Month: August 2022

Trauma and Recovery, Judith Lewis Herman

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I’m Mad as Hell, and I’m not Gonna Take It Anymore!

This book made me angry. Like, really angry. Not because it’s a bad book, on the contrary, it’s excellent. It just revealed a lot about our culture and society that infuriated me. This may be the OG source of the “C” in CPTSD, so props to Dr. Herman, but her main point is the rise and fall of realizing as a society that we f*ck over women, children, and powerless minorities inducing horrible trauma, and then we (again as a society) balk at horror of the reality of HOW MANY people are traumatized, abused, raped, assaulted, and systematically wrecked by status quo systems of power and authority and we then collectively decide it can’t actually be that bad, or that maybe it was that bad, but it’s better now, and we don’ have to think about it or look at it ever again. And that we have been doing it every few decades for at least 150 years. She somewhat optimistically follows this dire assessment with the cheerful notion that now we’re having a resurgence in awareness and it’s so good, so maybe we’ll learn something this time… only the book was published in 1992. So she was writing about the collective recognize-outrage-token-change-forget cycle in 1990-91 hoping it might be the last time, and I was reading it in 2020, in the wake of the 2017-8 version of #metoo and #blm (those are older than you think, too) going, “are you f@cking kidding me?! how long have we been doing this bullsh!t?”

She talked about how Freud, Mr. All-Girls-Want-To-Fuck-Their-Daddies-And-Rape-Isn’t-A-Thing-Cause-They-Secretly-Want-It-Freud actually wasn’t a total dickhead when he started. Originally, he worked with a bunch of “hysterical” young women (whoo boy howdy and that is a can of worms because the way those ladies were treated *before* him was even worse! seriously, just read the book). He tried the radical approach of (gasp!) actually talking to the women, an approach no doctor ever tried before. Said ladies revealed a lot of details of abuse and incest, which led Freud originally to begin to crack open the lid on trauma as a cause of both mental and physical ailments, but then he basically went, oh, wait, there’s no way that SO many respected, rich, men are doing this to their daughters and nieces, so they must be seducing these men! *gag*. Some sources imply the decision to change his mind came as a result of serious pressure from the gentlemen in his community. Either way, he recanted and we’re still dealing with that consequence nearly 2 centuries later.

She outlines historical occurrences where we (humans) start to realize what’s going on and then back away in fear and horror from Freud to the 1992 version of #metoo, which I vaguely associate with Grrl Power and Lilith Fair, and angrily singing Alanis Morrissette at the top of my lungs, but no real “movement” and certainly no substantive change. She doesn’t focus only on women or sexual abuse, but also men and the trauma of war. Over and over we’ve come close to understanding combat trauma only to turn away and reject it again. (the details of this cycle are more deeply covered by Van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score). Whether it’s sexual assault, domestic violence, street gangs, or war – the people who are hurt over and over are the young: children and young adults. She calls it “the adult conspiracy of violence” and it is a concept that fills me with rage.

The Adult Conspiracy of Violence:

Obviously it’s not a conspiracy in the sense that all the adults got together and decided to do this. It’s more like a set of unspoken and unbreakable rules. I suspect that Herman uses the word “conspiracy” to describe this phenomenon because although no organization exists, most adults are more aware of the violence than they are willing to acknowledge, and few are willing to break those unwritten rules. In my own understanding, it is the cycle in which every generation is abused and traumatized then goes on to grow up and fall into one of 4 categories (although fluidly and on a spectrum):
1) suppress what happened and live in denial
2) recognize what happened to them, but think that it a) is very rare b) doesn’t happen anymore
3) are angry about what happened to them and think everyone should suffer like they did
4) are greedy dickheads who don’t care who they have to hurt to get what they want

As a result, the next generation is subjected to just as much horror, abuse, and trauma by 3&4 while receiving zero support from the 1&2 adults around them who simply refuse to see it. I am infuriated because now that I’m “an adult” I can see it, I can see the whole cycle and the whole “conspiracy”, I can see it and I have no idea how to protect the kids from it. I have a niece and a nephew, I have friends with kids, I have students… I want to find a way to blow the lid off this thing, make a blockbuster movie, get a Greta Thunberg to stage a national school walk out in protest of violence against children, to make a giant statue you can see from space and paint it in Pinkest Pink and Vantablack so everyone has to go “why?” and we can explain the adult conspiracy of violence.

Note 2022: I’ve found that Alice Miller discusses this a lot as well in the two books of hers that I’ve read: The Drama of the Gifted Child, and For Your Own Good. Other authors discuss the effects of this cycle of trauma, but few delve deep into it’s roots as Miller and Herman do.

A good solid part of why this book made me angry is because in 1992 I was 14. I was already well down the path of being consumed by the adult conspiracy of violence. When this book was published, and this information was in the public eye, it did not find me. It did not find my friends, my sister. It faded from view and it’s wisdom was of no help to me in understanding or processing any of the things that happened to me as a child, a teen, and a young adult — when at various times I was neglected, abused, raped and my friends and family refused to see what was done to me. When instead they joined the conspiracy of silence and denial and told me it was nothing: you’re making it up, you’re exaggerating, it was your fault anyway, you must have wanted it, buyers remorse, be grateful anyone wants you that way, you weren’t really hurt, you have it so good, that never happened, I don’t remember it that way, look at how bad it could have been, be grateful it wasn’t worse, be happy, be silent.

She tried to reach people at a time it could have made a real difference in the course of my life, but it didn’t reach anyone close enough to reach me. I can’t help but think of all the 14 year-olds out there who need to hear this, who need to know about the Adult Conspiracy of Violence and be shown a way out.

There may be a fifth category that didn’t have a large enough footprint for Herman to write about 30 years ago: the cycle breakers. I see it more and more online in memes and YouTubes and blogs. The more young adults are normalizing therapy and seeking healing for past trauma, the more they want to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and abuse. Only time will tell if this movement can truly challenge the Adult Conspiracy of Violence or if it is just another peak in the recognize-outrage-token-change-forget cycle.

Post Trauma Fantasies: False Healing

Aside from the above cycle of violence and suppression, the book had a lot of information that was in line with what I’d already read and served mainly as reinforcement. There was one other stand out concept in this book which was the addition of more types of post-trauma fantasies. I was already whammied by the Healing Fantasy that Dr. Gibson introduced me to in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, so I was intrigued by the idea that there were more. Dr. Herman talks about the Revenge Fantasy, the Forgiveness Fantasy, and the Compensation Fantasy. Being able to further recognize some of my thinking as fantasy was both hard to hear and somewhat reassuring. It was like being given permission to let those thoughts go.

The Healing Fantasy is the idea that you can make it all better if you just do the right thing. If you can heal enough for both of you, or if you stop doing whatever it is that makes them mad or sad or cold, if you can teach them to be more self-aware, if you can help them heal from their own pain so they stop allowing their own trauma responses to result in abusive or toxic behavior, whatever it is, you take on the responsibility of healing THIER trauma in hopes that it will get them to stop hurting you. Gibson says it’s the idea “that more self-sacrifice and emotional work will eventually transform their unsatisfying relationships” and that the “healing fantasy always involves the idea: It’s up to me to fix this”. If I just find the magic feather, then everything will be ok.

The Revenge Fantasy is where the American justice system and every Spawn fan live. The idea is that by taking revenge on the person or people who caused pain, that the scales will be balanced, the perpetrator will be filled with shame and remorse for their wrongdoings, and your pain will go away. That last part is the key fantasy part. Making someone else hurt doesn’t heal your own pain. On an individual basis, this can lead to a lot of anger and rage, since the fantasies themselves are often violent. On a cultural level, it results in people who are happy to imagine prison rape or delight in police brutality for “those that deserve it”. The preference to punish rather than reform, to see people suffer rather than receive help is, I believe, at the core of the rot in America’s criminal justice system, and as far as I can tell, it comes from a widespread indulgence in the Revenge Fantasy.

The Forgiveness Fantasy is the church route (any church/spirituality), if you let go of your anger and forgive the person who hurt you, then your pain will go away. Forgiveness may or may not be a part of your healing journey, but it’s definitely not the only thing. Forgiving a person without making any other changes will simply result in the pain getting shoved further down, where it will continue to harm you. In many of the forgiveness-fantasy cultures, you are expected to forgive a person who doesn’t apologize or change, and are often blamed/shamed for being unable or unwilling to do so. Some people who cling to this fantasy will also use the continued existence of the pain to prove that you haven’t “really forgiven” your abuser, shifting the blame for your own pain onto your “unwillingness” to forgive.

In another type of forgiveness fantasy you dream you can get the other person, your abuser or toxic partner, to understand what they did is actually hurting you, and then when they understand it, they will apologize and want to change! After all, people who love you don’t hurt you on purpose, an will totally stop when you say ouch. Healthy people and people who are trying to get healthy totally will, but Spoiler Alert: toxic people and abusers will never stop, and any apology they offer is just to get you to stay. I had fallen into trap this many many times before learning about it, and I now know the importance of letting this particular fantasy go.

I’ve also seen a large number of memes and tweets about cutting out toxic people that strike me as woefully unnuanced. Not everyone who hurts you is toxic/abusive, so how do you know when to give someone the chop? To me, the difference between a toxic person and a toxic behavior is the way they approach healing. Every traumatized person has toxic behaviors at some point, but only those who are willing to do the deep work of self reflection and healing will be willing to admit it and work to change. It’s important to communicate when we are hurt. Relationships of all kinds are strengthened by good communication and successful conflict resolution, but there also comes a time when the healing process becomes the Healing Fantasy and we have to let go. Dr. Gibson addresses this in her book, and I also found Conflict Is Not Abuse, by Sarah Schulman has a lot of good advice on how to identify and deal with the distinction between being hurt and being abused.

The Compensation Fantasy was the hardest for me. This says that you deserve good things in life for what you have suffered, that if you get those good things it makes up for the bad things. I realized in one terrible epiphany that I had been holding up my joy as the compensation for all terrible things I’d gone though. In 2012-14 I went through a round of therapy research and practice that focused on positive psychology, and centered around the works of Brené Brown and Martin Seligman. I learned how to be happy, like, really happy, not just wine-mommy happy. Then, it was somehow ok that I had suffered so much, because I had so much joy! The sudden removal of everything that brought me joy due to a global pandemic made me crash very hard. The pandemic had not merely deprived me of some fun trips, or a fulfilling career, it had taken away what I was owed for my pain. Obviously, that’s not true, and now I can work experiencing joy for it’s own sake and not as a trade off for pain.

30 years later

This is a great book that didn’t make it into my top 5 but is definitely in my top 10. Despite being 30 years old, it still has a lot of useful and important information, however it’s no longer the only source for such. I recommend this for older readers (who remember the 90s), for younger people who are interested in the history or may be trying to understand a parent (older relative), and for anyone who is doing a deep dive into their own Trauma and Recovery.

안녕히계세요 Korea: The COVID Experience in Retrospect

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I’m leaving Korea! The decision to leave has been a long time coming and involves multiple factors. One of the biggest stresses on my life (on everyone’s lives) over the last 2.5 years has been COVID. My experiences with COVID in Korea are quite different from what my friends and family in other countries experienced, and have played a large roll in my decision to move on.

Flying Internationally at the Start of a Global Pandemic

COVID dropped in late 2019, with the first case arriving in Korea on January 20, 2020 while the school was on break and I was on holiday in Spain. It didn’t seem to be impacting my US friends yet, but I knew that my return flight From Spain to Paris through Shanghai to Korea would be impacted for sure. It was no surprise that the flight was cancelled, but I found information online that it had also been rescheduled as a direct flight from Paris to Seoul. When I checked into the flight in Spain, they seemed to think everything was fine! And when I arrived at the counter for my connecting flight in Paris, I was told I didn’t have a valid ticket to board. I was given the runaround for 9 hours as the three companies involved all blamed each other (the company that owned the plane, the company that owned the flight, and the company that I bought my ticket from).

I would say avoid buying from 3rd parties for this reason, but in reality, that often costs much more and even if I had, there were two different companies involved in the flight itself (the owner and operator being different). I was told to wait, to collect my luggage, to go talk to this or that office or desk, to call this business number, to wait more, to just buy another ticket and eat the loss (like it was my fault), and finally after just being a crying mess in front of the Air France desk for the 3rd time, they found a flight to put me on the next day. No one offered to pay for my hotel in recompense for my lost ticket, but they did help me to find a place nearby with a free shuttle. It beats out “Stuck in Bangkok without a Vietnamese visa on Tet Weekend” as my worst airport experience.

So Much We Didn’t Know

In late February, what I like to call “the Daegu Panic” started. Patient 31 (yes the mere 31st person to test positive in Korea) began a super spreader event because they couldn’t stand the idea of not going to apocalyptic megachurch/cult (Shincheonji) and freaked everyone including the KCDC right out, in no small part by lying about their membership and meetings. The government took very strict measures to contain the spread including mask mandates closing/restricting borders, implementing curfews, regular temperature checks, restrictions and bans on gatherings over a certain size, and school closures as well.

When I arrived back in Korea, I self isolated for 14 days (quarantine policies were only in effect for travelers from China back then, and thank gods because the early quarantine hotels were HORRIBLE). The start of the school year was delayed as we all waited to find out what would happen. I remember some of the other Americans in my office saying it would all blow over in a few weeks and scoffing when I said I thought the problem would last anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. Denial was really strong in the early days, and the Korean government issued advisories and policies as if they also expected the entire thing to be gone within two weeks. Every two weeks, a new policy or policy extension would come out, and it felt very disingenuous. At the same time we had a government response that was praised globally as one of the best, we also had this sense of denial pervading everything. Not the denial that existed in the US, no one here really thought it was a hoax or a “mere cold”, but denial about the amount of time and impact it would have on all our lives.

B.V. – Before Vaccine

In early 2020, Korea was having a massive (by early standards) outbreak while the USA was still thinking of COVID as something that only happened to other countries. Looking back at the numbers of the original scary outbreak, they seem so small. 900 new cases a day was a national emergency. Now, we’re happy if it’s less than 90,000. The Korean government acted very quickly, and so we never had the ice trucks of bodies in hospital parking lots. We did have an early mask mandate, swift implementation of limits on gathering and public events, really effective contact tracing due to the way phones are linked to national ID numbers, and everyone who got COVID was 100% covered unless they had broken a ban. By the end of 2020, despite only having 6.5x the population, the US had more than 400x the positive cases and more than 500x the deaths as South Korea*. I felt very very safe. Even safer than many of my other teacher friends who had been forced back into a classroom before the vaccines were out because my university continued to use online classes exclusively for the entire first year and only implemented face to face classes for a small minority of necessary training courses after that.

The population of the US is roughly 6.5x that of South Korea (51m/328m). A recent spike to 300 new cases a day and being brings the 10 month total to 30,000 cases (not deaths, just cases). The US has a larger population, but 300 x 6.5 is just under 2,000. Can you imagine your life in America if there were only 2,000 new cases a day instead of (checks notes) 120,000? 30,000 total cases x 6.5 is just under 200,000, but the US has a total case count of over 12 million. The total death count as of today is 501 x 6.5 that’s 3,257. Meanwhile more than 250,000 have died in America.
A country with 6.5x the population has 400x the new daily cases, 400x the total cases, and 500x the deaths.

Me – November 20, 2020

Every single major event was cancelled. All travel abroad was cancelled. I’m struggling to remember exactly when the curfews went into effect, but since I don’t live in a big city, I didn’t personally encounter them in 2020. It was lonely and boring, but I often felt like I had no right to complain because there were no piles of bodies, no one I loved was on a ventilator, I wasn’t in any danger of loosing my job, my home, my health insurance. And, for the most part, Korea was already a mask wearing, cheap delivery food having country before this hit, so the infrastructure of contactless shopping was solid.

Vaccine Rollout

Then in 2021 the news of the vaccine rollout was everywhere. My friends in Seattle were proudly posting selfies and adopting “I was vaccinated” frames on their profile pics. My family in the south were avoiding it like it was worse than the virus. (EDIT: I tried to give some credit to some family members for doing the right thing, but it turns out they don’t want it, and seem to have doubled down on the Kool-Aid since I last looked). Everyone in America I knew who wanted them had both doses, pharmacists and doctors were looking for volunteers to get the shot so they didn’t have throw away soon-to-expire vaccines, and I was still waiting for my first. Where was the vaccine, Korea? What happened to all the marvelous organization displayed in the crisis response last spring? Get me my jab!

It wasn’t until the SUMMER that we were even allowed to sign up for a vaccine appointment. I got a window of time assigned to me to log into the website and sign up for my vaccine location and time. The demand was so high that the website would not be able to stay up without throttling the access. I understand the desire to prioritize high risk people, but I just never got a satisfactory answer as to why Korea took so very long to roll out the vaccine program. Someone suggested they delayed intentionally in the hopes that a domestic brand would be finished soon, but were forced to give up on that idea. I got my first shot in August, my second was pushed back an extra 2 weeks due to supply issues, and happened 6 weeks later at the end of September. My third this past January was much easier to get as fewer people were scrambling for a spot and supplies were more available by then. I did have to wait again for my assigned window, but it was an overall smoother experience.

The vaccine experience: A huge community center building was converted for the sole purpose of administering and tracking vaccines. Outside, people waited in orderly chairs to make appointments, I assume they could not use the online signup. I showed my appointment confirmation text and went in. There was a long intimidating medical consent form in Korean only. A nurse helped me to understand the consent and allergy questions, then directed me to a seat. After a few minutes three of us were escorted to the next building, asked to take a number and have a seat while we waited to have our forms and ID verified. Then I was sent to another area with another block of chairs and another number dispenser to wait to consult a doctor.

There were 6 private booths, and even though not all of them were in use, it moved pretty quickly. The doctor explained the risks and effects in decent English and told me that they’ll watch me for 30 minutes because of my history of asthma (most people are observed for 15). He advised me to take Tylenol when I got home, and very gravely urged me to get to an ER if I had any chest pain, arrhythmia, or sudden rashes. He put a red 30 minute sticker on my hand and sent me to the next number dispensing area. Here I didn’t wait at all but went directly into a booth where the nurse verified my name and what arm I want the shot in. We chose with left because it was closer to her. It was a short sharp jab and she said something I didn’t understand in a reassuring tone.

There was one last counter to hand over the paper I got at the beginning, now covered in notes from the people I’ve seen. I was given an informative pamphlet on side effects and a paper to bring to my second dose appointment. While sitting in the observation room, in socially distanced chairs waiting to be sure I don’t have some kind of hideous reaction to Pfizer, I got my confirmation text (verifying my first dose is complete and second is scheduled) before I even left the building.

The process of the second shot was similar to the first but much better organized and more accessible to foreigners. They had forms in multiple languages and plenty of staff to assist. I went through the whole process in about 30 minutes from arrival to certificate, and they were even able to print my certificate in English in the vain hope that I would get to travel again! Plus, I got this cute button. The third shot, the booster, was held at the local hospital instead of the community center (which I gather had been converted to a testing center by that time). The organization and support vanished and the hospital seemed completely unprepared to deal with foreigners, but that’s what Google Translate is for.

The Restriction Rollercoaster

There was a tiered restriction policy based on the number of new cases per day in a certain area. (if the website is no longer working, you can see a pdf below). It was a little bit of an organizational nightmare, but it was fairly easy to check online and know the particular restrictions in any given city. The number of people in a café or restaurant was lowered and some places were limited to take out only. Private gatherings and the number of people allowed to sit together outdoors or at one table restricted to as low as 2.

Korean social distancing systemDownload

Every place had temperature checks, and when you went in, you had to either use an app to register or sign in manually. Even shops without food were limited. I saw a line outside Louis Vuitton of people waiting for another shopper to leave so they could enter. Bus stops had sanitizing sprayers on an automatic timer, and buses had bottles of sanitize duct taped at the entrance and exit. From spring through fall, people could be satisfied with outdoor activities, and the case count dropped to under 100/ day for much of that time. The cold weather drove people indoors and to close windows. By December the daily case count was over 1,000.

In 2021, America tried desperately to “return to normal” with predictable disastrous results. Korea, made mistakes too. Many businesses were hemorrhaging money as a result of the restrictions and were demanding a return to normal. In the second half of 2021, the government lifted too many restrictions too soon and the cases “skyrocketed” (again, in a very relative way think 100s–>1,000s), resulting in an even more severe clampdown than before. I didn’t write about a lot of this stuff while it was happening so I don’t have the best timeline, but I know I went out during the summer with reasonable safety precautions (level 2), and by my birthday in December, any business with food or drink had to close at 9pm (level 4). We joked for months that COVID wakes up at 9pm. I think it was a result of the “Living with COVID19” plan that started November 1st that year and failed like a week later.

Vaccine passes were on every phone, swipe your QR code to enter. Businesses were limited in capacity and often forced to closed early. We went to each other’s houses and probably acted dumber than we would have if we’d just been allowed to stay out until after midnight. It was like we all turned into teenagers sneaking out after curfew. I never understood the logic behind it. I tried to keep to a small group and be safe, but most of Korea just… did what they wanted. It’s an open container country, so you’d see swaths of people just sitting on the curb drinking after they got kicked out of the bars. Police only hassled foreigners about it.

Internal travel was largely unaffected, but external travel was prohibitive. I couldn’t travel abroad at all for any non-emergency reason before the vaccine rollout. Even then, 14 day quarantines, multiple rounds of PCR tests that would not be covered by the insurance since it was for fun. Airfare was 2-3 times more than pre-COVID prices. I spent months checking and rechecking and investigating in the hopes of travelling somewhere that winter since I was finally fully vaxxed. No such luck. Daily cases crept up faster and faster towards the end of the year and the 9pm business closures were not stopping it.

The Phobias aka The Bigotry:

Blaming foreigners isn’t unique to the US, either. Although the level of anti-foreigner violence never reached the peak here that it did in my home country, it was a challenging time, nonetheless, when locals were often scared of us or refusing us entry or service. It’s sadly normal for a culture, any culture, to blame the outsiders for whatever ills befall. While America was busy with Asian Hate, there was a generous helping of xenophobia and homophobia that accompanied the virus in to Korea.

These are not new problems. Enough Koreans were bigoted before COVID that we all felt it. Taxis that don’t stop because you’re skin is the wrong color. Restaurants that suddenly don’t have room to seat you. Shopkeepers who are sure they don’t have your size (even though you can see it hanging in the display). I’ve written about the homophobia in my Seoul Pride posts, but during COVID, there was a small outbreak traced to a gay bar in Itaewon. It was so much smaller than the super spreader events linked to the megachurches, but it was all the homophobes needed to blame the gays for everything.

The majority of my local crowd are also foreign, though I’m pretty sure I’m the only American. I do have a few Korean friends, but they are the kind of people who like foreigners. There are a couple other English teachers from Canada and South Africa, and then a whole bunch of other nationalities represented from all over the Middle East and Asia. I get to hear their experiences too, and even though I deal with discrimination here, it’s nowhere near what the POC foreigners have. Even in Korea, white privilege is real.

The number of incidences of “no foreigners” signs on businesses increased dramatically. There are very poor anti-discrimination laws in Korea. It’s technically not illegal to discriminate against anyone for anything, and so it was pretty impossible to get any action taken. (there are ongoing efforts to pass some anti-discrimination laws, but the Korean version of the alt-right has so far been successful at blocking them) Additionally, we had experiences of being forced to leave public spaces, like beaches or parks, because Koreans called the police on us… basically for being foreign, because we were following social distancing and masking rules. I went on a group tour over the summer to Namhae beach. The tour company had to jump through so many hoops to ensure the permits, and we were all so happy to be out enjoying the sun.

We were carefully separated into small regulation size groups at generous distances and only removed our masks to eat or swim (seawater in a mask is no fun). The locals called the police, and although we were doing absolutely nothing illegal, we were asked to leave. I stayed because my friends had gone on a banana boat and left their things on the beach with me, and I didn’t feel right just taking off without them knowing what was going on. 90% of the group on the beach left. Another friend went on a trip to Jeju and her group was denied access to just about every tourist attraction even though the tour company had procured the permits ahead of time. The employee at the gates simply refused to accept it and turned them away.

The rules were designed to protect us all against large scale risky behavior, but unfairly targeted foreigners. Local/natives could flout restrictions and face nothing worse than a small fine, a few faced the possibility of jail time for knowingly spreading the infection (breaking quarantine while actively sick). A foreigner caught breaking a COVID rule could be deported. 5 people at your dinner party instead of 4 could get you deported. In March 2021 the provincial government in Gyeongi-do ordered all foreigners to be tested. Only foreigners. Other regions swiftly followed suit.

One of the worst was Halloween 2021 when the government announced a literal witch hunt, targeting any place likely to hold Halloween celebrations, which is more often celebrated by foreigners and not a commonly observed holiday by Korean natives, and threatening to deport any foreigner caught at such a party. Also, at one point the mayor of my city actually publicly advised citizens not to go to foreign owned businesses or associate with foreigners. (I don’t have a link as this was something my Korean speaking friends showed me and translated). It was rough. I felt conflicted as well, because however much discrimination we faced, we were physically safe compared with our counterparts in other countries.

The New Normal

In 2022, the government finally realized that containment was a thing of the past, and started to focus on keeping the death count low. With most of the population fully vaxxed, they started to open more things up and that trend remained. Daily cases quickly climbed from a few thousand in January to a high of over 600,000 in March. I myself caught COVID in this time. I had my booster, and I felt safe. A lot of us did, and we were so exhausted of the curfews and the isolation. I went to several smaller (under 50ppl) events and was fine. Then all of us caught it at one birthday party. It was the first real party we’d had since the curfews were lifted, and we were all so excited.

The chart starts Feb 20, 2020 and goes through April 2022. You can see a current version here.

I was sick, it sucked. For me it was definitely worse than “the flu” but not as bad as the bird flu I got when I first arrived in Korea at the EPIK orientation. I wanted to just assume I was contagious and self quarantine for 2 weeks, but my school was trying to get me to come in for a face to face tutoring hour. I got a home test from the 7-11 and when that came back positive, I went to the testing center. PCR tests are free if you have a positive home test. I had the oh so horrible experience of the nasal swab, and got my results by text the next day. I worried about the taxi driver who had to take me, even though we were both masked, but I didn’t have any other options. My “flu like” symptoms lasted a couple weeks, and my fatigue and brain fog lasted much longer. Several of my friends who caught the same strain said they experienced similar.

The spike lasted maybe a month, and although the daily new case count is still measured in the 10,000s rather than the 1,000s, it’s getting better, and most people have mild cases and easy recoveries. The last restrictions were lifted including the outdoor mask mandate and the travel quarantines. Outdoor festivals are back this summer, and no one has to scan a QR code at the door of every café. We still mask up indoors when not eating, on transit, and even outdoors if it’s quite crowded. I went into Busan yesterday, and noticed that there are no longer temperature checks at the department stores and sign-ins at the food court. My dentist didn’t spray me down with full body disinfectant at the door like they did last time. Everything looks the same as it did before COVID except now there’s more masks. It looks like Korea will be ok.

As frustrating as many of these things were, I am grateful to have been in a place where almost everyone worked hard to keep each other safe, with a government that offered full medical coverage for vaccines, tests, and treatments regardless of citizen status. The experience was psychologically grueling, but I had a great luxury of safety in my health and my job. Just my luck to make it through all the hard parts and go when the sun comes out. Though as much as I treasure my time here, I don’t think even a fully functional Korea can fill the hole that COVID has left in my soul. I need more. It’s time to go.

Books for Healing: A List

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I tried to write about my therapy books here because writing about the books was a way for me to process what I was learning without just vomiting navel gazing. It also helped to keep me on a task by thinking (or maybe fantasizing) that my book reviews would help others. I have an easier time spending energy on helping others than helping myself. I was also also starting to get mixed up about what was actually in each book because I was reading them so fast that the contents started blending together and I wanted to be able to go back and reference or reread or make reading recommendations based on content.

In October of 2019, I read Educated. In February 2020 I read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Educated was the first time I looked at my CPTSD and thought it could be more than just the trauma from my adult life. Adult Children was a revelation. I don’t know how much more I would have done, though, if not for COVID. I spent years avoiding dealing with it. My method of avoidance was the pursuit of happiness, adventure, and meaning. Objectively better than drugs or alcohol, but no less an addiction (see In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts). Like a leaky roof, I only thought about my damage it when it rained. COVID was a monsoon season that lasted for 2 years.

I wrote as much as I could until I got to Gretchen Schmelzer’s book, A Journey Through Trauma, and I broke. It’s an amazing book. I just broke because it finally scraped through a wall of resistance I had inside and let a lot of scary goop come oozing out. I remember sitting in my room in the dark searching for my core (pre-traumatized) self and realizing it was just cracked up shards the whole way back. That book also made me believe that there was no way to heal without a trained and qualified guide (therapist, social worker, counsellor, group leader, etc), and I had to cope with the grief of the total unfairness of paywall blocking my mental health before I decided that it just wasn’t true.

I found two more book reviews in my drafts folder when I came back to the blog after my long break. I plan to publish them as soon as I get them cleaned up, but I don’t think I’m going to write any more of the book reviews after that. I’m still reading new and helpful trauma recovery books to this day, and hope to continue, but he process of writing out my thoughts and reactions to the books isn’t as helpful to me as it was when I started, and there’s plenty of online reviews out there.

My Reviews:

Educated, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents & Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving are in A Trip Inside: Where I Went in 2020 (and was meant to be the first of a series).

The Tao of Fully Feeling & The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog are in Head Trip: (Therapy Books Cont. 2021)

Gretchen Schmelzer’s book A Journey Through Trauma got it’s own post: Book & Author Review.

Trauma & Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman & The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk are coming soon.

MY READING LIST:

Below is a full list of ALL the books I’ve read and think may be helpful if you or a loved one is trying to heal from trauma. Although I have no plans to write any further reviews, I’m happy to talk about the books if anyone has any questions.

TOP 5 (no particular order):

The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk

CPTSD Thriving to Surviving,  Pete Walker

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson

Journey Through Trauma, Gretchen L. Schmelzer

What My Bones Know, Stephanie Foo

The only one of my top 5 that I haven’t written about is Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know. I just recently finished my first reading of that book, but the reason it made my top 5 is because she is a regular person (not a doctor or therapist) who started her journey of understanding and healing from her own CPTSD about 1 year before me and just published. Neither of is done with the journey, we’re just at a similar point. We are two people with very different backgrounds and life experiences. Foo is the daughter of Asian immigrants, and is a very successful reporter. Her trauma was not the same as mine, but I’ve learned a lot about not playing the Pain Olympics (don’t minimize your experiences by comparing your pain/trauma to anyone else; don’t make anyone compete to be “traumatized enough”). The part of the book that shot it straight to my top 5 was the process of revelation and recovery. The way in which even though our lived experiences of being traumatized were so very different, our experiences along the path to recovery were stunningly similar. It may not be a good book to start your own healing journey with, but I think it’s essential to anyone who’s been trying for a while and is feeling rough.

Family & Generational Trauma:

Mothers Who Can’t Love, Susan Forward

Toxic Parents, Craig Buck & Susan Forward

Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson

Emotional Inheritance, Galit Atlas

General Trauma & Healing:

Trauma and Recovery, Judith Lewis Herman

The Tao of Fully Feeling, Pete Walker

The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller

Healing Trauma, Peter A. Levine

How to Do the Work, Dr. Nicole LePera

Topical:

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Bruce Duncan Perry (child abuse)

For Your Own Good, Alice Miller (the pedagogy of child rearing examined as traumatic abuse)

See What You Made Me Do, Jess Hill (domestic violence & coercive control)

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Maté (addiction as connected to trauma)

Conflict Is Not Abuse, Sarah Schulman (trauma responses)

Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts, Richard C. Schwartz (founder of IFS therapy method)

What Happened to You? Oprah Winfrey (pop psych – learning to become trauma informed)

Educated, Tara Westover (personal narrative of escape and recovery)

Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa (personal narrative of discovery and healing)

Bonus Video Materials!

I know reading isn’t for everyone (most of these books are available in audiobook format for those who prefer), considering my current audience, I may be speaking to a higher percentage of readers, but maybe you want to loop in a non-reader or take a reading break. I also have a small list of videos that I found helpful.

The Crappy Childhood Fairy: also on Youtube, she is a person who is in recovery for CPTSD and has a lot of good stuff to share. Her insights into the problems with finding a good therapist were especially validating.

Patrick Tehan is a licensed therapist who specializes in family systems. He uses his knowledge mixed with his own experiences healing from childhood trauma to explain various trauma symptoms, coping mechanisms, and deeper paths to healing.

Dr. Ramani is a clinical psychologist whose videos target narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic abuse.

Psych2go is a really calming and adorable animated info source about mental health. Sometimes, I just watch it when I’m not sure what advice I’m looking for.

Any of Richard Schwartz’s videos on Internal Family Systems. I watched several and a lot of them are repeats, but the practical demonstrations and guided meditations are the best.

Jane McGonigal’s TedTalk tells the story of how her app Superbetter helps people gamify healing.

plus FICTION!

Sometimes artists turn their healing journey into tv shows? I’ve talked before about Adventure Time & Steven Universe because I think they are very good shows for dealing with complex and nuanced emotions in a fun and often silly way. Very especially, the follow up, sequel mini series of Distant Lands and Steven Universe Future took off the pretense of being “just a cartoon” and dove into the serious work of trauma identification.

I also found Centaur World on Netflix to be a psychonautic musical journey into someone’s own Internal Family System’s therapy. The characters are fairly obviously exaggerated aspects of various trauma responses, and the bad guy, well… it inspires some deep thoughts for sure. And it has catchy tunes!

Is it all cartoons? Maybe… I do watch other shows, but for some reason cartoons lend themselves toward the balance of goofy and surreal that is needed to address trauma without drowning in it. The last one is animation, but not really a cartoon: Undone, on Amazon Prime. It’s about a mestiza woman who goes back in time to try and undo her generational trauma. It’s also pretty psychonautical, and was instrumental in my one of my own ah-ha breakthroughs about my family’s generational trauma.

안녕히계세요 Korea: It’s Time to Go

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In one month, I’m leaving Korea, finally, and probably for good? It’s nice here, there’s a high quality of life and a low cost of living. The summer is brutal, but the aircon works, and the country is beautiful… plus it’s central to a lot of cool travel destinations. It’s a good place to be an American so, who knows, maybe I’ll come back some day. However, I’ve resigned from my position at the university, and I’m packing up, donating, selling, or throwing away my entire life until I’m back down to two suitcases and a carry on. The countdown begins.

What Have I Been Doing All This Time?

Since my arrival in 2016, I’ve written about 50 posts about my life in Korea, if you are bored or have a special interest in the worklife, you can see them all under the South Korea menu on the homepage, or you can scroll through some highlights here.

The Death of the Traveler

I stopped writing about Korea in 2020. I stopped writing about travel in 2020. I very nearly stopped writing.

Looking back through this blog, I can see that I did some updating about 2020 in these three posts: Life a Little Upsidedown, The World Is Temporarily Closed, and Who can even, right now? The last one was October 5th, 2020. I talked about covid life, stress, online teaching, whatever hobbies I was doing at the moment because I couldn’t bake sourdough, but I wasn’t able to celebrate my travel experiences. I was so sad that I couldn’t travel, even writing about it was unbearable. That seems really “first world white people” problems I know, but everyone has something they do that defines who they are, how they see themselves in the world and get out of bed on difficult days. I know my travel is a privilege, and yet it had become a core part of my sense of self worth. When covid took that away, I lost a large part of my self. I wish I could say that I found something else to give my life meaning, but the truth is, I’m only able to write again now because I’m about to start a new adventure, and it gives me strength, purpose, and hope.

The Rest of 2020

October 2020 was surprisingly good. I finally visited the famous pink muhly grass here in Gyeongju, a great chance for flower closeup photos. There’s a stellar observatory here in Gyeongju called Cheomseongdae, and it’s a famous tourism spot. The park it resides in is regularly replanted with seasonal flowers and filled with picnickers and kite fliers. I have no idea how the structure functioned as an astronomical observatory, but it’s a pretty park. The pink muhly is a type of grass that is, well, pink. There were workers around to make sure everyone wore masks when not posing for photos, and the paths were clearly marked out. People in Korea were as usual very considerate of others taking photos in the area. It was a beautiful day.

I took a trip with a good friend up to Seoul to celebrate Halloween at Everland where the whole park was decorated for the holiday. The daily case count was under 100 at the time, so we felt safe and had a good time. I even incorporated a spooky mask into my makeup for a full on monster face. There was a parade, and a zoo with a penguin feeding show, new baby pandas (only viewable via cctv video), fennec foxes and many more. We mostly looked at decorations, and then we stood in line for like 2 hours to ride the T-Express rollercoaster which was actually entirely worth it. The park offered mask compatible face makeup, so after a while we weren’t the only two in Halloween masks, and after dark the décor swapped from cute to creepy. Some of the photos made it to my Insta, but I never got around to writing about it.

My D&D group had a potluck thanksgiving and a New Years dinner too, we sat in my friend’s apartment eating homecooked comfort food and trying to keep the dog from getting anything that would make him sick. It may not have been a grand adventure felt really nice to spend my holidays in a way that was more reminiscent of my formative experiences. Also, trying to get ingredients for my traditional American holiday recipes was definitely a grand adventure.

2021

In 2021 my blog posts turned entirely into therapy book reviews because I felt like that was the biggest thing happening to me, but it was far from the only thing. I had some moles removed, and failed to write about the Korean dermatology clinic experience. I moved, which was such a huge relief, and failed to write Renting in a Foreign Language Part 2. I had another year of cherry blossoms that seemed so small compared to my grand adventures in Jinhae that I didn’t write about that either. I played an inexcusable amount of Animal Crossing. So much Animal Crossing, I actually created a second Instagram account just for my ACNH pics. (@gallivantrix_crossing)

I went to the beach and we got the police called on us for existing while foreign. I made new friends. I got an oven and started baking. I had my first Pumpkin Spice Latte since 2015. I went back to Nami Island & Seoraksan. There were so many adorable bunnies! I joined a Korean class. I ordered new Ben Nye makeup for Halloween and I’m really proud of that makeup (it’s on my Insta) and attended a party at my friend’s bar.

I went to TWO thanksgivings, a potluck held by my Egyptian friends who own an American themed bar where I was the only American. I made so many deviled eggs, and was scared no one would like them, no one had ever had them before, but they were a huge hit and all gone by the end of the night. The other dinner was on the Jinhae naval base where my coworker and D&D player had moved with her navy husband after they tied the knot. I made tiny pies because I could only find frozen tart crusts here, no 9″ rounds. Mini-America was quite an experience. It was so surreal to be entirely surrounded by Americans, in a little replica of suburban America with American food, and American …everything. Someone deep fried the turkey, and all had whisky and cigars on the back porch after. The next day they took me to the commissary and got as much unique American food as I could carry back on the bus.

I got new Christmas decorations, I had a real birthday party (even though the curfew was 9pm) where my friends got me cake and sang to me. I hugged an Arabic Santa at Christmas and fed my foreign friends homemade Christmas cookies. New Years Eve we tried to countdown at 8pm (midnight in New Zealand) because we had to close at 9. I shipped frozen homemade cheesecake to my friends on the base because they couldn’t join us during the lockdown.

2022 to Present

In 2022, I went to a wedding to celebrate the love of two of my friends. I visited a dog café, I went on a snow trip to Nami Island, Garden of the Morning Calm, and Yongpyeong ski resort in Pyeongchang (home of the 2017 winter Olympics). I caught COVID at a birthday party. I bade farewell to a dear friend who returned to the US.

I had a stunningly gorgeous final cherry blossom season in Korea that more than made up for the last 2 lousy years. I didn’t make any plans at all, I just went outside one Saturday and the weather was perfect. I decided to to the only part of Gyeonju I hadn’t seen the cherry blossoms from, back near the Cheomseongdae observatory. The taxi couldn’t get even remotely close, but it worked out for the best, because the walk from where he dropped me off was a deeply tree lined road, and may have been a better destination than the park.

I went to a butterfly festival on my own (I had been travelling with the tour group during COVID because they could handle the restrictions and rules for me). This was my first time to go on my own to a new part of Korea in years, and it made me think about the very first time I did that with the Taean Tulip Festival and how lost we got. I did not get lost this time. I have mastered the Korean public transit system. The butterfly park was beautiful and the spring weather was sunny but not too hot. My favorite part though, was the giant greenhouse filled to the brim with fluttering wings.

I started the agonizing process of looking for a new career or failing that a new adventure: a way to not only leave Korea, but go towards something that would fulfill me. I turned down offers that seemed too soul sucking, which was scary but liberating. I made a back up plan to go live in France on a student visa at a reasonably priced intensive language program while teaching private English classes on the side because I’ve always wanted to live in France for a year and just eat French food, and drink French wine, and go to museums, and maybe take an art class. Giving myself permission to just do that was very freeing. In the end, I got an amazing career opportunity that is also a new adventure, and I am beyond excited to share it with you soon.

Just last month, I went to Pride in Seoul, the Korea Queer Culture Festival, one more time as the COVID bans on large gatherings were lifted allowing 10s of 1000s of queers and allies to gather in support of love and equality. I went to this event in 2016 & 17, but missed out on 18 & 19 because I was travelling. It was cancelled in 20 & 21 like every other large event, but there was a concern that the homophobes who work to block the event every year would finally succeed in killing it, using COVID as an excuse. Love wins.

We all wore masks even outside (this was after the outdoor mask mandate was lifted) because we didn’t want any spike to be linked to us. We were warned to keep the clothing modest because the new government officials were looking to use public indecency as a way to ban future events. I met Hurricane Kimchi, and I donated to my two favorite queer in Korea causes, DdingDong, a youth crisis center, and the movement to protect queer and trans soldiers in the Korean military (the only place it’s illegal in Korea to be gay, but all young AMABs must serve). The monsoons came down just as we started the parade march, but it didn’t stop us, it only sent the haters running for shelter, and we danced in the rain as drag queens on floats tried to keep their wigs dry. I was tired, and sore, and oh so happy to have been able to go one last time.

I have done a lot during the pandemic, but I didn’t write about any of it because I couldn’t process it as worthy of the blog. It was either repetitive (been there, done that) or it was all so small compared to what I wanted to be writing about, so personal, banal and mundane. I looked at my photos on the cloud at the time and thought, did I do anything at all? And now I know that was some HARD CORE DEPRESSION talking. Seriously, look at this thing I wrote:

I’ve had no good days. There have been ok days, bad days, and HORRIBLE days. Horrible days involve involuntary non-stop crying, panic/anxiety attacks, suicidal ideation, and total isolation. Bad days, I can get through the bare minimum of “eat/hydrate/teach” and then have to sink into dissociative distractions like video games, binge watching Netflix, or reading pop-YA fiction to keep it from becoming a horrible day. Ok days I might actually experience fleeting moments of “that’s nice” before the ennui sets back in. And from what I understand, this is pretty much the new normal for almost everybody I know.

Who Can Even, Right Now? – Gallivantrix

I was deep down in a black oubliette, so far gone I couldn’t even imagine seeing the light again. I was dying, and now I know I’m not because I look at those photos today and I think, “what beautiful memories we made through hard times”.

Now, I’m in the process of untangling my life from Korea, getting all the paperwork filed, the apartment emptied (it is amazing how much stuff a person accumulates in 6 years), the banking, the utilities, the phone, the job… It’s the very first time as an adult that I’ve left a place after having lived for so long and not expected to return. It’s the first time I will be fully without a “home base”. I know my friends and family in the states will not let me fall on my face or be homeless, but it is a strange feeling knowing that I’ll walk out the door for the last time. I have had a safe and comfortable life here, and I am grateful to Korea for many things, but my adventure has turned into my comfort zone, and that may be the biggest reason it’s time to go.