30 Days Journal - Day 9

I am a terrible journal-er. As an exercise to become better, I decided to do a 30 day journal challenge for myself. Just like during my quarantine, I am using Isolation Journals for daily journal prompt.

Prompt: What did you trade as a child for attachment, safety, or love? Who did you think you needed to be in order to get those things? And how do you see that pattern show up today?

This immediately reminds me of a therapy session.

I think as a child I have traded a lot of myself to fit in. My most common example was when I was a child (3-7 y/o) I always did terribly in art classes in school. As in I don’t colour in the lines, because I believe in creating my own drawing on the canvas. To this day, I still cannot colour within the line (I love the eraser tool!). But to fit into the Chinese culture, I had to shape shift into the obedient child. When I came to Canada, I had to unlearn the shape shift and come out of my shell (and that itself took a few years). Trying to fit in and belong to a new environment has always been hard but luckily I moved around so much growing up that I can shape shift much faster than most of my peers. I find over the years that trying to shape shift never really works. You end up in a position that you either regret or create more chaos than you intended because you were uncomfortable to begin with. On the other hand, closing yourself up leads you to no where. Finding a balance between being my authentic self while rounding out the spikes that might deter people from getting close gives me more in what I look for in life than anything else.