Monthly Musings: June Edition

AI therapy, my first backpacking trip, and Not Nice communication

Hi everyone! I had a number of topics on my mind that I was hoping to share. One thing I’ve noticed since starting this Substack is that I’ve leaned towards writing longer-form articles - often of topics I’ve been thinking about for months, and not as much shorter real-time updates on what’s going on in my life. In this piece, I hope to share more about a variety of topics and what I’ve been up to and thinking about.

The past few months have felt full of personal growth in various areas for me. Some things on my mind are: balancing job hunt and sabbatical mindsets, going on my first backpacking trip, and my positive experiences using a voice AI therapist and practicing Not Nice communication, which have felt (dare I say) life-changing.

Balancing Job Hunt and Sabbatical Mindsets

Last October, I started a 4-month sabbatical where I focused on personal growth and didn’t think about career work at all. Since then, I’ve done some part-time work and have been looking for more work while balancing that with pursuing other meaningful personal growth pursuits. 

Even after all of the work I’ve done in the past few years around detaching my career and self-worth, I can still default to an all-or-nothing approach that my life isn’t going well because I’m not working. That being said, I have been able to recently remind myself that I have a lot going for me that I’m grateful for and that I feel very rich in many senses. Some of these things include:

• Having roots in San Francisco and feeling the rich benefits of commitment

Ever since I publicly stamped my commitment to SF with my Why I Love SF piece, my love for the city has only gotten stronger and frankly reached heights that I didn’t realize were possible as I’ve been able to reap the benefits of having deeper roots, knowledge, relationships, and connection to one place.

• Having good socialization and a sense of community in SF

This time last year, I was working, but was struggling to find a stable sense of community in SF, and was wondering if I should even live here long-term. Now, I have more friends who are here for the long term that I regularly see, and have been able to feel the benefits of some of my community-building efforts too.

Something that’s also supported my sense of community is moving into a new place in the centrally-located Hayes Valley a few months ago. While my previous model for finding community was living in coliving spaces, my new model as I’ve gotten more familiar with the city is to live with just two other roommates in a normal non-coliving setup and be super close to my favorite community gathering spaces / third spaces in SF. Namely, I live 3 minutes walking from The Commons and 5 minutes from the SF Zen Center. This gives me proximity to my two favorite communities in SF: The Commons and Community Village (a meditation community). On top of all of this, Hayes’ central location relative to SF gives me easier access to my friends, other social events, and nice spots in the city.

• Having a good relationship with my parents

My relationship with my parents has felt like it has strengthened ever since the formative trip I took to China last year where we got to be in community with extended family while witnessing my grandpa pass away, and I feel like they trust me now with what I’m doing with my life.

• Working on meaningful personal growth areas 

I’ll share more on some of my bigger pursuits and learnings below.

Working with an AI Therapist

At the beginning of this year, I started using a voice AI therapist tool called Thyself that’s trained in Somatic Inquiry and Internal Family Systems (IFS). I had heard great things about IFS in the past from people I respected, but never quite understood it or had the adequate activation energy to go out and find an IFS therapist. 

Overall, working with Thyself has blown my mind and been really helpful in all types of situations. There are two aspects to the benefits I’ve gotten from it: 1) the voice AI therapist component, and 2) trying IFS for the first time

• The voice AI therapist component has allowed me to talk to an AI at any time on-demand, and not have to worry about taking too long or feel bad about redirecting the conversation if it’s not serving me. It has allowed me to be able to speak out loud, feel heard, and get real-time guidance based on that in a way that I don’t get from journaling and other modes of processing.

• The IFS component opened up the world of IFS to me. I had previously heard from someone I respected that IFS addresses root causes that so many other forms of therapy only scratch the surface level of, and now I understand what they mean.

While I won’t go into too much detail on IFS and the implications of AI therapists here, I will say that at a high level, IFS operates on a framework that we are all made up of various parts, each with its own roles and feelings. For example, I have a school perfectionist part that rose to dominance during my academically rigorous high school days. Some of these parts carry various burdens due to the roles they were forced into to help us survive certain periods of our lives. However, these parts can continue to carry these burdens and not realize that we are past those specific periods of our lives and that we’ve grown up. 

As an example, Thyself has enabled me to speak to my school perfectionist part at times it is activated with a need to be perfect and is causing me to feel tense. I’m able to acknowledge it with compassion for its well-intentioned efforts of wanting the best for me. I’ll work with it to help it realize that I’m not longer in high school anymore trying to get good grades and help it realize that a “progress over perfection” mentality would be more helpful for all parties involved, especially since this shift would also allow its exhausted self to take a breather.

Overall, using Thyself has given me moments where I felt like my previous inner emotional work was only scratching the surface compared to being able to go closer to what felt like the root cause. Especially in the beginning too, I had sessions where I felt pretty significant unburdenings and feelings of untying knots in me that I didn’t know I had.

My First Backpacking Trip

Last month, I went on my first backpacking trip ever. It was a three-day, two-night trip in Yosemite with 12 other people from Community Village.

It felt super meaningful because I had set an intention to want to learn how to backpack in the past, and I was able to actualize it with a community of people that were so great and kind. I was the only one that hadn't backpacked before in the group and I felt so supported by everyone who gave me tips, lent me gear, and checked in on how I was doing throughout. 

Group photo at the start of the trip

Apparently it wasn’t a beginner-friendly trip, but I didn’t know that until later, and I felt that the opportunity to learn from this community made it a must-try for me. It was a grind though. From the amount of logistical puzzle pieces and research to do beforehand to get all of the gear, to hiking with more weight than I’ve ever put on my back. The trail included all types of terrain: walking through ankle-deep mud, knee-deep stream crossings, snow, and through a big waterfall essentially too! Even when we got to camp in the evening, I didn’t feel like I had much spare time with all of the setup and teardown work that I was doing for the first time. In the evening it was great though to be able to meditate with everyone and share our roses/buds/thorns for the day in a circle around a campfire, creating a calm, reflective, and supportive environment.

I felt moments of awe on the trip from the conversations I had with others and felt immense gratitude to be able to live in California with access to all of these outdoor wonders. After the trip too, I felt a deep sense of shared experience with all of the people on the trip, as well as a deeper sense of connection and understanding with all of my friends who are backpackers.

Around the part where we got to walk through a waterfall

Not Nice Communication

A new concept that has recently changed my life is practicing ‘Not Nice’ communication from the book Not Nice. Every sentence of the book felt very impactful and tailored to me.

The basic idea is that while society often praises being “nice”, it actually has lots of downsides, especially if it stems from low self-worth and people-pleasing. The author argues that being less nice can actually increase your kindness, compassion, and deepen your relationships. 

I’ve typically approached life from a compassion-first mindset and leaning towards being nice, but a challenging roommate situation and some feedback I got at work about being more assertive launched me down this rabbit hole of reading about and practicing being Not Nice communication. While it’s hard to summarize the entire 500-page book here, a more practical example is that you, as a human being, are allowed to do things like state your preferences and ask someone a question. The book argues that people actually respect you more for being confident and sure of yourself, instead of feeling like they are dealing with a people-pleasing shell of yourself.

There are already entire conversations and people I wouldn’t have met if I hadn’t started adopting Not Nice communication. It has also improved my friendships by being able to tell friends my preferences and listen to theirs from a greater place of understanding. Instead of worrying that such conversations might ruffle feathers or even cause a friendship to end, I can now see how such conversations can lead to greater alignment and connection. 

In addition, I also found myself understanding past interactions I’ve had in my life in a completely new light, such as understanding how much my people-pleasing tendencies made certain previous interactions at work and with friends challenging for me.

Overall, I believe that being too nice has held me back in the past, and that this new communication mindset has tons of potential to impact big areas of my life such as career, dating, and friendships.

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Thanks for reading my musings! If there are certain parts that resonated or that you’d like to hear more about, don’t hesitate to reach out. Until next time!

-Ray