, 25 min read
Get Ready with me & chit chat about relationships, panic attacks, life....
This necklace, it's Pisces. Why do people always go like this? Does it actually help with the focus? Is it for focus or is it for the lighting? I don't know why people do that.
So I'm getting over some sickness. I rarely get sick. I feel like my immune system is pretty strong, but I don't know if I'm going to make it through the video. When I do get sick, it hits me like a train. Gosh, it's hard to look at myself today. What is with this eye? I feel like this eye is drooping.
We're going to try lowering the curtains. I feel like that actually helps. Helps.
I feel better about my life so I'm going to put on makeup and just talk about different thoughts that are occurring today. First off, I feel somewhat too very much ugly today. This is me with zero makeup on my face.
I hate these lines and I don't like these. But as I say that, it reminds me of one of my thoughts that I think I realized it when I was getting my hair done at a salon. And I insulted myself. The guy had asked me a question and I insulted myself and I was like,
"Yeah, I'm just a loser. I just stay in most of the time. I don't go out."
And he was like, "Well, I do that too. Like I stay in most of the time too."
And then I realized that by insulting myself and calling myself a loser, I was inadvertently calling him a loser. And then it just makes me rethink everything that I insult about myself. Any like anytime I insult something about myself, I think to myself,
"Do I I want someone else to feel insecure about those things?"
Because there are people who share the same traits and like, for example, just as I was insulting these things and these, I was like,
"I don't want to spread around insecurity and be like, 'You should hate that about yourself.'"
It's ridiculous, but it's it's a learning process. I've never loved the way I look with no makeup. And I think that's fine. I have chosen to go without makeup more often, but it's more an act of bravery than me thinking that I'm beautiful with no makeup. I'm like, "I better get some makeup on soon cuz I can't keep looking at that."
First, I'm going to put these on. So these things are called Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Dew Drops. And I really don't even know if they make my face glow, but what I do know, is that it acts as a primer. And I've never been a primer lady, but this is the only thing that has blown me away where it's not even a primer, but it like it makes the makeup grab onto your skin so much better. And it does make the makeup last and it doesn't like interact. The chemicals don't interact and make like the makeup curdle or like, you know, women. No, it's always so hard to find like formulations that work together.
I got coffee. Then get it. I made it well. I put it together. I got cold brew. There's like a really special sweet cream thing that I got. I put that in and then milk. And I even got this topper stuff that's like cold foam that I saw at Target. It all like melted though.
Panic attacks
I've been dealing with a lot of panic attacks lately.
I started getting more — I’ve had this for years, but I started getting one like once a week and then one like almost every day where they felt like heart attacks. It was like the sharpest pain right in the center of my chest, an insanely sharp, like overwhelming pain. And it was like throbbing. And I was like, “At first, I thought they were panic attacks.” And then eventually, I was like, “Is this like heart failure? Am I having a heart attack?” And one of the weirdest things was that they would happen sometimes when my body wasn’t feeling panicked.
Like I was grocery shopping, and as I was walking out of the grocery store, I started getting this stabbing heart pain. And it lasted for like 10 minutes, and I was able to keep myself relatively calm, but it scared me. And then I also woke up in the middle of the night with the stabbing pain and racing heart, and I was like,
“Is that a heart attack? I don’t know, cuz like how can you be panicked at night?”
But I did Google it, and Google was reassuring and it said that panic attacks can come out of nowhere, even if you don’t feel panicked, you can have a panic attack. I also, like a while ago, I would read about how people were scared of the next panic attack, and I hadn’t — I didn’t really understand what it felt like to be scared to experience another panic attack. But now I understand that it can be so bad and so frightening and so serious that you are literally like scared to have a panic attack, and you’re always wondering when it’s going to happen.
It also kind of prompted me to go to the doctor, so I eventually went to the doctor a few days ago, and they gave me an EKG to test my heart, and they said it was fine. It was good. And all of my other tests came back good. And I went to the doctor for several reasons, and I did ask for medication to take if needed during a panic attack. So it makes me feel better, even though I’m scared to take the medication as well. But I would say, like several times a day, I am — there will be something that will happen with my body that will start to freak me out and set me down a path with panic.
The worst panic attack I got recently lasted for like an hour or two hours even because I was just chilling at night, and I noticed that my leg was swelling up. It looked like I had gotten a bite, like a bug bite, and it started like there was some sort of mark on my leg that big that was swelled up that big, or like, you know, like an area that was swelled up. And this is me — I immediately went jump to the worst conclusion.
“What if it’s a brown recluse spider bite?”
Cuz like it obviously looked like some sort of bug bite, but I wasn’t aware when it happened. And I was like,
“What if it’s a brown recluse? What if it’s a brown recluse, and my leg is going to rot off?”
I actually don’t even know — I don’t know if a brown recluse kills you if it bites you, or if it makes like the injury area — anyway, I’m getting dark. See, that’s a part of my personality I hide from my YouTube videos. I can get quite dark. It’s not like purposefully hiding it. It’s just like socially, I learned what is socially acceptable and what’s socially looked down upon. And so naturally, I hide specific parts of myself. And it’s extremely difficult to calm yourself down in a situation like that because there is something wrong, like I had a bite. And like, sure, it turned out to be like just any sort of random bug bite.
I still don’t know what it was, but it’s so hard because it’s like,
“Well, I don’t want to calm myself down if it actually is an emergency.”
Does that make sense? Like if it’s actually an emergency, you want to like go to the ER, but I don’t want to just go to the ER because of — anyway, I’m talking about this too much. I like to do half of my face just for fun to show you the difference. So people who are not familiar with makeup don’t probably — or they don’t know this, but the first step of foundation is supposed to kind of give yourself a blank canvas to work on. So I am fully aware that it looks kind of like I’m dead right now, because it — what foundation does is, it takes all the color away from your face. But that’s the purpose of adding in all of those colors again. And I feel like some people who do their own makeup don’t understand either that like you can’t just stop at foundation. If you stop at foundation, you’ve like wiped away all of your own natural shadows and colors and your natural rosiness, and you do look kind of like a dead person. And foundation does do an excellent job of like wiping away.
Everything I was watching Jennifer Garner’s like makeup tutorial for Vogue. I love watching the celebrity makeup tutorials for Vogue. They’re fun. But Jennifer Garner said something interesting, something that kind of hit me. And it’s like something that I have heard so many times before, but it never really — never really struck me as true. It actually always struck me as like extremely insulting. But all right, I’ll just say what she said, and I’ll say my thoughts on it. She said,
“The way to gain self-esteem is to do estimable acts.”
And she was like,
“Focus less inwards and more undoing things for others, estimable things for others.”
And I was like, “I paused and I thought about it for a while.” Because I’ve had a lot of people be like, “Stop focusing on yourself. That’s why you’re so unhappy.” And it’s like, it’s so annoying because like, and people say that like being self-aware or pursuing self-awareness or personal growth is the same as self-centeredness, or like being too selfish or focused on yourself. And I think that is such bull crap. Like I think being self-aware and focusing on self-awareness and focusing on healing your own healing and like working through your own issues and discovering your trauma or not trauma, but discovering your triggers and working on like how learning, how to like self-soothe and manage your emotions, all of those things are extremely beneficial. So it’s just so annoying whenever people would tell me that. And I would pretty much immediately brush it away. And they’d like,
“Focus on doing things for others.”
And I’m like,
“I am — like you don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I actually do a lot for other people. I focus on like generosity and giving to others and like showing up for my friends and offering support, and offering help. I volunteer at nursing homes here and there, and I do art classes at nursing homes.”
I’m trying to get rid of these shadows under my eyes, like these red shadows. This actually kind of looks cool. I look like an anime character or something. I think some of the most dangerous people — gosh, I look like a freak.
Some of the most dangerous people in society are not self-aware. I think not being self-aware and like, for example, not understanding the difference between “You made me do this” versus “Oh, that’s a choice that I made. I need to take responsibility for it.”
The difference between those things is major. Like most abusive people, if not all of them, are not self-aware. They don’t understand exactly why they’re doing the things they’re doing or why they’re reacting the way they’re reacting. I’m so glad I thought of that because that is such a good example of why self-awareness is so important. People with no self-awareness hurt people.
This is going to get better. I promise. So I’m going to lock it in with some powder, and then we’re going to get going. I can’t tell you how much I love makeup and how important makeup is to me. It’s always so personally insulting, when people tell me that they way prefer me with no makeup or they hate my makeup or
“Why do I wear so much makeup?”
Because I love it. I’ve always loved it. It’s like one of the very first things that I got to practice my own agency, because I was like hiding the fact that I wear makeup for my dad, because he didn’t allow us to wear makeup as teenagers. And the fact that I would put on makeup as like an act of rebellion and I loved it. It made me happy. I feel like it was the first time I like exercised my own independence.
So the whole reason I was recording this video is, because I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing with my life right now. Me and my now ex-boyfriend were planning on moving in together. So a lot of my focus was like looking at apartments and like thinking of what areas of town we were going to live in and like planning to live together. And it kind of put a halt on my own life. And I wasn’t upset about that. I was so excited.
I felt like I was going in a specific direction and even leading to marriage with him that like, again, my life was on hold because our life together was kind of up in the air. I was like waiting for us to live together, and then we would figure it out from there. So when it ended, now I’m kind of left like,
“What now? Where am I?”
Great. I have to focus on my own life. And now I’m actually really grateful that we didn’t live together before breaking up, because it would have made the breakup a lot harder, because there would have been a lot more adjusting to do. And I’m lucky that I’m in a good spot in life for like my — at least financially, I’m doing good. Okay, I have an income. I have a reliable job. So that was good. I have a place to live, which is good. So life in general is good.
But it has led me to,
“Okay, I love to pour all of my energy into a relationship. I just love it.”
And I think part of it is like a healthy love of like,
“I just love to love. I love to give. I love to put my energy into relationships.”
I don’t think that that’s a bad thing. But another half of it, I would say, is that I do it to escape the overwhelming feeling of trying to figure out my own life. And I’ve known that about myself for a couple of years. I did it with my ex-boyfriend, my previous one, where like I just — I’m so happy to like give up my own life in order to support their life. Cuz it’s just so easy. And like to me, I value a relationship more than I value anything else, especially like a career. So it’s easy for me to put my own life on hold in order to maintain a relationship. But I was doing that for years with my first boyfriend. And then I spent like three years on my own, kind of just like flopping around, just like not really knowing what I’m doing. I was in California, and I’m proud of those years and I’m proud of that decision, because it was an adventure, and I did learn a lot, and it was fun. But at the same time, I didn’t do anything while I was there to create a future for myself. Like I didn’t pursue goals when I was in California.
I was mostly just like floundering and terrified. Like, so I was just like overwhelmed by life.
Another aspect to this is that I felt, and still feel to an extent, that if I made a wrong decision or if I started to pursue my own life goals, then there’s a chance that I might like not have a place for a relationship anymore. Meaning that like if I did eventually meet the right person and they had a career and they needed to like move to another state, but I also had a career that was based here and I wanted to stay, and I had all my own goals and my own life and my own like everything, my own friends, then I would be a lot more reluctant to follow.
Because something in relationships, and I think this is true — I really do — like ask anybody in a relationship, one person has to follow the other at some point. And most of the time, it’s the woman. I have seen and met so many couples who have moved together for either school or work. And there have been one or two, where the man does follow the woman, which I appreciate. But that’s what I’m talking about is if I want to stay with somebody, I have to be ready to like approve my life. So I always felt like it was easier to just have no life. And I’ve always had a life. It’s just I haven’t pursued anything that requires like full-on dedication and commitment. Pretty much nothing in my life has been commitment, which I chose that.
This is one of the things that people just misunderstand because of YouTube. But I’ve always been a very committed person. Like the first job I had in high school, I stayed at for like four and a half years. And I didn’t realize that like I could quit. And I hated it for four and a half years. I hated it. And then my mom was like,
“If you hate it so much, why don’t you quit?”
And I was like,
“Like, because that’s all you do. Like you don’t quit jobs. You stick with them.”
Like I was trying to think that like even if you hate something, you stick with it. So I did, and I still have that within me where like you stick with things. You finish that thing. So it’s actually against my nature to not commit. But I chose to live a life with no commitment because I saw all the adults around me committed to things and how it was like like chains around their ankles, dragging them down, holding them back. They’re like,
“I wish I could travel, but I can’t quit my job. Like I’ve been here for 15 years.”
Oh, I think I totally got off topic of the estimable acts thing. I did.
So Jennifer Garner said the estimable—like,
“To gain self-esteem, you must do estimable acts.”
And it made me pause because I think there is truth to it to an extent, where you can be like,
“I think self-awareness is good.”
But at the same time, if you are self-aware and then you remain in your head, you can go down such dark trains of thought. And a lot of it has to do with like beating yourself up, like even things like saying like,
“I should be farther along. And like like I haven’t been doing a good enough job. Like I need to be pursuing more like this or that.”
I think when you get stuck in your head in a negative way, it can really drag you down. And I think that’s the line when you know you need to be looking outwards more. And I actually think that I have finally hit that line because I think that I am self-aware. And I’ve definitely hit the line where like everything I could know about myself for the most part, I know.
Like I like to joke with myself and others that I know I have figured out all the ways that I’m broken. I’ve figured out everything that’s wrong with me. But it’s very difficult for me to figure out how to fix it. So that’s when therapy comes in. And it also kind of points to like,
“Okay, there’s nothing else you can do. Like you’ve done the work. You’re self-aware. You know how to like question things. And now you’re mostly just like going in circles.”
I do a lot of circles. I think it hit me now because I think it is actually connected with the place I am in life right now. Because I always knew I was doing important work before, but now I’m like pretty good. And I think I should focus more on like looking outwards, looking outside of myself. And there is truth in it.
My YouTube channel
But still, to anyone else, I would not give that advice specifically to like, like that is the way to gain self-esteem. ‘Cuz I don’t think it’s the way. Like you do not want to be out of touch with yourself. I’ve gained a lot of self-esteem in a lot of different ways. Something that is incredibly important to me that I would like to focus on and that I wish could build, and one of the reasons I’m recording this video, is my YouTube channel. My YouTube channel, of all the things I’ve done in life, not very many, the one thing that makes me feel the most purposeful or like I’m living aligned with my purpose is my YouTube channel. There’s a lot of things that have been extremely discouraging having to do with my YouTube channel. I’ll name three.
1. I don’t like when I post a video and I get excessive compassion and attention from people focusing on me. Like I don’t like when people don’t understand that the reason I’m sharing my problems and issues is not to get all this positive like,
“It’s okay. You’re wonderful. You’re going to be okay. Like we’re here. We support you.”
Because it’s not about me. And yeah, sure, it’s my channel, but I always say the reason that I record my videos is like it’s a personal diary. So I am recording my own life, my thoughts, my journey, all of that. And it’s important for me to look back on. But the reason that I make my videos public, the only reason that I make it public, is for anyone who feels like they can relate to these problems and then they can watch me and see how I solve the problems, or the thoughts I have or the breakthroughs I have. Anything at all that they can relate to that inspires them or gives them hope. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable it feels. But when you share these things and you get thousands of comments like just smothering you with this compassion and empathy and being like all about you, it’s extremely uncomfortable because it’s like,
“No, you missed it. You missed the point. That’s not the point. The whole point of the video is not about me and my personal problem.”
The comments that make me feel the best are the ones that say,
“Your channel has helped me so much.”
Or,
“I’ve related so much to you in your journey.”
I’m like,
“Yes, you get it. This channel is about you.”
It’s for people who struggle with anxiety, for people who have social anxiety, for people who feel kind of out of control of their lives, for people who feel weak, for people who struggle with self-hatred and insecurity and trying to gain confidence and they’re on this path trying to gain awareness and progress in life. All of that.
2. Okay, the second set of comments that make me extremely uncomfortable are all the men in love with me. If I could snap my fingers and make them disappear, I would. There’s no value in comments from people just be like,
“You’re so beautiful. You’re so — oh my gosh, I just love you so much. Please come to Detroit and go on a date with me.”
I guess so many men like inviting me to New York to go on a date with them. I’m like, “That’s never going to happen.” And like,
“How can you watch my videos, which are about deep subjects and me sharing my thoughts, and the only thing you can say is something about my looks and how like you’re obsessed with me when you know nothing about me?”
I just hate that. And like, there is a huge difference. And hopefully, you know, there’s a huge difference between the creepy obsessed weirdos on the internet and people who are giving me a genuine kind compliment. I can tell the difference. But even I don’t really like the compliments unless I like specific compliments. I like compliments on my makeup. I like compliments on my hair color, when I color my hair because it’s kind of complimenting a decision I’ve made, not so much looks. Like I decide to wear makeup because I love makeup. It’s my decision. And anytime somebody insults my makeup or tells me that I look way better without makeup, they’re insulting me and my decisions and my autonomy. Like makeup is very much a part of who I am. The third set of comments that not just makes me uncomfortable but makes me hate YouTube and hate being public and wish that I could just disappear are the comments who say that I love attention and the only reason I post is for attention.
3. I wish that I could just make disappear the comments, who say that I love attention and the only reason I post is for attention and sympathy from people, and that I just relish that sympathy from people, when it’s the most uncomfortable feeling? And I do understand, like, you guys are genuine. The thing that you should know, I am always okay. I’m always doing okay. I’m never in severe mental trouble. And even if I was, I would reach out for help to people who can actually help me, like professionals. Like, it is not your job in the least to make sure that I’m okay. I’m pretty much never reaching out for direct support from you. Like, I don’t think that’s your job. You don’t owe it to me. It makes me uncomfortable. That’s not the purpose of my channel. I’m not trying to sound ungrateful about it. Just something that’s built up the entire time I’ve had my channel.
The internet
The reason I have my channel is to provide hope. And I think I’ve said it once or twice, but the reason I created my channel was for, maybe this is a little selfish, it was for my teenage self who was so lost and struggling so deeply and had no help from anyone. And I’m better now, but I still have so much compassion for that teenager. And I want to help anyone who was like my teenage self. And I’ve never really shared exactly what I mean by that, but I was struggling so much as a teenager with so many things, like self-hatred, insecurity, deep shame, thinking that I was like a bad person. I had no sense of identity. I was being bullied and abused. I was in constant fear. I was in like fight or flight. I would just journal about how much I hated myself and what a loser I was and how I was completely worthless. And then I got the internet. I actually got access to the internet when I was like 18 or 19. I had like internet here and there, like at a library, but I didn’t have access to the internet on my phone until I was 18 or 19.
And once I did get internet access, I found everything I needed. I found YouTube channels and I started with TED Talks. I started listening to TED Talks, and they covered all of the issues that I was struggling with and gave me so much insight and perspective.
The comment that always means the most to me is when I can hear from a young person in their early 20s or in their teens, and they tell me that my channel has helped them. Because when you’re at those ages, you’re so overwhelmed and so confused, and life is just so overwhelming, and you don’t feel like you can do it. You’re scared and you don’t feel capable. And as far as life direction, I hope that someday my channel will actually grow again, and I’ll have opportunities to help more people. If I could ever make YouTube my career, I would. I’m putting this out in the universe.
But my dream would be to do what Diary of a CEO does. That’s my current dream. I would like to interview, basically have a podcast and interview all my heroes. There are so many people, like relationship therapists and researchers, people in different fields, but like in the personal growth, self-awareness, and relationship fields, that I would love to get a chance to talk to.
I’m kind of cured on relationships for now. I had like two traumatizing relationships. I know, the word “trauma” is so overused these days. It was traumatic in different ways. Like in my most recent relationship, I was made to feel very safe and very stable, and then suddenly I wasn’t. Sudden, it was so sudden that behavior would change in the other person, where one second I was safe and the next second I was scared. And then like the way that the relationship ended was very — it was very traumatic for me, where I felt very secure that the person loved me, and then suddenly they were acting like I was garbage. So now it’s like hard to ever trust, even when I do trust in somebody’s love for me, because now I feel like I can’t trust my own feelings about like that. I also don’t think I can trust my taste in partners. I think I’m choosing unhealthy people and I can’t really see it. So even though I thought I would be married for a while at this point, I guess life takes you in a different direction. And I don’t really feel like being in a relationship anymore at this point in my life. Like, I will be, but I’m not in a hurry. And like people encourage you to take time for yourself to grow and heal and this and that. And I feel like I’ve already done that. I feel like I’ve done all the healing and self-awareness I can do on my own.
Overall, I mean, another thing is I am scheduled to work with a therapist for the first time in my life. I actually made an appointment. I got that far. I made an appointment with someone just coming up. So I’ll let you know how it goes. But I’m very excited for my first therapy appointment. That’s super duper exciting. So I guess there’s probably a lot more work I can do with a therapist. But at the same time, like I feel like for me, a lot of my issue is just being able to choose the right partner for me. I just need to find someone who is a healthy person or or at least is self-aware and can catch themselves when they’re acting out of their own trauma and triggers.
This talk is over. I’m going to edit it down. Here’s my final makeup look. I feel a lot better now than I did. All right, goodbye.