My familiarity with uncertainties

There is now a full-blown Covid-19 pandemic in most parts of the world. People are frightened, in denial, following social distancing rules, defying social distancing recommendations, shouting that government should impose stricter measures in places with very few cases, claiming that the government should just let the virus infect the entire population to achieve herd immunity in places where hospitals are overwhelmed, the whole spectrum.

Many people have expressed great frustration about the uncertainties of it all: how long will this pandemic last? When can my kids return to school? When can we start traveling again? They mention that previously, they could plan their lives down to a T, and now everything is up in the air.

When I hear the descriptions of  how much control people previously had of their lives, I am actually totally envious of it. For me, surprises and uncertainties have been with me my entire life. My mother used to send me to summer camps with no notification until the day before the event. She told me about our immigration to a different continent where people spoke different languages and had different cultures a mere two months before we made the move, because we had to move out of our apartment that I lived for 3/4 of my life at the time, and stay at a temporary apartment for a month. She probably would have told me later if she could have. I have been carrying a perpetual anger my entire life. If I made plans with friends, she could easily tell me to cancel it and do something with her instead because her business was way more important than whatever it was I had planned. Even when I eventually did become independent, I still operated as if unexpected things would happen. In fact, I would put myself in very uncertain situations, like moving to foreign countries without knowing much about the details of a ton of things, such as taxes and insurances and local cultures etc. People would describe it as "brave", and I would feel confused about that description. I am not brave. I simply have never felt like I was in total control wherever I was located.

For the longest time, I have felt like a weak, inadequate, unprepared, disorganized person. I got good grades, but I don't know how to keep my lives and daily routines organized. Now I finally understand why. How do you keep yourself completely organized if you mom can send you off to some random places without warning at any time? What's the point of keeping everything in order if your mom can rearrange everything in your room because she doesn't like how it's currently arranged? The uncertainties, confusions, and feeling of inadequacy that normally competent people feel right now, are the exact feelings I have been feeling forever. Which means, perhaps, there has been a legitimate reason why I felt like such a helpless person. This pandemic throwing everything off is a very familiar feeling for me. I am used to living in constant uncertainties and fear.

I am trying to learn from people who still seem to be able to bring laughters and comfort to others during this difficult time. People who seem to be able to stay optimistic (not in an ignorant way), who can (non-sarcastically) joke about it all, and who can remain in good spirits while having a realistic understanding of the situation. This situation really is a good time to put our lives on hold, reevaluate what's really important in our lives, and what we formerly thought were important turn out to be not so important after all. This includes physical items, people in our lives, our values and notions, maybe also grudges, resentments, and other emotions.

Policing other people's behaviours

Recently I have been watching a lot of Chinese shows talking about all kinds of social and psychology issues in society. One of the episodes had a discussion about a newly invented label "green tea slut" that is supposed to be given to a woman who gives the impression of being innocent, elegant and naïve in order to make other men fall in love with her, but in reality they are scheming and they take advantage of these "poor men" financially and emotionally. These labels are usually given to women by other women. It's basically the Asian version of slut-shaming, with women being particularly angry that this type of women don't also dress like the promiscuous type to give obvious warning to other women. Also, promiscuity discussed here is not only about sexual behaviour. Women try to police other women for being "emotionally/verbally slutty" as well, ie. talking in a way that makes men feel like they have a chance to date her/become her boyfriend.

In the episode, instead of criticizing the type of women being given this label, the invited "relationship experts" and psychology counsellors try to explain that instead of listing all the ways women with this label are horrible, maybe one can try to admit one is actually jealous of this type of women, and figure out the specific relationship skills this type of women possess that make men fall in love with her easily, and one can think about acquiring some of the particular skills that make them likeable and attractive to men.

In the comments section, women continue to voice their hatred for this type of women. In actuality this is not a specific type of women. It can be any woman who is super well-liked and is fantasized by male classmates, work colleagues, and even most women's boyfriends. It could be a woman who "stole" the heart of one's biggest male crush. This woman can actively manipulate men's psyche such that her multiple boyfriends don't realize they are not exclusive with her, or she could simply be actively pursued by multiple high quality guys, all competing to become "the" boyfriend.

Since this "green tea slut"-shaming is not a thing in the west, I am having a bit of trouble understanding the mentality of it. I guess many women are brought up to believe that as a woman, there are "good" and "bad" ways to behave. Women who are successful at garnering attention from a large number of men are "evil" and men should be ashamed of themselves for falling for this type of women.

I mean, I guess it sucks to fall for manipulative people, period. It happens to all of us, whether in romance, at work, in politics, in social circles, etc. But from what I can observe, these critics consider non-manipulative women who have personalities that genuinely attract a lot of men to be just as evil as the manipulative ones. Maybe it all comes down to the question "why can't I attract the men I'm interested in and woman X gets attention from all the men?" Their interpretation of the answer to this question is that these women are behaving in ways that are not allowed (not allowed by what? By their inner police).

It comes down to what is attractiveness. The most obvious answer is looks. In the west, charm, sense of humour (for men) are also obvious. In the east, what makes a woman charming (besides looks) is less understood by women. The dominating judgemental way of thinking of how a woman should and should not behave will take some time to shift I guess. 

New experiences climbing outside and intense emotions

I experienced a very intense week recently. It was a climbing vacation, and I was pushed to climb every day. I didn't know I could do it. I tried to keep it very easy on the first day. By the third and fourth day I was really tired. Then I thought I got used to it. But then when my brain could not will my body to do the moves that required a little extra stamina and strength (the type of exertion that normally triggers the ecstasy during climbing), I felt angry and defeated. I felt like I was not in control of my situation. On this trip I experienced anticipation, excitement, joy, adrenaline high, fear, anger, frustration, pain, helplessness, senes of accomplishment, boredom, confusion, dread, tiredness, stubbornness, impulsiveness. The trip brought out a lot of feelings and thoughts in me.

For one thing, I was very fortunate to be able to participate in such a trip. The weather was perfect; the setting was gorgeous ( by the Mediterranean Sea); the companions were intelligent people who have led very interesting lives; my partner was super accommodating to my weaknesses and complaints. I was expecting the trip to be a lot less strenuous, but was amazed my body could handle it. I learned that I could push my body to do a lot more than I thought I could. Climbing outside is so different than climbing indoors. In the gym you stand on these deliberate footholds, and follow a distinct path. On the rock, you are supposed to trust your feet to generate enough friction to stay on the angled wall with rough features on it. It's really different. My bunions were hurting after 2 days, so I didn't dare to push my feet harder into the wall, which meant I couldn't climb any harder. I tried to climb in a way that prevented aggravation of foot pain. It's good technique, but also limiting. I will take it easy and see if my feet feel better as they get stronger. If the pain persists I might not be able to climb higher grades in the future.

A lot of extra factors outdoors generate more fear and give the brain more factors to process. The wind; the sun; will this thin rock that I grab break off? Can this step hold my body weight? Many times I have to tell myself to breath, that I can get through this route. There was one 5a/5.7/5+ route where I felt very uncomfortable to push hard on my toes so I could grab higher and reach the next comfortable handholds / footholds. So I had to down-climb to the last quickdraw that I clipped to go down. That also felt really difficult as I had never down-climbed on rock walls before. I felt like I was gaining a lot of new experiences. The more I experience, the less scary they feel, the more my brain can handle it, and the better I can climb.

Because there were so many intense emotional triggers on this trip, I am reminded of how some of my friends used to tell me how "they are afraid to be bored". Yet they normally resort to activities like shopping, movie watching, socializing with friends, regular sight-seeing travels, alcohol drinking, and almost never adrenaline sports. I feel like when some people say they are bored, rather than craving true excitement, it means they want to be distracted. They do not want to be in a focused state. When I am up on the wall, there is no complaining I am tired, or bored. There is only problem solving so I can come down the wall safely eventually.

I'm hoping this experience will help me climb better in the future, both in the gym and outside. I'm also hoping it will help me  handle my emotions better in normal life.

The psychology of climbing grades

Climbing is a graded sport. Every wall or piece of rock can be assigned a level of difficulty, based on the several factors: the distance between the handholds and footholds (for easier routes you can effortlessly reach the next handhold without reaching very much), the size/shape of handholds/footholds (for easier routes the handholds are easier to hold on and feel secure), the strength/power required to reach the next hold (for harder routes, it might take a gymnast/ninja move to reach the next hold), and the angle of the wall (walls that lean towards the climber, where the climber have to fight harder against gravity are harder).

There are also style preferences. A strong but not flexible person might not mind the power pull ups but hate routes that require one to lift one's foot super high or far out to reach the next foot hold, while a super light person might have less trouble with crimpy handholds (holds that barely fits a finger knuckle) than heavier person.

While there is logic to the grading of a route, there is also a lot of mental games involved. The other day, my boyfriend struggled through a 7/6b/5.10c lead climbing route, but told me to try it. While I have top roped many routes at this level before, I have never lead climbed at that level. I was sure I couldn't do it, but he said to just give it a shot and come down when I have hit my limit. So I went up, and with several hanging rests (I tend to rest when I have trouble reading the next section or think the next section will be challenging), I made it to the top with no problems (cheated on one foothold).  I was super (pleasantly) surprised. So then I tried another route, graded 7-/6a+/5.10b, which my boyfriend also struggled on. Because I could do the harder route, when I struggled on the 7-, I told myself that since I just did the 7, my body must be able to handle this route. And so, even when the hands felt like they were burning, I just shook them out and kept going. I kept expecting the burning hands to fail me while I clipped in the rope with the other hand, they hung on with no problems. So I managed to onsight this 7- with no hanging rests. But I know for certain that I would have taken hanging rests had I not just attempted a 7 before this route, because: hands and forearms felt like they were on fire.

As I have mentioned before, sensations are not good indicators of how much stress my body can handle. A lot of the on fire feeling may have been generated by the head to protect my body (and my mental security). In my case, maybe my brain is a bit overprotective. But maybe not, because every time I come home my body is sore for 3+ days. So while the body could perform at that intensity in the moment, it basically tells me afterwards to take it easy for a few days.

I hope I can keep pushing the limits of my body and my mind for many more years to come.

Climbing as therapy for the brain

The other day I saw a big guy wearing a helmet climbing a relatively easy route in the indoor gym. He was making these horrendous screams as he was climbing. My boyfriend noted that he is probably someone with some mental issues, brought to the climbing gym to try out climbing as a therapy to help him to perhaps quiet some strongly intrusive (violent, abusive?) thoughts.

Normally I would not be able to help myself but to judge other people, but since some of the greatest climbers in the world also scream like they are giving birth to a baby without epidurals when they attempt really difficult climbs (eg. Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra), I knew pretty early on that screaming had a function.

Our guess was that this was his first time trying out climbing, and he insisted on wearing a helmet so it would help him feel more safe and secure about the activity. We didn't want to be impolite and stare at him too much, so we continued our own climbs on the other end of the wall. We could hear his torturous screaming, then there would be a break, then he would start screaming again. It was obviously pretty awkward for everyone else in the gym, but it kind of made me feel happy too, because I think he knows that the activity is helping him, so he must have made a second climb, or at least took a break and then kept going.

Again, I always find the most fascinating part about climbing to be the mental part more than the physical aspect. I also have racing, random, ruminating, and intrusive thoughts. When you are on the wall hanging on for dear life, those thoughts are forced to take a break. So for a few moments, the brain experiences fear (of heights, of the unfamiliarity with the body being in funny 3D positions), and simultaneously welcoming peace from nagging, wordy, annoying thoughts.

The thing is, if the climb is not intense enough, that is, when my body and brain start to feel quite comfortable hanging out or moving about on a route, the thoughts would come back. So basically, if I am experiencing nagging thoughts again, it's time to try a harder route. I'm at a stage where I feel like I have trouble finding Goldilock routes, that is, routes not so easy where my brain starts yapping at me about my daily worries, and routes not so tough that I need to take a break after every move I try. I need routes that a physically challenging, intense, but at the same time, allow me to perform some flowy movements. Not something easy to balance.

An interview with Dr. Gabor Maté, an expert on addiction, reminds me how fast brains adapts to chemicals and stimulants. It also reminds me how we are often unconsciously drawn to drugs and everyday activities that our brains inherently need. When we take drugs, either prescribed or illegal, our brains adapt to the normal dosages rather quickly, and we need to increase the dosage until the side effects do terrible things to our body. In the case of climbing and other sports, our brain and body also adapt quite quickly, but we just need to increase the intensity or difficulty of the activity.

For that man with the helmet, I hope climbing is helpful for him, and I hope he can keep doing it if he finds it helpful.

Climbing: working on the body vs. working on the nerves

The last few weeks, I have been working on getting used to lead climbing, which, as a reminder, works by bring a rope with me up the wall and clipping it to a metal draw located at evenly spaced out sections all the way up to the top of the wall. The pile of 40-60 m long rope lays on the ground, and your belay partner slowly gives out rope to the climber on the wall through a belaying device, so that when a fall occurs, the climber hangs off of the draw he/she last clipped. Such fall could happen any time, but a likely position when a fall happens would be when the climber attempts to slip the rope in a draw and fails to do so, in which case he/she falls all the way to below the previous metal draw where the rope was clipped on. This is quite a large fall that is quite scary for the climber, and the belayer also gets dragged some distance up and into the wall (the belayer should stick his/her foot out towards the wall to help control the fall). Here is a video of what this process looks like. The whole process is supposed to be relatively safe for the climber and the belayer.

So despite practice having practiced falling in a controlled manner, at this current stage of my climbing journey, my heart rate still goes way up even as soon as I don't have at least one secure footing and at least one secure handhold. This is why I am currently only climbing very easy routes, over gripping my handholds, and "cheating" -- ie. grab or stand on a handhold or foothold that do not belong to the designated route I am working on. On these easier routes, the handholds and footholds are pretty large and non-tricky, so simply climbing them isn't a work out for me. Well, I mean, they still tire me out since I am gripping them too hard, but it doesn't work my hands and my body the same way that a higher level route does.

My boyfriend, having stronger grips, better endurance, and less fear of heights, is on a different game. He is able to attempt routes that are way closer in difficult to what he normally climbs on top rope. He also hates falling, but he is able to overgrip trickier handholds for longer than I can. He likes to work on minimizing the number of hanging rests on a hard route so he can eventually "onsight" such routes, or get through an entire route upon first try without hang-resting or falling, having never watched another person climbing that same route.

To be strict, you should rather fall than to use holds that do not belong on your route, because on an outdoor wall of labelled level X, there are no additional holds other than all the ones available to you on that wall. However, currently I cannot play that game, because I have to first get over my psychological roadblocks. Otherwise the falls would not be fun (will be fall of tension), and I would lose my desire to continue climbing.

So anyways, my boyfriend and I had a conflict over the fact I sometimes place a foot or a hand between the rope and the wall. You should have your body parts over the rope, otherwise when you fall, your leg or hand can be jammed up by the rope and the resulting fall could be messy. I understand that intellectually, but I was so focused on not falling that when he yelled out at me from the below when I had a hand under the rope, I totally panicked and could not climb any more. His warnings were out for safety concerns, but the problem was that I reacted over the fact that I did something wrong and I didn't know how to fix it immediately.

The main thing is, what I did was dangerous if I fall. My main focus was not to fall. I would have grabbed all the things I was not supposed to grab (the rope, the draws, the bolt etc) in order to stay on the wall. So we were playing totally different games with totally different rules. This was why it was impossible to solve the conflict. I understand his game is how climbing should be. You are supposed to practice using the appropriate body movement to get up a route, falling as many times as necessary until you get the movement to work. But I needed to just get comfortable on the wall holding my body in uncomfortable positions until I feel comfortable enough to work on falling and then work on following the rules as well as more advanced climbing movements.

Being on the wall, standing on your toes and hanging by a rope, there are a million things to think about. One has totally different perspectives being on the wall than the person maintaining your safety from the bottom of the wall watching you climb. There are a lot of parallels between this activity and real life. I think I might have been failing certain things in life because while I know the rules of the game for career advancement, due to my own psychological shortcomings, I want to be given a break and be on my own terms, while being attached to other people. But the administrators, the boss, the colleagues do not see my perspective and are not willing to give me a break. If I really want to play my own games, then I need to be independent, belaying myself. Otherwise I have to play their games. It's something for me to contemplate further for sure. 

Revisiting spirituality

Based on my blog posts, I've been progressively becoming less and less spiritual the past year, to the point that I declared life is meaningless in my most recent post.

I came to this conclusion because I realized that whether it's social science, hard core biological or physical science, spirituality studies, religious studies, health-freaks obsessed about either raw vegan diet or paleolithic diets, political fanatics, whatever you are passionate about, if you keep looking for evidence to support your beliefs, you will find them everywhere. The moderates will be able to find evidence that support either sides of a controversial; the extremists will completely ignore the evidences that contradicts their beliefs and blow up the ones that do support their claims, "See? Just as I told you, this research entirely supports my point of view, and therefore I'm right; you're wrong!"

More rigorous scientists will try harder to avoid these biases, but researchers are humans too. It is still human nature to be a bit blind to counter-evidence and over-emphasize the evidence that supports one's theories. In addition, we are pattern hunting machines. We will see patterns even when there are only random stuff going on.

It was a blessing to go back to Michael Stone's teachings to learn more about psychology and how it related with spirituality. Stone talks about four different kinds of personalities: schizoid, borderline, narcissistic, and depressed, in a way that made me understand these four types of personalities much better. We all possess some fraction of these four qualities. It's just that someone who is more heavy-leaning on one of these traits would display certain obvious behaviors during meditation and silent retreats.

When I started yoga I was depressed. I ruminated on and on about how I was wasting my life away doing my graduate degree which wasn't going anywhere, but I also couldn't quit because I had no idea what else to do with my life. Yoga provided me with a distraction. It made me more aware of how I felt in the body when I was anxious and how a yoga practice would calm that frazzled nervous system. My teachers were charismatic, charming, compassionate, beautiful people. My classmates were like me, open-minded, curious, and slightly lost in life, all thirstily drinking up all the teachings. Tension in my body were released and I was hanging out with like-minded people who are mentally in the similar space. My yoga studio was my paradise, my safe haven. I embraced yoga and its community like my own family.

Here in Europe, my job contains more "stuff" for me to work on. It's more challenging, fulfilling, meaningful, and my bosses act like supportive cheerleaders, rather than my enemy who acted like she regretted hiring me, but couldn't fire me because it would look bad for her among her peers, and it's impossible to find anyone who would do the same job for less salary than PhD students. So career satisfaction went up, but community support went way, way down. I live in an apathetic society now. Also, I've been acting like a vessel, absorbing whatever negative emotions people around me expressed. They complain not about me, but about aspects of their lives in which they deeply dislike. For whatever reason, I empathize too much and feel just as stressed and neurotic as they are, and I don't know how to block off their negative energies.  I tried to offer suggestions to alleviate their stress or hint at them to take up yoga, but yoga is not a big enough fad here so they have not taken up my suggestions. I wasn't very aware until now that allowing friends to vent their negative feelings to me for prolonged periods of time can be as energetically draining as having them complaining about me.

I guess subconsciously I have been trying to fend off all the negativity by setting up a psychological wall, ie. becoming more apathetic (socially withdrawn, wanting to disconnect from people). I don't really like it, and wish I could be more attuned to the positivity in people. I will keep looking for them I guess. Maybe I'll have to eventually move back to Canada.

According to Michael Stone, meditation will help with grounding, so I feel more connected with my inner self and the stronger buddha so I can deal with life's challenges. I will try because I don't know what alternative options I have.

Personality analysis

I've been forcing myself to go to social events and meeting lots of kinds of people, some of which are really friendly and welcoming, which was a nice change. It's a good thing that in my new job I get to interact with a lot more people than during grad school, but at the same time, it's also a big challenge for me to work with people with very different personalities than me. I know that as a professional, one needs to set aside one's preference and dislikes for personality types and work with others' professional abilities, but I'm finding I'm horrible at it. It's a big wake up call I guess.

I have always thought I was an INTP, but recently, redoing the Myer-Briggs test and reading more into it, turns out I'm actually an INFJ, with dominant introverted intuition, extraverted feelings, introverted thinking, and extraverted sensing. I have always thought that I suck at reading people's intentions and feelings, but turns out I've been ignoring my intuition all these years. In reality, other people's energy affect me hugely, to the point that I can't hold my own state of centeredness when someone else is exhibiting different energies. For example, if I meet someone who is grumpy, it totally brings me down as well, no matter how hard I try to stay neutral and cheerful. Meeting super cheery people can bring me to a totally cheerful state as well. By this logic, I should always hang out with super cheerful people, but people like that are not super common around here. Also, I don't mean fake cheerful. I mean genuine happiness. My logical brain cannot tell the difference (and I've always relied on my rational brain without monitoring my own reaction to places and situations), but my happiness only lights up sometimes, for example at this Indian wedding I attended where I didn't know the bride and groom but my Indian friends' friends were all super excited to meet me (I was the only foreigner at the wedding... super exotic to them LOL). I think it was one of the happiest days I've experienced in a very long time. It wasn't because I was the center of attention, but because I could feel that everybody was grinning from ear to ear they could hardly contain their excitements. At work my colleagues also crack jokes  and break into loud laughters every single day at coffee breaks, but somehow it just doesn't feel like real happiness to me. I can't explain it and I could be wrong, but to me their laughters feel more like life-coping strategy than genuine contentment with life. These are definitely signs of extraverted feeling and sensing.

According to Wikipedia, only 1-3% of the US population of INFJs, the rarest personality type of all (compared to 20-28% ISTJs/ISFJs and 17-25% ESFJ/ESTJs). This means I belong to the most misunderstood loner crowd and I also think differently from most of the populations in the US and probably in the world.

INFJ weaknesses, according to the Internet, include being unaware (and sometimes uncaring) of how they come across to others, applying their judgment more often towards others, rather than towards themselves, having unrealistic and/or unreasonable expectations of others, having an intense and quick temper, can hold grudges, can have difficulty forgiving people, can be wishy-washy and unsure how to act in situations that require quick decision making, having difficulty communicating their thoughts and feelings to others, and can see so many tangents everywhere that they can't stay focused on the bottom line or the big picture.

Yikes.. how horrible it is to be born as an INFJ! I think the judgmental part of me prevents me from seeing the positive aspect of issues and focusing on working with colleagues' professional sides and take in their advice (because I've already decided that I don't like them as a person). But it doesn't matter why I am the way I am... I must come across as a difficult to deal with person as well. The website offers suggestions on personal development. Some of these I have already been attempting for years. As for the "do not express anger" advice, I usually try to suppress my anger by staying silent, but most of the time people can sense that I'm upset anyways. So then I get frustrated that the situation remains tense even though I think I haven't expressed my anger... perhaps my facial expression gives things away.. I don't know exactly.

I don't like to have a personality that only accounts for 1-3% of the world's population, and I don't like to be difficult. But being among this personality group means that I naturally think differently than most people and that it is hard for me to understand how others think and figure out most people's preferences.

I think I need to majorly relax, try really hard not to take things personality, try really hard to be less judgmental of others (the website suggests that I be as least as critical about myself as I do with others but I think I already do a lot of that), and assume the best - this one is quite important and useful for me. I think sometimes I dislike a person because they act as a mirror or even a magnifying glass of an aspect of myself that I don't like. I try so hard to eliminate that characteristic in myself, but how dare this person blatantly express this characteristic and seem to be so comfortable with it? I guess instead I should shift my thinking and be grateful to that person for demonstrating to me that one can exhibit these characteristics that I consider as "flaws" yet still live (somewhat) happily and have lots of friends.

It's a major challenge to be interacting with so many different kinds of personality types, especially ones that clash with mine. I guess it's a necessary part of life that I've managed to avoid until now. I hope I get through this and become a less judgmental, more accommodating and a more easy-going person.  If I cannot get through the challenge, I should perhaps seek out jobs with less human interactions maybe, LOL. Anyways, self-awareness is supposed to be a good thing, right? I genuinely want to be less of an asshole to the people around me. I'm also supposed to draw on my strengths, which I have trouble to  identify confidently. That'll be my task for the next little while - focus on the positives and figure out what exactly am I good at besides assimilating broad range of information obsessively but not be able to coherently organize them into useful thought systems.

The Tai Chi of dealing with people

Last week I observed my boss and his more senior/established/famed collaborator undergo the "Tai Chi" of negotiation. On the surface it appeared that the two of them were joking around a lot during the meeting, but in reality it was a power struggle, where the collaborator was trying to entice the junior professor to take up a whole bunch of technical work by painting a verbal picture of the medical importance of these projects and how doing these work could put us in the forefront of the research field in terms of those specific subject areas. My boss was indeed intrigued by the medical potentials; however he was also aware that the senior guy wants to dump a huge amount of workload on him, so he made plenty of stupid jokes while trying to assert that these technical tasks are more time-consuming than people seem to think. The senior guy jokes that there are 24 hours a day and that should be enough time to work on multiple projects. He did this because my boss was over-claiming the amount of time required to perform some of the tasks. 

To me this discussion could have been 1000 times more straightforward. The senior guy could have just described all the interesting research ideas he has which our group could potentially work on. My boss could have just made a conservative estimate of how many of these ideas he can get his staff to put into implementation and make a rough estimate of the amount of time required. But I guess that would be too boring. For them it made more sense to just joke around to keep the atmosphere "light". My super boring linear mind was confused: why all these jokes and dance and over-exaggeration of potentials and difficulty level of the work? I thought this kind of stuff are reserved for politicians and are "beneath" science? 

Sadly I think this type of negotiation is not restricted to the world of business and politics. If we are too straightforward, the "truth" can hurt our relationship with others and our career potentials. To get ahead in the world we must all have the skill to sell ourselves, to joke around to establish friendliness, but also to work in our assertions and basic values without offending the other party.

Unfortunately I am totally unequipped with this type of skills to be witty and funny and manipulate/maneuver my way out of sticky situations. I don't know how to keep the people I am obliged to deal with happy even if I don't like the situation (or the people); I take everything people tell me at the face value and rarely ponder about the meanings in between the lines. To me it seems like it doesn't matter what field they're in (even if it's NGO or social or charity work), successful people in the world are people who are masters at playing the diplomacy game - people who can convince other people to do what they want them to do wins, which means diplomacy, persuasion, manipulation,  ie. marketing and sales skills trump all other technical skills. Even if I want to quit my job and go volunteer the the poorest village in the world or something, I still need to possess the above-mentioned skill set, or at the very least recognized others are manipulating me or selling me ideas that are not as straightforwards as they sound; otherwise I will be taken advantage of, being stepped all over, and become frustrated no matter what I choose to do with my life.

Another thing: I'm used to jokes back home that are light hearted and to some degree politically correct. I'm really tired of jokes being made around my social/work circles here that sound potentially offensive in a personal way, overly sarcastic, sometimes racist/discriminatory, and then they are like "oh I'm just  joking".  Back home people most likely wouldn't laugh at these jokes. But here I feel like I've been bombarded by this kind of "jokes" (you could argue that some of these are "socially awkward people"). I need to figure out some way to deal with this; otherwise I feel like I'm going crazy. 

Balancing reward-based vs. threat-based tendencies

This survey comes from the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

You a reward-oriented person if the following statements are mostly true for you:
1. When I get something I want, I feel excited and energized.
2. When I want something, I usually go all out to get it.
3. When I see an opportunity for something I like, I get excited right away.
4. When good things happen to me, it affects me strongly.
5. I have very few fears compared to my friends.

You are a threat-oriented person if you agree with the following statements:
1. Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit.
2. I feel pretty worried or upset when I think or know somebody is angry at me.
3. If I think something unpleasant is going to happen, I usually get pretty "worked up".
4. I feel worried when I think I have done poorly at something important.
5. I worry about making mistakes.

All 5 statements for threat-oriented traits apply to me. I'm so worried about making mistakes or something bad will happen to me that I don't always dare to pursue something I want. I monitor myself so carefully that I don't dare to try anything that I haven't tried before or that anybody warns me not to do (regardless of how irrelevant the warning is to me).

My personality does not jive well with my upbringing - I went into science because my mother bought me a lot of books on science - biographies of famous scientists such as Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Marie Curie (although she was hoping I would become a medical doctor). I dare to travel to random countries because my mother used to - without explaining to me or reassuring me beforehand - just place me in random summer camps that seemed just as foreign and scary to me as say, Somalia and Afghanistan (although in her mind there's nothing to be fearful about because she actually knew what the camps entailed about and who organized the events. She didn't feel the need to explain anything to me). I was told that I shouldn't touch business and commerce because of my personality, so I actually believed that I am not capable enough to ever try to understand how the business world works. If I weren't pushed to try out an activity (and I got placed into many extracurricular activities without being notified beforehand), I didn't gather up enough courage to sign up for something I really wanted to learn myself because I got the impression that I could not trust my own judgement to decide anything for myself.

It just seems really unfortunate to go through life being warned the whole time that the world is a dangerous place full of people that cannot be trusted, when I already set up so many stops and checks for myself as long as I can remember. What I really needed all along were reassurance, trust, support, and encouragement. I did NOT need more restrictions, rules, notions that led me to believe I am not outgoing enough to try x, or that it's too dangerous for me to attempt y. Now that I look back, I've been raised with contradictory values - I gain critical thinking skills from my education, but I'm only supposed to be as good as the direct knowledge transmitted to me from my classes (ie. my field of major) and I should never step out of line to try something else. I think this has been the source of my inner struggles.

It's a challenge for me right now to feel comfortable in a foreign country, to make new friends and to feel competent at my new position. I need to learn to shift from feeling really nervous and "worked up" about my life to feeling "excited and energized" about the opportunity I've been given. Sounds easy to say, "Just make that mental shift! Right now!" but in reality it hasn't been easy at all. I will keep working on it though.

And it all goes down the drain

Every time I go to a brand new place or meet brand new types of people, I learn something new about myself. I've been doing that for the past 4 months, so it's been a wild and rewarding ride for me. In addition, I've been obsessing with self-help books (not a good sign.. seems like ones just ends up reading more and  more of this type of material rather than getting better and moving on to a more positive way of life), and I learned a lot about how non-assertive people (ie. me) typically behave and how typical (ie. assertive) people have firmer stances in terms of things like not feeling bad if they don't understand something, not feeling obligated to answer every question that anyone throws at them, and not getting offended at anything that people say that might resemble criticisms of them.

Sadly, one phone call with mom and all the growth goes down the drain. I fell back to old, self destructive patterns, as if I have never done any yoga or psychological deep work. I guess deep down I want my mother to acknowledge that the way she raised me was totally wrong, that she accepts me as who I am, and that she supports me no matter what. Of course this is way too much to ask of anyone (and I didn't consciously understand this was what I was looking for). What she said instead was what she always says, "Just forget anything bad that has ever happened to you. Be happy and everything in the world will be all right. Look at me! I'm so happy right now!" This type of saying always triggers me and we end up in a horrible fight.

I think it comes down to the realization that she tells me to call her once every week to say I am okay, and I do it because she says so not because I want to do it. On the phone I told her I don't want to go back home any more (the bratty kid in me talking) and she told me that she was all right with it if that makes me happy. She feels like she's such a good mom that she gives me freedom to do whatever I want. After I hung up on her half way through our arguments, I realized what I really meant was that I feel really lonely in a foreign country and I want to resolve our relationship problems so I can go home. By saying "Just be happy! Everything's all good! You get all the freedom you want!", it had the exact opposite effect of resolving our long term deep-seeded problems and instead was putting a big distance between us.

I no longer think it's her "fault" that I turned out the way I am today, but that we have such different way of thinking that we probably will never fully get along. My mom had issues with her mother too, but she never wanted to resolve it; she just want the problems to go away, to start fresh, to erase anything bad from her memories (and she succeeds in forgetting a lot of these things too). Me on the other hand, being raised in the west and being an introvert, want to talk through all the things that have gone wrong, analyze them to death, explain them in terms of both cognitive psychobabble as well as spiritual chakra/energy woo-woo stuff. My mother seems to be able to let the negative go easily (or at least bury them so deep down she's not easily aware of them). I want to dig up all the negative memories and examine them to death while reliving all the pain. I have no idea if things between us will ever get resolved.

Well, at least I realized I'm automatically choosing to do an action that I didn't want to do just because others told me to do so (ie. calling mom). It is so hard to reprogram myself to take active control of certain aspects of myself that are on auto-pilot and to let go of the negative toxic junk that could be thrown away a long time ago. It's a life long journey I guess.