Being a ‘Chill Guy,’ but Having a Stormy Mind

Posted September 2Sep 2

Most people who are reading have never met me in person, and will likely never meet me in person. But on first impression and interacting with me in a professional or casual setting, many people think of me as a “chill guy.”

My voice does not ever give off a ton of emotion, and I speak at a slow pace. I never show getting rattled by a crisis, no matter how severe (despite internally being bothered or rattled). My wife says that on first impression, I sounded like a Californian surfer dude who did not have a care in the world. A lot of people who have interviewed me or have not known me for a long time have described me as “soft spoken” and “quiet”, which is likely what other people will get from first impression too.

As such, most of my awards and accolades as a teacher have revolved around my ability to be calm and keep my composure no matter the circumstances. I was cleaning out my office after wrapping up six years of education. Three years ago, when I left my previous school, I won a “keep your cool — you are one chill teacher!” superlative.

Screenshot from the author

I found this very confounding at first — how I felt and what I thought when a student called me a homophobic slur or when a student put me in a headlock in my first year of teaching was anything but chill.

But I did not lash out at the student in either instance or say anything mean back or react in the way that was expected. It wasn’t just the professional expectations of the job when a student does or says something upsetting to you — it’s also what I would do on the street if someone heckled me on a run: don’t react, keep running, don’t engage.

However, I should have realized the disconnect between how I felt and how I present when students kept asking me, over and over again, “Mr. Fan, why aren’t you more mad?” after a certain adverse event that took place in the classroom that disrupted everyone’s learning. I was sometimes pretty mad and I had no clue what my students were talking about, but it never showed. Always taking the high road and not seeking enough support from my administrators during my first year ended up backfiring — because I showed I was willing to tolerate that kind of behavior and let it slide, I was soon as too chill, too calm, and too nice, a teacher kids could just roll over.

As my career progressed, my emotional side did sometimes show in my intense commitment, willingness to go above and beyond to make other people’s lives easier, and ways I would zealously advocate for my students as a special education teacher. There were times I emailed a teacher once a week asking “hey, how’s John doing in your class?” and was so persistent that I could tell it felt exasperating for the other teacher. I called some parents multiple times a week, especially if the student needed only a few assignments to bring their grade up to passing. I seemed to be able to navigate how to do my very important work and acts of service zealously, but also quietly, letting my actions on behalf of my students speak for themselves rather than being a particularly outspoken person at meetings.

. . .

It’s not that the “chill” characterization of myself is untrue, but it’s incomplete. I do come off at first as quiet, soft-spoken, and chill, but there is a long history behind that and more beneath the surface.

I grew up surrounded by anger and chaos. My father can be a very angry man with a short temper. He is not afraid to express it, in private or in public. He would admit to this himself and say he is just a traditional man, but growing up, I dreaded this anger. I heard it when he was in screaming matches with my mom and often had a freeze response to try to shut out the noise, trying to drown myself in video games as a distraction. My mother would be equally as emotional in her response. Unlike me, I can say both my parents had no problem exposing their emotions and letting the whole world know exactly how angry they are when they are.

Outside of that aversion to anger, in school, I was navigating stereotypes around Asians that revolved around us being robotic and really good at math, so my stress at home, which did make me quite emotional, would never be expressed outside the home. Even in high school and middle school, people thought I did not have a lot of emotion.

But I would get a look of recognition and surprise here and there in my English classes, when my teachers would give me back a piece of writing I submitted. My eighth-grade English teacher told me, “wow, you’re a really deep thinker” after I submitted an assignment, which did stick with me for a while to make me appreciate that there could be a productive use of my emotions and racing mind.

I have long been in therapy about my relationship with anger, and how to present it, and this sometimes resulted in personal goals of (1) not to get angry at all, and (2) not to show anger, ever, if I felt it. The first was impossible, since we’re all human. The second, well, I seem to have been very successful at given my outward manifestations of being incredibly “chill” and “calm”.

However, there is sometimes an equal evil that can result from never showing my anger: passive aggression. It’s not that I will make a snide joke or comment all the time, but I do recognize my tone can start to sound more exasperated and impatient. Even then, there is a disconnect with any time I thought I was short and passive-aggressive in a conversation and then went back to apologize. I will apologize, only for the other person to say, “I have no idea what you’re even talking about.”

This passive aggression or flat out anger can come out a lot more in my writing than in my in-person interactions. I can say exactly what’s on my mind while writing in a way I’ve become more guarded against doing orally. Again, few people who interact with me in person ever think I get visibly angry or upset — about anything. But my writing clearly shows that I get angry and upset, and the closer I get to someone, the more often they will see those emotional reactions, since I feel more comfortable showing them.

There is a very simple reason why I don’t display a lot of emotion, given my role throughout my life and in familial dynamics. In my family, I always had to be the strong one. I had to be the strong one when my parents got into arguments. I had to be the strong one when I saw my brother’s life unravel with unemployment and struggles through school before my eyes due to his mental health issues, and then continued to see him struggle for the next decade. I had to be the strong one academically and professionally when my parents consistently chewed out my brother for not accomplishing enough in life, having to be the sibling no one worried about.

Because of this, I quickly developed an ability to suppress my emotions and not quite realize I was doing it. It took me a while to be able to feel and embrace the pain and angst that had been bottling up for a while, and it was a lot healthier when I was able to express them and be vulnerable. That has come through in writing, and it has come through in close relationships with my closest friends.

As a man, I am proud to say I do talk to my wife and my friends about how I feel, even if it takes me a long time to really name the emotion. But I have to be very intentional and actively try to communicate those emotions. I am selective of the audience — I do sense that there are some situations, especially around older people, where expressing that I feel stressed or overwhelmed isn’t what other people want to hear. But my closest and best friends will see the side of me that zealously stands up for what I believe to be right, that actually can react emotionally to very emotionally trying situations, like every time I talk to my brother about how exasperated he is by difficulties in his own life.

My default outside of those intimate situations has always been to suppress when I can. A lot of the time, because I didn’t want to be angry and was successful in not presenting as an angry person, I usually turned it within. Internalizing anger meant a lot of self-criticism any time I don’t accomplish my goals. It meant a lot of self-criticism any time I failed in my endeavor to be a good person in every situation.

Other people don’t see this, but that internalized anger is a big motivator of what drives me to keep pushing as hard as I do. If I don’t accomplish everything I want on a given day, I often launch into expletive-laden internal dialogues of things even the strictest of coaches wouldn’t say to their athletes. When things go wrong, I always think about ways it could have been my fault (even when it wasn’t) and ways I could have changed the situation. People often don’t recognize how much I wrestle and agonize over the right decision and making the morally correct one, the balancing tests I apply to any tough situation.

Beneath the chill, calm, and unbothered exterior has always been this tremendous agonizing, angst, and self-criticism that most people don’t see. I think that’s why it’s hard for other people to really know I need help and am struggling when I am — I will always need to actively ask because I will always “seem” fine.

. . .

Partially, I present as a calm, chill presence, no matter what’s going on in my head, because I struggled to have that calm presence at home. I never saw emotional regulation modeled in a very healthy way when I was younger, and so I probably tilted too much in the other direction of emotional suppression for a long period of time.

But I learned a lot of things about human nature from the disconnect between how I’m perceived externally versus my internal, racing thoughts and dialogue.

First, you never know what’s going on in someone’s head or what someone is thinking. Generally, you never know most of what other people are going through. I realized that often, the person who was the class clown and funniest person in the room throughout school could be fighting significant demons and mental health challenges, and no one realized it at the time.

As a 28-year-old who is in and around a lot of progressive circles, I often am surprised that a lot of the time, the friends who could be the biggest activists and most outspoken about the biggest political issues of the day on social media could present as the quietest people in real life. Maybe they just don’t talk about those issues around me (partially because I sometimes don’t ask), but part of it, too, is that disconnect between an internal dialogue and exterior presentation.

Beyond politics, I remember in high school when I found out someone in my friend group had been suffering from clinical depression and had been taking medication for years. I hung out with this person regularly, and would have never known unless he said so. These days, people taking medication for their depression tends to be pretty well-accepted and not have the same stigma attached it used to, but 10 years ago, it just made me realize I could spend hours a week around a person and still not really know what they were going through. At the time, I felt bad, and thought “how could I call myself [this person’s] friend and not know they were depressed?”

For this reason, I am often amazed by people’s ability to adapt their emotional presentations to the moment. There is a lot of masking that many people, particularly those who are neurodivergent, go through to “fit in” with society. To an extent, I have mild ADHD and have to do this when I feel distracted, impatient, or when my mind is racing. I sense that this emotional adaptation is also a survival mechanism where we don’t fully show our emotional ranges until the terrain feels safe or acceptable.

I am trying to gain more balance. I sense that I either maintain this chill and calm exterior and give no indication of what I’m thinking or feeling, but on the other end, with my wife, closest friends, or in my writing, to compensate for that lack of emotional presentation. I do sometimes wish I were like some of my friends who seem to be the same person in every setting, who don’t seem to care what others think, and can unapologetically be themselves.

But that’s not me, so for the foreseeable future, I will continue to be a person who, in most situations, maintains a calm, chill, and stoic exterior, followed by a stormy and emotional interior that can manifest in actions, writing, and intimate settings. I will keep trying to navigate this balance, just like so many people do, to make space for a world where there isn’t that internal versus external disconnect so much of the time.

Two weeks ago, a colleague called me a “quiet storm” as a compliment when I was recognized at the end of my six-year career in education for my contributions to my students and the school system. But I wish I weren’t always quiet, and I wish I weren’t always a storm.

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This post was previously published on Ryan Fan’s blog.

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