! Jeoneun Liz-imnida! You think you could learn Korean on a little green bird app so that you’re able to understand your K-pop idols without the subtitles. Yes, you also learned that they are called idols instead of artists. You’re starting to pick up little Korean phases by binge-watching all of your favorite idols livestreams and online content, and you start to use them in every day conversation because it’s different. At this point, the K-pop interest you had is now slowly becoming a part of your identity. You only talk about Korean idols and K-pop, your content on social media is just a K-pop dumping ground of stuff, and your playlists on your Spotify mainly consist of K-pop music. You’re in this weird phase in life where you feel like this is the most authentic you’ve ever been with yourself, but feeling as if liking this specific genre of music is not age appropriate for you. You watch other K-pop stans online and notice that they not only listen to their favorite groups, but they buy their albums. I mean, we bought our favorite artist’s albums when we were growing up; this is just an extension of that really! You find an album that you really like and you either order it on Amazon or eBay since those are the only places you know that sell anything and everything; including K-pop albums.

The fifth stage: The K-pop collecting community.

You’ve bought every single album and version of each album for your favorite groups and notice that each one comes with a Photocard. You keep the small stack of photocards until you realize that the other ones that come in that particular album are much cuter, or, they are of your bias. You really want that card so you can put it behind your clear phone case and show the entire world who your K-pop bias is. You look online and notice that someone on social media is looking to trade the card you want for the card you already have on hand. You decide to open up an Instagram account and put a picture of your bias’ face as your profile picture. Your username has either the words ‘sale’, ‘collect’ or ‘trade’ on it. You put up the cards you want to sell or trade for with 500 hashtags, hoping someone has the card you’re looking for and is looking for the one you have on hand. You are now officially a K-pop collector: you create templates of all of the cards you need to obtain this collection, you buy trading card sleeves and binders to store your photocards in once you get them and yes, never let them see the light of day again, and now you are actively looking up the hashtags to see if you can go on the hunt for your most wanted photocards. You’ve picked up the lingo of the community, you’ve put yourself out there so that other collectors know who you are, and this is possibly the easiest way you can make a group of friends ever. You feel as if you finally belong in a community and feel seen.

You finally feel like yourself, until you realize that being a K-pop stan isn’t really an identity factor.

The sixth stage: The toxicity of every community.

You find yourself noticing a couple of bad things in the community you confidently called home for awhile. You’ve grown into it; you’re considered a veteran in the community, and everyone knows who you are or you’ve interacted with at least most of the community you’re a part of. Of course, this aspect applies to smaller fandoms within the K-pop community, unless you’re well-known in different fandoms; a multi-stan as they put it. You start to notice things just not being the same anymore; the appeal is losing its shiny exterior. You find it hard to spend money on things like photocards and albums, but you still do because you haven’t quite let that go yet. You find yourself not trading or selling things anymore; you just toss out anything and everything that isn’t selling. You still hold onto your presence in the community just to say you’re in the community, but you find yourself coming around once every comeback or whenever you are desperate to sell some things. You’re starting to view the community in the way many outsiders would: obnoxious. Obsessed. Delusional. You can say these things because you were also once obnoxious. Obsessed. D E L U S I O N A L.

At this point, you know more about the community and understand that the industry’s tactic is to make fans because that idols personally care and love them; of course with the cost of buying thousands of dollars worth of albums to even be considered the chance for a minute and 30 seconds of screen-time with your favorite group. You understand that K-pop is mainly harmless, but so harmful for those that lack the skills to be aware of these industry tactics. At this point, you realize that K-pop is just another genre of music, and there’s nothing truly special about it besides the fact that a community was built around it for it seamlessly being ‘different’.

The seventh stage: The casual K-pop listener.

If you made it this far, you might find yourself spending your money on other things that bring you joy. You might listen to a couple of K-pop songs here and there, but you don’t find yourself buying anything K-pop related. You don’t really talk about K-pop in the way you used to. You lost contact with those who you call friends in the community simply because you’ve realized that outside of K-pop, you really didn’t have much in common. You either delete your K-pop based social media accounts or make them inactive. The posters of the different K-pop groups you loved slowly come down from your walls. You begin to put your K-pop albums away in the closet and throw out any duplicates of albums you were holding onto just because. Your collection becomes smaller or it’s non-existing these days.

The last stage: The former K-pop stan.

You reflect back on your days being an active K-pop stan. It makes you cringe a bit, but you can’t deny the fact that it came at a part in your life when you needed that. You knew that part of your life was important and needed in order to be where you’re currently at and where you’re going. You feel like you’re losing a huge part of yourself; long gone are the days when you introduced yourself as a K-pop collector. So what are your interests and hobbies? Well, shit; I don’t even know. Some days, you grieve the days where you got excited for comebacks from your favorite K-pop artists with the friends you made in the community. Let’s call a spade a spade: you grieve the loss of your identity.

The chapter that you were so afraid of ending one day has come to an end, and like with everything else in life, you learn to move forward with life simply by letting time pass by.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I am a former K-pop stan.

When I graduated high school at 18 years old, I didn’t think college was going to be for me. My first semester of college was a challenging one; I was thrown into a new atmosphere not feeling ready for the experience that college was. I was left thinking, “Maybe college isn’t for me” when I knew deep down that this was the route I was meant to take for the next couple of years.

When I was on the path to graduating college at 22 years old, I didn’t think grad school was going to be for me. Sure, at the time of getting my bachelor’s degree, I felt as if I had a lot more to learn about writing and wanted to better myself as a writer. I was thrown into my graduate studies without any break in between and with truly no guidance. I’ve learned so much about the type of work I want to be a part of, but getting my Master’s degree in English left some emotional and psychological scars in the process.

When I graduated with my master’s at 24 years old, I told myself that I was done being a student and that it was time to get out into the real world and finally get some work experience. At 25, I got my first part-time job at my old college’s bookstore mainly because that’s what I was qualified for not having any prior work experience. By 28, I was able to get my current job at the Registrar’s Office at the same college I got both of my degrees. Of course, everything is made up of hierarchy, which meant I came into the office working part-time, with minimal wage for the first year and a half there. After hard work and consistency, I was able to get the opportunity to develop more as a professional in higher education and get full-time at the office being an Assistant to the Higher Education Office (aHEO).

I turn 30 in a little over 4 months, and more than ever I am figuring out the things I want to achieve in that new decade of my life. My 20s were a time of establishment; figuring out who I was in this society and going through the ups and downs of what it meant to live a life that was in between the early years of young adulthood versus actually entering adulthood.

While I have so much I want to do entering my 30s, something that I subconsciously dreamt of was another graduation day. For a couple of years now, I have had dreams of finishing what I started; I was proud of my accomplishments in college and grad school, but I always wanted to excel in academia. That’s when it finally clicked:

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m putting it out in the universe to return to school to get my doctorate degree in my 30s.

Setting this goal in mind makes me excited to enter my 30’s, to be honest. I think this is something I thought about a lot but felt like I couldn’t do it after the damage grad school left on me. But, I was 24 years old when I got my master’s degree. I fast-tracked into a program without taking any real break from being a student. I was burnt out but by the time I graduated with my master’s, and when I did leave my student life behind, I had no identity outside of that life. But, I’ve had some time to focus on myself and figure out who I am as an adult in society rather than a student in one. I now have work experience, I’ve done publications, and my resume is actually looking like a true resume! I’m in a really good place with a better understanding of my limits and boundaries. If I didn’t think I could do it, I wouldn’t even consider the thought.

Of course, I still have a ways to go before I actually start filling out applications to doctorate programs. I still need some more work experience in this field I want to pursue as a legitimate career. I want to do my research on the type of doctorate degree I want to pursue. I want to work to prepare myself to return to school, and become a student again; this time one that is a little bit more established and who matured as a person. I want to feel as ready as possible to enter a new program, which is something I didn’t allow myself to do when transitioning from my undergrad to graduate studies.

It’s my drive and passion for excellence and growth that has always put this idea in my mind that I would attend commencement wearing a fabric, doctorate cap & down. I think as time goes on and I officially enter my 30s in a couple of months, I feel this sense of commitment to go ahead and apply to some CUNY EdD programs. In the meantime, I want to continue to work on what it means to be a professional in higher education and learn the methods and techniques to provide a service to faculty, administrators, and students. I also want to completely learn the art of code-meshing in the workplace; how to balance out my professional, formal voice with the likeableness of my everyday, human voice! There’s just so much I am ready to embark on when it comes to my job and I’m excited to do the work that I enjoy so much as I prepare to study more about it in a doctorate program.

With time, I am definitely making at least this dream a reality of mine.

Dear Summer 2023,

You came and went faster than any other summer I had within the last couple of years. It seems as if the unofficial start of the summer was yesterday and the news of the beaches opening excited all of us that patiently waited for warm weather to come. It seems like it was yesterday that I was sitting on the deck of my aunt’s backyard, sipping a glass of chardonnay while listening to 80’s Classic Rock on the Bluetooth speaker. Now it’s back to school for the kids and teenagers, back to a full work schedule for the adults, and back to the “Ber” months of the year where many people celebrate the Fall season through Halloween and other autumn related activities.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let us take a moment to talk about you.

Summer 2023, you have been the first summer in a very long time where I spent most of my free time by myself. I was truly on my own to do anything socially this summer, but you also have been the first summer in a really long time that I got to do fun, outdoorsy things in a more confident way. I spent most of my days at the local community pool, sunbathing for hours and swimming during the times when the pool wasn’t so busy. I sat in the sun, thinking about the things I needed to do once I was done at the pool, but most of the time I thought about how content I’ve been since adapting new techniques and methods on living a healthier lifestyle mentally. Your summer mornings at the pool were possibly my favorite time of the day. The pool waters is calm and the sun beaming down onto the water took me back to my childhood summers when my aunt used to have a pool in her backyard in her old house. The tan lines show just how much time was spent at the pool. I am grateful that you allowed me the time and confidence to go to the pool as a solo adventure and in a one-piece bathing suit without swim shorts for the first time in 18 years. Needless to say, I hope to now keep this summer tradition for future summers to come.

Summer time meant more time spent with fur babies, especially on the days where I was having such a hard day and all I needed was a hug from one of my cats. It also meant spending time with my grandmother’s dog whenever my family and I went to visit. Last summer, I spent most of it taking care of my cats, who were then just kittens. While last summer that caused a lot of my anxiety, this summer it was refreshing to hop into bed and have the cats come and greet me after a long day at work. Summer 2023, you have shown me just how much I value the fur-babies in my life, and that they are the purest form of serotonin I have in my life.

Summer 2023, you have taught me that it is okay to move on and not hold any grudges towards the people you once knew and the versions of myself that did not last for long. I learned that the (one of many keys) to true happiness is setting boundaries with not just those around me, but with myself as well. I learned I can be just as toxic as those around me; therefore, I needed to set those boundaries with myself as well. Summer 2023, you shown me places within my own neighborhood that I haven’t visited on my own just for the fact that was too afraid to. I was able to go into cute boutiques where Ramon Cola and Japanese snacks were sold on the shelves. I was able to write blog posts sitting on top of a rock that was located on top of the hill, facing the direction closest to the water. I was able to get Korean corn dogs and Triangular kimbap after work on the days I craved it the most, even though I have yet mastered the proper way to unwrap the kimbap and have it stay in place. I was able to actually go into a store and shop for clothes in-person; something that I was not able to do when I was heavier. It was empowering to realize that I was now a size Large; a size I don’t ever remember being in a really long time. I was able to do a lot of things on my own because, well, I had to be my own friend to hang out with this time around. Of course, some days I felt lonely, but never alone. I think that mentality comes with maturing and learning that the only person that will look after you, care for you, and be there for you through it all is you.

Lastly, you have shown me that hard work truly pays off. Summer 2023, do you remember the day I was at work on a gloomy Wednesday afternoon? Something felt off mentally for me; it was like I wasn’t able to really focus on my job without getting some wave of anxiety about something. I went to the bathroom one final time before clocking out for the day, returning to my co-workers telling me that the Head of Registrar was looking for me. I had nervously went into her office to see that she was on a call with my immediate boss; the Supervisor of Historical Records. I sat in a seat next to the Head of Registrar, in which then my immediate boss said out loud: “The full-time position that’s been in the works as been approved by Central.” Do you remember me literally crying in that office, feeling like I was on top of the world? I don’t remember much after, but I remember even admitting to the two women that this week in particular was extremely difficult for me, and this has been some of the greatest news I got in a really long time. Do you remember that? You must do; it’s been the highlight of what the summer was for me. New opportunities. New beginnings. A new journey to add onto this chapter of my life. I don’t think that I’ll ever forget the feeling I had walking out of the office feeling as wanted and valued as a new professional in higher education.

This is just the beginning, and it all started during the summer of 2023.

Setting boundaries with others is one thing, but setting them with yourself is a whole other type of experience.

Ever since I began therapy in 2018, a topic of discussion that often came up was learning how to set boundaries with those around me. It’s no secret that I grew up being a people-pleaser; I always put the feelings of others before my own, even if I got hurt or silenced in the process. While the process of actually applying those practices into everyday life took years of trial and error, I can confidently say that I make my boundaries known and make sure they are heard for the sake of protecting my energy and my self-worth.

A lot of those boundaries unfortunately were enforced once I already made myself too available and too open in the relationships I had with people in my life, so most (if not all) successful “setting boundaries” stories were learning experiences, whether or not the outcome was what I expected it to be.

It really wasn’t until I had to learn that setting boundaries was not just an external thing I needed to do in order to better my mental health; it was also something I needed to do with myself.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I just recently started to set boundaries with myself. These are the things I’ve learned so far in doing so.

Let’s take it a few steps back before we just jump into this: setting boundaries is not a new thing for me to do, but the way I would set them in the past was still unhealthy for my overall mental health. In the past, setting boundaries was strictly an act of selfishness. My boundaries with people consist of me being completely one-sided and too protective of myself when really I was just hurting more in the end. It was either you respected my unrealistic boundaries that only accommodated my needs or you were cut out of my life. Cue 2016 Liz after graduating college and thinking I had my life all figured out.

Setting boundaries once being in therapy became more about setting them with the intention of challenging the social anxiety I’ve developed in those last couple of years into my early twenties. Again, transitioning the relationships in my life already to set these boundaries weren’t easy; especially for a person that still had to learn so much about myself and how my anxiety looked like on me versus everyone else. Many of those relationships ended because I simply didn’t know how to express what I needed out of them. I didn’t know how to express to others that the way I functioned had a lot to do with my anxiety disorder without never taking accountability for the shitty behavior I put on them. Even to this day, I’m learning to express this to others that will never fully comprehend how anxiety looks like on me; only I would know it completely.

Even after developing friendships later in my twenties and had a better knowledge about who I was as a person, I still struggled to set boundaries with people. It wasn’t because I was afraid to set them at this point in my life; it was because I was unaware that there were situations and points in these relationships that needed to have boundaries set early on.

It wasn’t until just recently that I realized that I needed to set boundaries with myself in order to know how to properly set them with the people around me.

I’ve known that I wasn’t always in the right when the relationships fell out. I know that just like everyone else I carry toxic traits that I’m not proud of. I know that I do things and say things that do not align with the energy I try to put out there, that I’m not proud of, and that truly act as the catalyst between me feeling better and me overthinking everything.

And jut like the “toxic people” you may need to set boundaries with, you also have to set them with your own “toxic person.”

For me, that includes actually blocking certain profiles on social media so that I’m not inclined to obsess and lurk to see how the people I cut out of my life are doing. It includes me thinking about the impulse decisions I make before actually doing them. It includes reminding myself that I am also capable of ruining my good energy by overthinking and allowing myself to do unhealthy things. Once I found ways to set these boundaries with myself, I find myself focusing on myself in positive ways. Whenever I feel myself slip into these bad and unhealthy habits, I remind myself that I could spend this time doing something beneficial and useful; something that enhances the good energy in me.

Since then, I’ve felt like there’s been so much more progress in my healing than previous times.

Setting boundaries with myself has shown me the type of boundaries I should be setting with other people. Boundaries, in the simplest form, are meant to protect us from things that affect us in a negative way. We set them so that we let others know what we will and will not tolerate, and I think we all need a better understanding of what that they mean for us by setting them with ourselves. By setting them with ourselves first, we’re learning if they need to be revised in any way before we project them onto other people.

I’m in no way saying that setting boundaries with yourself works with everyone. Maybe it’s not an universal thing that people may do, but for the type of person that I know I am personally, I believe that setting these boundaries with myself will allow me to let go of this belief that I am able to control what other people do or how they react to different scenarios and situations. While I know that for most of my life, I’ve been known to accommodate to other people’s feelings, I’ve also been known to not carefully consider what or when was the right time to enforce boundaries or do certain things just because I felt ready. I always need to control the situation even when I knew I couldn’t, because that also involved trying to control the other person in it.

Setting these boundaries with myself gave me the power to control how I should react and what I should say in situations that were triggering or bothered me. Instead of being reactive and controlling instantly, I now stop myself and ask questions to rationalize and truly understand why I am acting the way I am towards something. I ask, “if you know what’s bothering you, why and what about it did it make you feel this way? Have you thought about other possibilities before taking it personal? Does it serve you any good by allowing it to make you think and feel this way? What can you do to step back and gather yourself so that you are able to approach this at another time when you know you will not be so emotionally reactive to it?” For me, I really do ask myself if it serves me any good to allow something to damper my good energy, because 9 out of the 10 times, it’s not.

I’m not a stranger when it comes to setting boundaries, but I am definitely a novice when enforcing them in a positive, non-reactive way. I am still learning what works and doesn’t work for me, and how can I revise some of the key boundaries with people by enforcing them on myself first. So far, it’s teaching me a lot about what it truly means to protect my good energy, when if i have to protect it some myself.

Sometimes, you find yourself in a position when you’ve become so self-aware of your behavior and ticks and you are forced to make a decision about it: will you acknowledge it and continue to do it because you know how it starts and where it stems from, or will you acknowledge it and then challenge it?

Hi, my name is Liz, and I am currently challenging my trichotillomania.

I spoke about what trichotillomania looks like on me a couple of years ago when I thought it was at its worst. I was just returning to my bookstore job after the pandemic lockdown in 2020 and I was dealing with some anxiety about things I didn’t have control over. Needing to feel some type of control, I would nervously tweeze, pluck, or pull hair from different parts of my body mindlessly and would feel helpless when I know I needed to stop.

Like I mentioned in my first blog post about this, I remember this habit developing one day when was 12-years-old, reading a book that I was really into at the time. I have this memory of reading this book on my bed; on my back with the book in one hand and my other hand mindlessly pulling the hair off of my eyebrows. As the years progressed, my eyebrows have always been the one consistent place on my body that suffered the most with this bad tick. Other places on my body have had points where I hyper-focused on at once, but my eyebrows have always been the place where I struggled to not touch when I had these hair-pulling episodes.

For years, I deemed it as nearly impossible to let my eyebrows fully grown out to its full potential. Before this tick, I always had naturally thick eyebrows to the point that I even rocked a baby unibrow when I was a kid. After years of plucking and tweezing the same hairs off of my eyebrows over and over again, I was afraid that the hair in those places would never grow back. I started to accept my patchy and spare eyebrows when I learned how to draw them with makeup back in 2016 (before that, well, let’s just say were drawn horrendously…)

Anyway…

The first half of this year has been one with tons of challenges whether they’ve been my own personal/mental challenges, or external challenges like social and familial ones. I tried to find ways to hide the fact that I was never going to be able to grow out my eyebrows, so I bleached them earlier this year to hide the little hairs I had left on them. I liked the look of them; it was the first time I ever tried the trendy, bleached eyebrow look and it was low maintenance since I didn’t have much hair to bleach whenever I had to touch them up. But, after having bleached eyebrows for three months straight, I didn’t have much eyebrow hair left in which I dyed whatever I had left and tried to grow them out again. Needless to say, it wasn’t long after that I plucked all of the remaining eyebrow hair off of my face.

When dealing with a nervous tick that in a way is categorized as a self-harming type of behavior, it’s easy to accept it for what it is and find ways to live around with it. For me, I thought that having bleached eyebrows would help me not resort to plucking if I didn’t see the hair on my face. Wrong. I eventually would get so anxious, I went back to plucking them once I saw the roots turn black, and before I knew it I was completely hairless in my eyebrow region.

I knew the only other thing I could do is challenge this nervous tick. I wanted to test myself this time around instead of allowing and accepting that this was something I was going to live with for the rest of my life. I wanted to test if I was capable of truly being able to control what I can. I wanted to see if I was able to find healthy alternatives to these ticks, like playing with a fidget toy or apply castor oil on my eyebrows whenever they weren’t drawn in. At a bigger scale, I wanted to not let these unhealthy ticks control me whenever I feel like I am not in control of the situations happening around me.

So, here I am.

I don’t know how my progress will look like by the time this post is published on the blog, but this alone has made me the most proud I’ve been in regards to manifesting something into existence. I don’t know how my eyebrows will look like (or how long my actual hair has grown since writing this), but I’m excited to continue challenging myself from something I haven’t been able to tackle in more than a decade. After a last couple of months of things not being in my field to control, I feel like this is one of the few things I actually have some way over, and if I want to see just how long I can go without relying on my nervous tick to ease my anxiety, I can.

My goal is to not only fully grow back my eyebrows, but I am hoping to grow out my hair (finally) out of the pixie stage its been in since December 2018. I think i am just at a place in my life where I want to take back control of the things I know I can and be proud of making those goals into active changes in life. I would love to see myself a year from now with a little short bob and full eyebrows!

It’s all about celebrating the little victories on the way to the main goal, and I think that’s the path I am continuing to walk down on.

Let’s just say that my only new year’s resolution didn’t necessarily go as planned.

The day is December 31st, 2022; New Year’s Eve. As someone that carries some trauma associated with the holiday, I never try to make a big deal out of it. I try to keep myself busy; on this particular NYE, I went to the beauty supply store and purchased a packet of bleach to try the whole trendy “bleached, no eyebrow” eyebrow look on my already non-existent eyebrows. As the hours counted down towards midnight, I told myself I wasn’t going to set any resolutions since I really didn’t believe in them. The only thing I wanted out of 2023 was for the year to be relatively peaceful and quiet after a very loud and very busy 2022.

Hi, my name is Liz and I think this year has been anything but peaceful or quiet for me.

2023 continues my journey of embracing the person I am growing into and practicing how to assert myself in areas such as self-worth, self-respect, and in self-confidence. I knew that new things were destined to come my way professionally as I was told early on in the year that my office was in the process of potentially getting me a full time position! Entering 2023, I feel like I was going through possibly one of the highest points in my life–

until I was at my lowest.

As we passed the halfway point into the year (which is crazy considering it feels like the year just started), I reflect back on the last 7 months of 2023 and how it’s molded me into the person I am today and even where I’m going in the future.

In 2023, most (if not all) of my interpersonal relationships were tested. I entered 2023 feeling secure and surrounded by these relationships for them to not be here anymore or not what they were before. These challenges were faced with a lot of questions in mind: am I letting people speak about my feelings and my life without really knowing the entire story? Am I going to let people fuck me up to the point where it hinders my growth as a person? Why am I feeling the way that I feel if I already know what I should do about it? I would never say that the people I once had in my life (past or present) never had my best interest in mind, but the difference was that I never even had my own best interest in mind, so why would the people around me do? I realized that after stepping back from a lot of these relationships to reflect and take a look at it as an outsider looking in: a lot of the relationships you had during the time where you were a people-pleaser and accommodated to everyone’s feelings besides yours will start to look different once you change those qualities about yourself.

Removing those qualities came with a lot of self-doubt and contemplating whether or not I was doing the right thing. There’s a fine line between being assertive and just being a mean person overall and most of the time, you’re never going to get an unanimous answer of what it truly is. You may think you’re being assertive and putting your foot down in situations you never put your foot down for when really, you’re not accounting what everyone else may be feeling and are only thinking for yourself (and vice versa, of course).

A lot of my time alone this year was spent on feeling guilty of practicing assertiveness with the relationships in my life. I spent a lot of time fighting the urge to revert back to old habits, to let people influence my decision making and to let people step all over me without acknowledging my feelings. I was afraid that I would not be seen anymore if I allowed myself to revert, but I felt like I was stuck in this place where I had the angel and devil on my shoulders:

“You are working towards a better you,” the angel began to say. “Practicing these techniques and methods means you are not going to get them right the first couple of times. Be gentle with yourself; you know how much you are truly worth.”

“But you’re constantly doing it wrong,” the devil counteracted. “Like look at yourself, Liz; you’re back to when you had no identity and no friends and like, seriously; if it feels like how it was before it’s most likely because it’s exactly how it was before.”

Not even the amount of therapy I have gotten to this point can help me rewire this part of my brain to finally stand up and say that it is what it is and that the next group of people I allow into my life will be introduced to an already assertive and outspoken Liz.

But that’s a whole different part of the story I am not ready to write yet.

In the meantime, I am learning how to be gentle with myself and give myself the same love and support I would give out to other people. I am at a place where I am learning that these changes do not happen overnight and that patience is truly the key. Half of the work has already happened; I’ve practiced these techniques and enforced them on whatever was dimming my light. The other half of the work is still yet to be determined, and who’s to say the work gets any easier just because of the practice?

When is it going to be about perfecting it?

Perfecting techniques so that when these insecurities and untamed emotions subside, I already know what has to be done. Perfecting the alignment of my heart to my mind and being on the same page with them so that I can come out of these situations the best that I can be. Rome wasn’t built overnight, and I know I have more than the rest of this year to unlearn beliefs and ideologies that are harmful to my mental well-being.

These next 5 or so months, I don’t see myself having this “come of Jesus” moment and discover the true meaning and purpose of life. I don’t even see a lot of peace along the way, and that’s not me being pessimistic or a Debbie Downer; it’s me having lived a lot of life and experienced how not everything that shines is gold. I know that anything in life can happen, and no matter how prepared I am for what’s to come or how it comes, I am still learning and growing into the person I want to become–

–and there’s simply no deadline for when that happens.

I want these next 5 months of 2023 to be a time where I am experiencing all of the things I was once too scared to experience. I want to continue having the difficult conversations I used to avoid completely when I was younger. I want to be my authentic self to others and still remind them I have feelings and emotions just like theirs. I want to push myself to try new things, learn new methods and techniques and perfecting the ones I am already being taught.

Most importantly, I want to enter my 30’s in 2024 alive.

Not just physically alive, but I want to experience my 30’s just how everyone describes them to be; “a time in your life where you do not care what people say or think about you because you have a pretty good understanding of who you are.” If there’s one thing I felt consistently in my 20’s, it’s the feeling of being mentally exhausted. Shit; I’m currently mentally exhausted. I’m exhausted of worrying about what people portray me as, I’m exhausted of trying to prove myself to people who already have an opinion about me. I’m exhausted of allowing external beings influence my internal feelings. I’m exhausted wondering if I am worthy of healthy, true love in the form of romantic partners, platonic friends, and anything that I feel like I don’t deserve. I am exhausted of having other people’s best interest in mind and never having my own. I so desperately try to keep lovers and friends in my life, yet easily let go of the lover and friend within myself.

I am so proud of how far I’ve become as a person. I am proud that I am relearning who I am and what are the things that define me as an unique being in this world (and yes, that includes my red flags and toxic traits). I am proud that I can look back to the Liz I was 10 years ago and truly say that I made it through the shit that I thought was going to take me down.

I just hope that 2033 Liz sees the same in the 2023 me, knowing I’ve overcome everything I’m going through now. There’s no doubt in my mind that she will.