Stuck to freed

By Minh-Anton D

Maturing is new to me. As I grow older, experiences cling onto me like mosquitos looking for sweet blood. Throughout my life, my mom has helped me with these experiences from an emotional perspective. As she has always explained to me, E.Q. is an acronym for emotional quotient, meaning to describe how emotionally aware someone is. 

I was able to interview my mom to see how I’ve matured with my E.Q. and acknowledging experiences from an emotional perspective. There are two emotional ways to acknowledge a situation: either reacting or responding. 

Alynn: “When you react, you just quickly react without thinking and that might have consequences, or you might hurt yourself, or you might hurt others by saying certain things or doing certain things you shouldn’t.”

Like my mom says, a reaction is a spontaneous comeback to a situation that doesn’t help de-escalate anything. However, responding is something different. 

Alynn: “When you respond, you allow your mind, your body, to give yourself time to process, give your brain time to process things before you take actions.”

By responding to a situation, you give yourself time to gather your thoughts and rearrange them into a calm order to find ways to deescalate a situation. 

One situation that helped me see what having E.Q. was, was one day during P.E.

I had finished changing and left the locker room to go to lunch. However, a teacher was there and made sure no one went off to lunch until the bell had rung. I, of course, tried to walk to lunch hoping that he would not notice me. Unfortunately, he blew his whistle at me and yelled at me to come back. 

His way of acting towards me at this moment triggered something in me. And it gave way for me to decide what my next few actions would be. 

At that moment, I could have reacted by yelling or shouting at him for blowing his whistle at me and seeming mean. Or, I could have responded by giving myself some time to digress and see it from his view. And from there, I could think of what actions I could take. 

I decided to respond. I spent that afternoon reflecting and seeing the scenario from the teacher’s perspective. I took into account that he has to come into work everyday and lead a bunch of rowdy teenagers into a calm class to teach. I quickly understood how, by overstepping my bounds, I caused him to take action in a way to get me to come back. 

By responding, I took the first step of reflecting and I was able to break the situation into its core. Why did the teacher react the way he did? So I quickly booked an appointment with him during advisory for the next day and I went to talk with him. 

We both were able to talk and I was able to understand where he came from and he was able to understand where I came from. At the end of the talk, we both resolved our issues from it and were able to connect by doing so. 

However, I wasn’t always this way. Growing up, I lacked this E.Q. For example, any time a family member said something that triggered me, I would shut down and react. If they proposed a plan for me to do something, I would give an attitude and bicker back quickly rather than allowing them to finish and give me time to think about it. 

This caused me to have many fights and arguments with my family as I grew up. One example I can still remember was when my grandma asked me to help her wash some dishes whilst I was busy doing homework. Rather than taking time to hear her out and explain to her that I was busy, I reacted and lashed out at her. I told her that I wouldn’t do it with an attitude so forceful she gave me silent treatment for a couple of days. 

Reacting to every situation, small or little, made going through life so much harder. I did not give myself enough time to reflect and make a response, so I struggled with trying to talk to people.  One example of when I reacted was when my mom told me she had signed me up for a 4-week summer photography program. In my mind, this overwhelmed me because I also had to take a grueling week-long summer temple retreat on top of this other program.

For the last two summers, rather than cherishing it and playing all the Roblox and Minecraft I could, my mom signed me up to go to a retreat at the nearest temple for a week every summer. It made me wake up early in the morning and by eight, I was expected to be present and go through the grueling hot summer day and meditate, pray, and eat. I would have preferred to play roblox. 

Alynn: “I think having you attended the retreat at the temple during the summer and wintertime, both of the summers time, and also attended the Sunday Vietnamese school at the temple.”

On top of this, she signed me up to another program that would have taken my time. For me as a kid, summers were for me to relax rather than doing stuff. So for her to tell me this made me beyond sad that I would be wasting yet another summer to learning. 

Alynn: “Well, I signed you up for an art and I think it’s a photography class at one of the museums in San Jose, which is a very rare program that you get to attend.”

Instead of responding and gathering my thoughts into a calm order, I reacted.

Alynn: “You, first of all, you got upset because why I put you in that program and second of all, you have no ideas what that program entails. You didn’t allow yourself to experience that. Right off the bat, you get upset already and when you get upset, you shut your mind and you didn’t want to give yourself the opportunity to learn or hear me or hear good things about the program.”

I reacted to my mom and didn’t give myself enough time to come to my senses and create a concrete response. Instead of telling my mom I wanted to relax, I did something out of this world: I took out my emotions through reacting.

Alynn: “By reacting to it instead of appreciating what I made for you that day, you ended throwing a whole plate of taco across the kitchen, which is very very unfortunate.”

I reacted by doing the quickest thing to retaliate: smashing a plate of tacos onto the floor. I didn’t know how to control my emotions but rather let them control me. It felt like I could never escape my emotions and they always tied me down. 

For the next few years, I continued to go down into a spiral. Ignoring my family, having a constant attitude, and drifting away from my most important best friends. I went into a vulnerable state and contemplated self-harming. 

It felt like my emotions infected my brain like a virus turning a human into a zombie. I trekked through life emotionally and it made relationships with friends and family turn toxic. I couldn’t connect or talk with my grandparents, I was distant with the rest of my family, and I didn’t allow myself enough time to reflect about my emotions to open up with my mom. I felt helpless.

Soon enough, I caught a break. My brain began to take back control from my emotions. I just added fuel to the engine that was my brain. I had just started working out my emotions and I certainly would not stop now. I was able to resolve my emotional brain by using the tools my mom pressed into me, which were what I learned at the temple retreat: meditation. 

Doing this calmed the unnecessary baggage that I was carrying in my head. I was able to reflect on the remaining emotional baggage on them and cleared them up by knowing it is in the past and all I can do now is learn from it. Though I didn’t see it at the time, my mommy putting me into the temple was not for me to be miserable, but to gain a tool. 

Alynn: “Now that you have gone to the temple, you have gone to the retreat, you learn to reflect. You learn to think before you act and now you know the difference between react and respond.” 

She knew in her heart that the way to calm me down and help me learn was sending me to the temple, an environment where I could meditate, practice patience, and engage with the world without having to react to everything. And it proved right.

That tool would help me transform my negative emotions into fertilizer for my positive emotions to flourish. I was able to use meditation to calm my mind and apply that into my life. 

Nowadays, I have been able to reflect on how I used to behave before. I now know that my mom was always there for me and extended a helping hand to guide me through an emotional parkour course. She’s always been there for me and calmed me down in various ways, starting from when I was a child.

Alynn: “When I see you have those outbursts, I put you in the bathroom. I gave you a shower and then you came out happy. So water cleanses and water calms you.”

She also would apply her essential oils if she couldn’t help  calm me down. 

Alynn: “When you like really—you were in tears, you crying, you were just really bad, I would rub the balance oil on your hand and five minutes later, you were happy like nothing happened.”

My mom always helped me and she still continues to help me today. 

Alynn: “As you get older, I’ve spent time to sit down and explain to you the differences, explain to you what is what are your feelings, what are your emotions, and how I can address it. And I think you just want to be heard and valued on your thought process too.” 

With her help and the tools she instilled in me, she helped smooth out those emotional impurities and paved the way for me to respond better.  

I live my life from being stuck to my emotions and constantly reacting to the world to being freed from my emotions. It’s a separate entity that comes and goes through me. I no longer react but respond through life, giving me enough time to reflect and take actions. Knowing that has helped me detach from that and freed myself from my emotions.