This is an excerpt from the book I’m writing. It’s raw right now, more of a journal. If you read this, let me know what you think. I’m hoping to get this out sooner than later, and thus putting this here in this newsletter.

The shame of defeat

The therapist’s office I was in suddenly faded away. The commercial carpet that rubbed against my shoes suddenly turned into a dry, cold dirt floor. I was in the corner of the room, curled up. My arms wrapped tightly against my legs. My head was down, defeated.

The buzzers in my hand vibrate.
Left, right, left, right.

I feel a sudden rush of anxiety. I know this room. I’ve been here before. It was the feeling of familiarity. I’ve been here before.

This phrase would come up again and again.
It’s so hard to understand.
Because logically, I haven’t.
But there’s a deep understanding there.

That I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE.

I’m in the corner, and out of the corner of my eye, I see a large shadow of a figure. He overwhelms me. It’s dark, and he’s backlit so I only see his black figure envelop me.

_{^{I’m afraid.}}

He’s hurting me.
He won’t stop.
I don’t want him to go.
If he leaves, I’ll die alone.
I’d rather be hurt, than to be alone.

The feelings keep rising. With each subsequent round of buzzing, this reality gets louder, more real. I’m no longer in the office anymore.

In all my EMDR sessions, there’s mostly feelings that emerge. This was the first, and only time when my perception of reality distorts. I literally saw it. I could feel the dirt ground. I could smell the muskiness of it. I could feel the cold, the warmth.

I am my dad, back in Vietnam, after the war. Soldiers that supported the Americans were rounded up, sent to “re-education camp.”

I remember the words he said growing up.

học tập cải tạo

It’s hard to say these words out loud. It has so much more resonance than re-education camp. The soldiers here were put to hard labor, starved, and lived in poor conditions.

He was being re-educated.

Tortured.

Abused.

I later validated this with my dad.
He never told me this story.
Yet my experience of it is true.
He wasn’t tortured like in the movies,
it was more intentionally starved,
right up to the point of death.

The shame around wanting to be hurt over being left to die alone felt strange, conflicting. I was tied to my oppressor. I needed him to be alive, and he was hurting me.

He wanted his oppressor to stay, to not leave him alone.

Being seen meant he was alive.

The idea of dying alone was too much.

He felt ashamed of this.

The buzzers in my hand vibrate.
Left, right, left, right.

I see a warm light peeking through the window.
It gives me hope.
It tells me to keep going.
There’s a figure in that light.
He’s waving at me.
Who is he?

This was my EMDR session with a new therapist. She used some of the new modern tech. Instead of waving a finger back and forth, she had these Bluetooth buzzers. I held one on each hand. With each found, the buzzing alternated back and forth.

We did some work previously, but this time, I came in with yet another strange feeling.

I keep seeing this painting, I told her. It’s a yellow building with a straw roof. I see this painting in my head often, and it terrifies me.

It invokes a strange, discomforting feeling. I don’t like it. I want to shut it down and run away.

You should.
Stop this.
No good will come of this.

I don’t know why.

Things start to emerge as you peel back the layers.
What was previously covered with screaming voices,
now emerges new feelings.

This journey would be 10 steps forward, then 8 steps back.
Sometimes I’d fall off completely.

I cried so much in the session. It was so painful. It wasn’t even my pain.

Maybe it was the crying from knowing that someone you love, someone that you hated at times, was in so much pain back then. He kept it from me. He didn’t want me to know.

I never knew.

I got to be my 27-year-old dad again, to be him, to feel him, to exist in the same timeline as him.

I’ve been a fairly protected child growing up. I wasn’t exposed to anything abusive or dangerous, and I definitely never witnessed any killings or war, yet everything in my body knows it.

What am I supposed to do with this now?

Nothing.
You’re healed.
Congrats, you did it.
The feeling is gone.
Let’s get back to work.

Dan likes claiming victory. Along the way, I’d have big breakthroughs, he’d congratulate me, and then trick me into thinking I was done. For him, the idea that this healing journey has no end doesn’t work.

If you can’t check the box, why do it.

So he leads me to believe that I did it. There’s nothing more to uncover. Dad felt shame. He was in prison. That makes sense. Lock it up, we’re done.

The EMDR therapy definitely works. I left feeling great, a weight released, but only temporarily.

I learned along the way that these breakthroughs, while are moments to be celebrated, are just moments. They shift aside blockers, and create space for more to emerge.

Something deeper resides here.

Something that I bottled away.

Something that wasn’t meant to be uncovered.

When I started the session, I told my therapist that I see a yellow painting, it’s a building and it scares me. I kept that image of the yellow building in my head, and we focused on it.

This is a photo I took when we were in Hanoi Vietnam at the Hỏa Lò Prison museum. It’s not THE prison, but there’s an erriness to see the yellow trim here.

Free Palestine

I’ve been swirling so much on Palestine. I read the news, I see the images, and I’m caught in the take a stance, or protest, or…

And at the same time, I saw a complete decline in my mental health, and my physical healthy.

Why?

Read above. In the story above, the bombs were being dropped. The torture in the form of forced starvation. I know the faces in the pictures because it is me. We are not individuals separated from all this, we are deeply connected.

Only in doing the work above, could I understand why this impacts me.

Only in doing the work, could I expand my capacity for compassion.

Only in being, can I feel the depths of the pain this world is in, and keep my heart open.

Thank for reading

Thank you for getting this far down. I’m making a run at building this newsletter and putting the learnings I’ve found here. If you think someone might benefit from this, please forward it along. If you haven’t already, subscribe.

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