Reflections: “A Letter to My Past Self” by Phil De Vera
In the intricate labyrinth of our minds, we often confront the shadows of our past, seeking solace and understanding. As we step into the new year (hello 2024!), we delve into a heartfelt letter penned by our own team member, Phil Jacob De Vera, during a period of mental distress and self-discovery.
An AI-generated image of Phil done by our very own team :)
His heartfelt story serves as proof of how intricate human emotions can be and the strength that introspection holds — an example of a journey where Murror aims to be your guiding light.
To begin our Reflections series, I asked our Murror AI app for a prompt that could help Phil begin his reflection. As he felt (understandably) nervous doing an interview in person and answering personal questions on the spot, this AI-generated prompt offered a chill way to just sit back… think, feel, and reflect.
After all, with AI, there’s truly no rush. No expectations. No pressure.
The dawn of a new year has always symbolized a fresh start — a chance to reflect, grow, and embrace positive change while showing gratitude for our past.
Here at Murror, we understand, too, that sometimes the feelings towards past lives and lessons can overtake us, so it is important to create a safe space and offer support to comfortably explore those emotions.
With our Reflections series, we highlight real stories to show you that not only are you not alone on this journey of life, but there can also be comfort and healing.
As we explore Phil's personal journey, we aim to highlight the importance of introspection, self-compassion, and personal growth in the realm of mental health.
Phil’s letter is an exploration of resilience, self-discovery, and the promise of a brighter future — fitting as we navigate the uncharted waters of the new year together.
I hope his story resonates with you as much as it resonates with me. Read his candid reflection below.
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Dear Past Self,
I want to start off by saying that I am so proud of you for accomplishing everything that you have done so far. In just a couple of years, you have been able to do so much in college. To many, you have become a source of inspiration. You overcame the doubts of many and became the youngest executive in the history of your university’s student government. You defied all odds and accomplished your dream of becoming a Resident Advisor despite facing many obstacles to get there. You found leadership in virtually every organization that you have been a part of. (And I know that there are a LOT of them because that’s just always been the type of person that you are.) I know that, at this very moment, you feel like you should be incredibly proud of yourself and happy with where you are… but I also know that this isn’t how you actually feel.
On the outside, you are always smiling and being your usual bubbly self that everyone knows you to be. Growing up, this was your entire personality. Amongst your cousins and other family members, you were always seen as the “star child.” You know exactly what I mean. The child that was always unproblematic, quiet, listened to their parents, and did well in school… at least it always seemed that way.
Well… how you feel on the inside is a completely different story. I know that right now you are ridden with immense amounts of frustration at yourself, a lot of self-doubt, and even more embarrassment. Everyone sees you as this person that is “so smart” and very put-together. They always portray you as this perfect individual that can just “do it all” without any problems. In reality, I know that you are actually struggling in so many ways, one of the ways being in your classes because of your unexplainable inability to study effectively or even study at all. I remember all of the feelings of frustration, never being able to understand how people could just force themselves to study for long hours or find the energy to consistently go to class and pay attention to the lectures.
All you do is imagine and ask yourself how much more successful you would be if you could study or do work like everyone else.
Looking back, I remember having so much doubt during this time about ever making our dream of going to medical school a reality. Each bad test score and every low course grade would constantly eat away at our self-esteem, leaving us feeling hopeless because it felt like we were going to disappoint so many people. I know that you feel like such an imposter right now because nobody around you actually knows how much you are struggling, since you always try to keep a smile on your face.
They don’t know that you basically stopped taking care of yourself because even just getting out of bed can feel overwhelming sometimes. They don’t know that, for you, doing laundry always seems like the biggest task ever. They don’t know that your room has gotten so messy to the point where piles of clothes and trash make it very hard to walk around, but that you can’t find the motivation to clean it up. Because of this, you never let anyone visit you out of a fear of embarrassment and being seen negatively by the people that you care about. I can tell you that this is still the lowest point in life that I have ever experienced thus far.
Things will start to change for you though.
Everyone in college always talks about mental health, but you never took the time to think about your own mental health for the longest time. Soon, you will finally start to seriously consider that maybe many of the things that you were going through could be attributed to a mental health issue. In the past 20 years of your life so far, you never really had the chance to explore your own mental health because it is something that is often brushed off in Asian households, including your own. At this point, you have heard so many of your family members get shut down when bringing up their own mental health concerns, and you constantly hear everyone saying that our generation is just too soft or too dramatic.
Also, as an only child, I know that you rely a lot on your parents for a lot of things, like making dentist appointments and such. (I hate to break it to you… we still do this, but we are getting better!) And out of a fear of being misunderstood by your parents, you will end up choosing to check out the therapy provided by the university all on your own, which sounds very unlike you… I know. You will go in thinking that it could be something like depression because that’s the most common issue that you have heard about, and you don’t know any better at the time. You will start therapy in hopes that you could find a single magical and perfect explanation and solution to all of your problems. (Surprise! We don’t find that… because the perfect solution doesn’t exist!) BUT you will finally get the chance to talk to someone who will hear you out and make you feel like your struggles are real and not merely a result of you “being dramatic.”
It will feel like a breath of fresh air finally having your mental health concerns be validated because you will finally get the chance to work through these issues with someone, bringing you a lot of excitement and hope.
Through therapy, you will get diagnosed with “Other Specified Depressive Disorder,” which means that you don’t fully meet the criteria for any specific depressive disorder. This moment will leave you feeling a lot of disappointment at the diagnosis, and it will cause you to spiral and convince yourself that you were just being dramatic after all. It will make you feel like it was all your fault because you were just overthinking everything and being a lazy person looking for a way to justify being lazy.
And to make things a little more complicated, you also end up joining a dance team while all of this is happening. This is one of the first involvements that you will join completely for fun. (You are actually still with the team today as one of the Directors! Are we surprised though? It’s very on brand for us…) The novelty of joining a dance team will temporarily remedy and hide the inexplicable feeling that you wanted to address. Because everything ends up feeling resolved, you will end up choosing to stop going to therapy before getting to explore any actual coping skills and the deeper issues at hand, and you will just continue to move forward as if the issues were never real issues to begin with.
Now, let me tell you where we are at now. First, those issues that we had were real! They are still very real. I am actually so excited to be writing this letter to you because we finally have some answers!
It turns out that we actually have Combined-Type Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD-C). You may be thinking to yourself, “What do you mean? Isn’t that something that only affects children? Are you sure it’s not just you being lazy and justifying it again?” (Believe me, I thought about all those things too.)
)
I was seeing a lot of information on social media about ADHD recently, and everything was feeling a little bit TOO relatable. Because of this, I ended up going online to read more about ADHD and its symptoms and doing a lot of introspection. The signs were clearly always there growing up, so I decided to seek out professional help from a licensed clinical psychologist. While the trauma of receiving a somewhat inconclusive diagnosis in the past made me doubtful… and a little bit of me was still fearful that I was just making everything up to justify my bad habits… this time felt different.
Upon receiving the diagnosis, I felt so much clarity, and I felt so much more security in knowing that the ADHD diagnosis could actually help me to explain a lot of the issues from the past and help me better accommodate for it in the future.
I have learned so many things already like “ADHD masking,” which is when people try to cover up their symptoms by forcibly stopping them or copying other individuals that don’t have ADHD. (I feel like this is why my ADHD went undetected by so many people for so long!)
At the time of this letter, I am still coming across so many posts on social media about very niche symptoms and experiences of people with ADHD that make me feel so seen. So, you will finally get some of the answers that you are looking for, and it is such a great feeling that I cannot wait for you to experience for yourself. From discovering things like Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria to learning that there is a reason why I talk so much, I could go on and on about all of the things that have left me mind blown as I piece our life together with this new perspective… but then you would be reading this for hours! (Guess it wasn’t the best idea to have someone who loves to talk write a letter to himself, the same person who also has trouble focusing on large amounts of text…)
The main point that I have been trying to get at though is that this revelation and better understanding of our experiences only came because we took matters into our own hands. While your upcoming attempt at getting help may fail, I hope you can feel confident knowing that the future version of you will succeed. Maybe I am just the better one! (I’m kidding.)
This version of you is only here because of everything that you overcame to get us to this point. We graduated from a prestigious university and landed a job at a psychiatric clinic AND a position at a mental health start-up. So many of our dreams are being reached and worked towards, and all of it has helped us have a little more confidence in our ability to take control of more things in our life, like our mental health.
We were able to take the steps to seek out an official evaluation and obtain proper medication on our own. Getting therapy or talking to an ADHD coach is also on the horizon but, as we now have learned, we need to take things one step at a time or our ADHD brain will get overwhelmed.
I know how scary it must sound to you right now because this seems nothing like who you think you are or can be, but I want to assure you that this is still that same person. The same person who still has many moments of doubt. The same person who still seeks help for a lot of things from his parents.
The only difference is that this version of you is a little more grown up and has realized that sometimes we have to put a little more trust in ourselves to do things that will help us grow and reach our full potential. Topics like mental health and ADHD are not common for our parents, which is completely okay because they can and do support us in other ways.
Our mental health journey is just an opportunity for us to learn to be more independent, and now we know that we are capable of things like this and more. I hope that this letter can serve as a reminder that things will get better for you and will keep getting better for us.
Sometimes it will just mean taking matters into our own hands.