Kaila Yu on Surviving Shame and Writing Her Truth in “Fetishized”

00:00 This episode is about the long, complicated road to self-worth. Kyla Yu shares how one super-traumatic moment in her early 20s derailed her sense of safety, trust, and identity, and how years later she's learning to honor the version of herself who survived it. It's a story about silence, shame, and ultimately the quiet power of telling the truth. I don't remember. I think from that point I just stepped it down and pretended it never happened. 00:27 Literally, that's what I, I didn't tell a single person about it. I didn't talk to anyone about it. And I don't remember that night. I'm Maciel Huli, and this is the Life Shift. Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. 00:53 Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with Kyla. Hello, Kyla. Hey, how are you? I'm tired. How's that for an answer? Honest. Honesty is good instead of just a generic, I'm good. That's what I've learned. think the older I get, the more I try to show up as a real person instead of maybe what I thought I was supposed to show up as for so long. 01:17 So I don't know if you've always been someone that's been pretty open and honest, or is this something that you are doing now as well in your life? Probably similar. mean, Asians have a little less emotional show of emotion in their household. So I'm definitely not taught to show my emotions or like be authentic with things. I can understand that. Yeah, mine came from, 01:42 The Life Shift podcast really comes from my own personal experience. When I was eight, my mom was killed in an accident. And that was my line in the sand moment. Everything at that moment, my parents were divorced, lived states apart, and I lived with my mom. And all of a sudden, everything about my life was going to change. Like, I had a different parent, I had a different house, I had a different school, a different friends, different accents, because I went from Boston to Georgia. And like, all the things in my life had changed. what happened for me, 02:11 is was like late 80s, early 90s. So people weren't really talking about anything, but they especially weren't talking about how to help like a kid that's kind of grieving. And so I saw all the adults around me and I was like, they want to know that I'm okay. So I took on this like perfectionist tendency because I figured if I'm perfect, 02:35 my dad won't leave, my family won't leave, because my mom left in my mind, you know, like it was like, oh, maybe I did something and it just snowballed from there. And so like, eventually, like I'm in my 30s and I'm still like trying to please people that didn't need me to do that. And so that's what brought me to like kind of mention that, like, I try to just show up as honest now, because for 30 plus years, I was like pretending that everything was fine. And sometimes it's not. And that's OK. 03:05 Yeah, I think as a society, we do kind of pretend everything is fine, right? Or like have this perfect picture where like everything looks beautiful on Instagram, but it's really not. No. And you know what I've learned through this this podcast journey is like when people are telling their stories, like I will celebrate all the exciting moments for them. Right. But where I connect with them the most is typically in the valleys of their lives. 03:33 and not these mountaintops that, you know, like, that's great. I'm so happy for you for winning whatever you've won. But like those hard moments are teaching me more about you as a human and how you kind of move through those moments. so not to say that I only want to hear people's bad stories, but at the same time, I want to see how they how they came out of them and like how it changed them, because it's so interesting to me. Yeah, it's important that you learn something from it instead of just getting my friend. 04:02 said to me like there's some people who bounce and some people who splatter and you want to bounce, right? You want to like learn from it and come back stronger and better. Yeah. I wonder if your friend would agree that you might have to splatter at one point to figure out how to bounce later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You that's very true. You almost like need the tools and that sucks. You know, I think it's kind of very similar to people saying, oh, I had to hit rock bottom. Yeah. And like, once you do it, 04:31 You'll know better the next time. think it's all about, know, successes come from a lot of little trying and making mistakes and maybe we don't say the word failure, but like a lot of mistakes will teach us to get better and better and better. So same thing can be in life. Well, thank you for wanting to share your story in this way. My whole goal is that someone out there hears everyone's story. 04:53 And if they feel alone, maybe by hearing someone's story, it's like, oh, I'm not the only one going through this or there is hope for me or something like that. So I think it's just it's beautiful to be able to talk to a bunch of strangers around the world. They're like most deepest moments. Sometimes it's it's light. Sometimes it's they woke up one day and they decided to quit their job and go chase their. 05:20 dreams, know, and that's great. So we celebrate those as well. But before we get into your specific story, maybe you can tell us who you are in 2025. Like, how do you show up in the world? Like, how do you identify? I'm Kyla. And I guess I'm now an author. I think I've actually had like several life shifts in my life because like I keep I've had several different careers and pivoted due to circumstances that just guided me in a different direction. But yeah, at the moment, I'm an author. 05:48 That's awesome. Well, congratulations. By the time this comes out, your book's been out about a week now. So congratulations to you. Thank you. That's quite a quite a feat for anybody. Yeah, it's scary and exciting and all the things. It's very personal. Yeah. Yeah. As personal as can be. Well, I mean, I think it's I think it's so important, though. I think, you know, it just it gives. 06:12 It gives so many layers to humanity. And I think it's just really important that people are sharing their stories because we can also learn from your story. Well, it's funny when you're writing the book, you're just like putting it out on paper and then you're like, oh, shit, this is actually going to be coming out in a month. Yeah. People I know are going to read this. Yeah. My parents. 06:34 I told them not to read it actually. Well now they're gonna read it because you told them not to. They gotta skip specific chapters. Just give them the redacted version. Well maybe you can paint the picture of your life leading up to this main pivotal moment. Like you said we all have so many life shifts and if we're lucky we have these life shifts that we can pivot from even if they seem really tough in the moment. Sometimes we look back and we're like it kind of worked out in a beautiful way. 07:03 Maybe you can kind of paint the picture of your life leading up to this. And if you need to go back as far as your birthday, you can. Yeah, I'll just touch on growing up. I'm Taiwanese and I grew up in a Taiwanese household. As I mentioned, we didn't talk about emotions. And my dad was such a good dad, like in so many ways he was a provider, but he was just some Asian dads don't. 07:30 interact with their kids that much. It's just cultural. So I didn't get like the adoring dad that I sometimes like my brother is now a father and he's like adoring telling his daughter she's beautiful or she's talented. And I didn't have that growing up. And it turns out I really needed it. And I didn't know that. 07:51 like attention kind of was it not attention or just like love and attention? Love and attention. I mean, I got plenty of attention for my mom, but like, Asian moms are like kind of mean, you know, the tiger mom, they're like, understood, critical. And they're, they're trying to push you to be your best, but they don't do it in a nice way that builds self esteem. I did like, get good grades and go to a good college and all of those things. But I just was very, very 08:21 deeply, deeply insecure and uncomfortable in my skin. And I really looked to men for validation, which is kind of something that tons of women faced in the 2000s anyways, not a unique thing. I think that layered with family dynamics and just like a natural low self-esteem. You just wanted to be loved or you just wanted to be taken care of or? I think we all... 08:49 If you bring it down to the core, all just want to be loved and then it manifests in different ways of searching. Loved and validated, and we just searched for it in different ways. Drugs and alcohol are a big part of my story. I'm 11 years sober, so that was a big part of that. Once I got into college, I didn't even try alcohol really or drugs while in high school, because my household was so strict. But once I got into college, 09:18 I was living in San Diego, my parents were here in Upland in the IE and I was far away and free. I partook. You just let loose? Yeah, they say those who start later get a little bit crazier. I got pretty crazy. you wanted to do all that stuff? when you were growing up and you were in this like strict kind of you need to keep your nose to the grindstone. Were you like wishing you could be someone else or anything like that or? I think. 09:47 I don't know, was like, I didn't really have any specific goals. I kind of felt like, oh, I to be a singer or something. But then for Asians in the 2000s, there was zero, you know, there was like Lucy Liu and that was all. There was no singer, there was nothing. So you didn't really think that was like a valid thing to pursue. So I thought, oh, I'd like to do that, but that's not realistic. Did your mom have like a predetermined? 10:12 Oh, absolutely. Career for you and all those Doctor or lawyer, 401k. Yeah, something with a 401k. And you were like, were you, okay, I'll do that? Or were you like, mm? Yeah, I mean, it was just what everybody my peer group was in. I was in like AP classes and stuff like that. So all my friends were trying to get to the best college. So I was just doing what everyone expected me to do. Everyone just went to college. So of course I was going to go to college. 10:40 I wanted to go to UCLA, but I didn't get in because I got kind of bad in high school where we just started ditching classes, sneaking out at night. But it's very strange that it wasn't offered alcohol or drugs in retrospect. What were you doing? Well, I feel like the Asians, the bad Asians weren't that bad. We were just like a little bit bad, like just sneaking out at night bad, but not doing drugs and stuff. Just testing the limits. Yeah. Yeah. Like for us, that was really bad. So we thought we were bad. 11:10 Well, it would have been if you got caught, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Either way. But college seems like it's like an opera. Is it a land of opportunities for you? Do you just like? Well. How I got led into like drugs, I never really thought about doing them at all. It just like didn't cross my mind. I think I was just in this bubble of people who weren't doing that kind of thing and I didn't think about it. But then I got a boyfriend who. 11:40 I really fell in love with, it was like my first real boyfriend, I would say. And he did a lot of drugs. So he did a lot of weed specifically, which is, I guess, considered a minor drug now. He would do it morning to night. And of course, he would start to like push the bong towards me. And eventually I tried it and I absolutely hated it. Like I hate I still hate weed to this day. It makes me paranoid. It makes me terrified. 12:09 and I do not get any of the pleasurable feelings everybody else feels with it. But once you've tried that, it just makes you like more open to trying things. And that was during the time of like when rave culture was hitting California or probably all of the states. Eventually we went to a rave and I remember taking that first ecstasy. 12:35 And I was like, where has this been my whole life? Like this is the most, it feels like a spiritual experience, like a kind of joy that I had never felt. And the whole night, and this happens with a lot of people who try E for the first time, I think, I was just thanking my boyfriend. Like, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for giving this to me. And yeah, that was just the way, and I just like started doing that all the time. 13:05 very recreational for you? Like something where... Yeah, you know, at first it starts off as weekends or whatever, but it starts to bleed into more eventually. Does it start affecting your life? Like, I mean, I think some people are very functional on stuff like that, but then... E's very functional, because E's different from, say, cocaine, where you can do that all day long. Like, if you take a ecstasy, that's probably you for 20... Like, you can't take another one. 13:32 two hours later, it's probably just not gonna really hit. I would say E of all the drugs I've tried is like not as damaging as say heroin or coke, know? Cocaine was a big part of my life at one point and that drug makes you eventually kind of turn evil. It just makes you like kind of turn into a person with not a lot of ethics eventually, but E doesn't do that. 14:01 Did you find yourself looking for the next thing that would give you a different feeling? And that's why you kind of went down the road or it was just there and your life just was kind of around the drug. So why not kind of move into it? Because I feel like if you just did it once, whatever. Well, I was obsessed with the E feeling. So I wanted to do that all the time. And it is like better. just a weekend thing because you want that. If you're going to do it, you want that. 14:28 full high, but if you like did it today and then did it the next day, it wouldn't be as good. So you're better to kind of wait in my opinion. But yeah, I loved it. Just to be honest. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that a lot of former would you consider yourself that you were addicted to drugs or drugs? Okay. So I would say a lot of former addicts of some sort. There are things they miss about those lives. That's super honest and real. I think we can't be like, Oh, no. 14:58 I'll never do it again. You know, like, there were parts of your life you probably really enjoyed while doing that. Yeah, I mean, it always starts off good with the drugs and then not so good at later. What what what started happening? Like, how did this progress? It seems like you went from which I think a lot of people could relate to this conservative type, like strict upbringing to this opportunity to do whatever the hell you wanted. 15:22 and sometimes make good decisions and maybe sometimes make not good decisions like all college people do, but maybe yours were a little extreme on some ends. So I think that's all relatable. I think a lot of people have probably experienced that, but I'm assuming some parts of that didn't go well for you. Yeah, so I was in college just like doing my thing. And as I mentioned, there's not a lot of role models for Asian-Americans at that time. 15:51 And when I was in high school, I discovered this Asian model. Her name was Sung Hee Lee and all the guys were in love with her. There was just one model. That's how few we had. And she was a Playboy model on all the covers of the magazines and everything. So I was like, oh my God, I want to be like her. So that's what I really wanted to do. And then obviously I couldn't pursue that while I was living under my parents' roof. But once I got into San Diego, 16:22 I thought, oh, well, maybe I'll try to poke around and see if I can pursue this. Back then, we just started having the internet. I feel like I had a desktop computer and it was still the black screen where there's a cursor. It's pre-internet, basically. So there wasn't a lot of resources to find out how to do things as we have today, everything at your fingertips. 16:51 But I started looking just in like San Diego's LA Weekly and like the college newspaper and the college newspaper had ads like, oh, looking for models, test shoots, blah, blah, blah. So I would go out and like just go to these random, so sketchy photo shoots where it'd be like some guy at a house. 17:17 But like I hadn't ever experienced anything bad. So to me it was like, oh, I guess this is how it works. And yeah, I did like one of my earliest shoots was some guy at his house, but there was like other models there coming in and out. So it just seemed fine. A little safer if we to find it as such. Yeah. Maybe not. We wouldn't think of it now as safe, but yeah, back then. Yeah. We were a little naive to make a lot of things. Yeah. 17:47 Trusting, trusting. mean, plus you came from this more sheltered background too. So like, it's a little easier to understand. Just a question of like wanting to be like that model. Did you want to do what she did or was it more the drive that you knew all these guys were like looking at her? And do you know which one like kind of drew you to that or was it both? Both, but also like in high school, I was 18:15 never asked to like homecoming and prom. I ended up going because my friend just set me up with her friends from other schools, but they didn't ask me. You know what I mean? Like nobody asked me to do these things. I didn't have a boyfriend in high school. I think in like junior high, I had a big crush on a guy and somehow he found out and he was like, oh, that dog is in love with me. Like those kinds of things happening. the worst. Yeah, kids are crazy. 18:44 Yeah. And then somehow those crazy, evil kids get in our heads. And then we make decisions even as adults because of those like 10 year old conversations that we had. That's insane. We're so moldable at that time. We are. And then we hold on to things where maybe logically we're like, why did we hold on to that? But it's like so deep seated and it just stays there. And then it just guides us whether we're intentionally doing it or not. That sounds like 19:12 some of those things led you to wanting to do this, but also wanting to do this for other reasons, maybe some validation or some love in some way. Yeah, it was definitely like a bottomless hole of wanting love. I think that's very relatable. Really wanting it from a man or like men or like I wanted to be like her and have all the guys be like, oh my God, I'm in love with her. You know, nobody said that about me. So, yeah. Yeah. So you were going around to 19:42 what you would call now pretty sketchy. Did you feel at the time they were kind of sketchy or you were like, man? Yeah, I think when I went to those first couple of houses, I didn't think anything of it. I went to this one guy's house. He was like an amateur photographer, this and that, but he had some calendars and stuff, cheap looking, but still printed, still published in some way. And it wasn't like nowadays where you can just go to 20:11 FedEx or Kinko's and just print something like, he had to go, I don't know. To an actual printer of some sort. Yeah. Yeah. So it seemed a little bit official and we did the shoot and it was totally fine and everything. He then said, oh, I'm working on these other things. So he showed me like hardcore pornography and I was like, no, I would never do this. And then I left. Yeah. 20:41 It was just not some, mean, some he Lee, my, um, my idol did not do hardcore porn. And I think within the industry at that time, there's definitely a hierarchy. Like the playboy models, then the penthouse models, and then hardcore is like, Ooh, that's like really serious. Yeah. So that's definitely something I didn't want to pursue, but then I kept going out to these things and was fine. And. 21:11 Eventually, I ended up going to another guy's house except this time it was an apartment. And that one I knew when I stepped in that things were weird. 21:27 Oh shit. I don't know if I've ever spoken about it out loud. So I don't remember a lot of what happened when I was like, I straight up don't remember a lot of what happened. I just remember I went there to do that test shoot like typical. And then I was asked to do things that were more pornographic. And 21:53 I've spent so much time writing about it, analyzing. I wrote about this in the book, so I've like broken it down and everything. I remember flashes of like, just feeling uncomfortable or fearful or whatever. But I went back and watched that video again, and you can see, which was, yeah, its own thing. Cause I had to see, because what ended up happening is that the video was published online. Well, 22:22 It went to DVD first, because that's what we had back then. And it ended up getting millions of views on Pornhub or whatever those sites are. So I guess I'm telling you this because I wanted to watch it to know what people saw. Because that moment in time for you was a scary... You were doing something that maybe you didn't necessarily want to do. I know I absolutely... 22:51 Well, I forgot to mention something else. I had a boyfriend at the time, and I think we had been together about six months, and I hadn't had sex with him because I was still a virgin. So these were my first sexual experiences. So I absolutely did not want it to be with this disgusting, creepy guy. Like, there's no way that's what I wanted, you know? And then, but you're in this moment in which you feel really vulnerable and it's hard to... 23:21 choose to leave that moment because I think we've all been in situations where we kind of just like keep taking the next step, whether we really want to or not. Is that kind of what happened? You were just like, what's the quickest way to get out of here? And it's probably by moving through the motions. That's a good question. I've asked myself, like, what the fuck? Like, why didn't you like get out of there? You know, when you're in those moments, it's 23:51 there's no telling what your brain's gonna do. Yeah, so in looking back, I've researched this to find out what happened and there's like the fight, flight, and there's a fawn, which is lesser known where you just become compliant and just do whatever you need to do. And then this brings me back to, I wrote this book about the fetishization of Asian women. Part of that fetishization is that men 24:21 the men who fetishize Asian women like them because they're submissive and really compliant and basically submissive. And what I kind of broke apart for me in the book is that like, I'm not this way now. Like I'm actually really confident and aggressive or whatever. But when I was growing up, I was a little bit like submissive because my parents were like, you do this, don't talk back. So I just like listen to authority. That's what I was taught to do. 24:51 This guy was twice my age. I was alone. I'm tiny. Back then I was like 15 pounds lighter and he's twice my size. I mean, I don't think that that I think that's a totally I don't know. I feel like a situation like that. I think there's a lot of people maybe not the same exact situation or setup, but have been in these moments in which maybe looking back, they're like, why? 25:19 Why did I do those things? But in those moments, I think it's interesting that you brought up the fawn thing. I think sometimes that's a safety thing. That's also maybe a thing where we're conditioned that we don't want people to not like us or not or be mad at us or any of those pieces. And so I can see as hard as that moment must have been for you, why you would just kind of go through the motions and so you could get out of there. 25:48 let it be over with. And then I feel like it did really switch in one of those modes because of me not remembering anything because that's a form. You must have. Yeah. Again, I wrote an article on this. So I really analyzed what happened here. And I spoke to an expert and they were talking about dissociation where you just really just a trauma event. Yeah, just separate. So no, mean, it's a safety thing. In my opinion, it's a safety thing. But then I can't imagine like, when you leave when you leave that 26:18 Are you still dissociated? you like how does leaving that moment look like for you? remember leaving. I don't remember if I talked to my boyfriend that night, which I'm sure I did. I didn't tell him what happened. there like a shame attached? What was the emotions you were feeling about that when she started thinking about it? I don't remember. I think from that point, I just stepped it down and pretend it never happened. 26:47 Literally, that's what I didn't tell a single person about it. I didn't talk to anyone about it. And I don't remember that night. Yeah. That's mean, common as well. I would imagine that in trauma, we push down and we choose to pretend it didn't happen. And then eventually it bubbles back up. But you also had a situation in which it's not just bubbling up for you, right? Because now it becomes. 27:14 public of some sort, which is a whole other piece. And then it gets more public because then it gets on the like, how do you navigate those worlds while still pushing things down and like trying to remain a human? So I think that happened and then nothing happened for a year. I it was good to like, And then I was doing a lot of drugs. So it's easy to kind of like, I think you're doing more drugs because do you think? Probably. Yeah. 27:44 because that was definitely a time where we were just going. But also I would say my friends were going to a ton of raves. So it's easy to just like, oh, everybody's doing this. But it's also easy, right, to dissociate. doesn't, it allows you to push it down even further. Yes, because I think on ecstasy specifically, which I was doing at the time, you just feel such joy and happiness and like that you have no issues. So yeah, I literally. You're like, I just need to stay in this. 28:13 Yeah, yeah, as long as possible. But it's not possible. Yeah. How do you find out that you're on DVD? Yeah, that was just one day when so I think okay, this is a kind of weird thing that also happened. Well, not weird. My grades totally like didn't do good. Yeah, like they went down to like a one point, you know, some crazy low GPA. And I 28:44 somehow convinced my mom that I needed to drop out of school because like I don't even remember what I told her and I don't can't believe she agreed to it because You know, she's paying she was paying for this college education and I think I had convinced her like it's not going well here. I'm gonna drop out and Go to a junior college and try to go to UCLA which is like the college I always wanted to go to and 29:13 I dropped out of school then and that was the best thing that happened because otherwise I would have been walking on campus when, yeah, which I can't even. hindsight, it's a great thing that you Yeah, yeah. But it was entirely, wasn't a thought in my mind at all because I still had forgotten this video. Like somehow I forgot that this was filmed for publication. Like I don't understand how. 29:42 You block. didn't know it was coming. You know, this was like, obviously what's coming, but it completely it just as I'm talking about, it shows how much it was repressed because I didn't even consider that factor plan for it or yeah, it's such a human experience though. I mean, it's just the, the actual experience that you had, but like that, the feelings that we all have, like it's so universal of like when something like this happens and then there's this period of time where it's gone. So you're like, 30:11 Yeah, it doesn't exist. Like, yay, I can like maybe move forward. And then that's like, surprise. Yeah. Remember this? Did was he like communicate? Like, was he like, it's out? No, he had contacted me a week later to see if I wanted to shoot more. And obviously, I remember that distinctly, I didn't call him back or ever speak to him again, actually. But the way I found out is that 30:39 I had dropped out, so I was living with my boyfriend in Chino Hills at our friend's house. And we were doing our raves every weekend. And my best friend from college called me. And he was just like, I saw this video. And he was really torn up about it. And he was like, is that you? And then I knew at that moment that that's the only thing they could be talking about. 31:08 Yeah, so he basically went on to tell me that one of my friends, one of my guy friends, one of my boyfriend's guy friends, because these are all our friends, rented the video that they found at a DVD store randomly and watched it together with like eight of them. my friend... they knew it was you or just because it was a random I didn't get it specifically, but I'm assuming... 31:36 Yeah, eight guys don't usually gather too. And I'm sorry, I laugh at like really dark things, think, as a coping mechanism. Yeah, basically, he told me that they all watched together and then he ran out of the room and threw up. And then he started to go after me. He was like, I can't believe you did this while you knew me or whatever. And somehow we got into an exchange and he didn't want to be my friend anymore based off this. 32:04 Which, looking back, is absurd. It's probably not about you either. Yeah, but it's... I still don't get what was going through his mind. Yeah. There's probably some other story behind that that we don't even need to know, because it doesn't matter. Yeah, I just basically never spoke to him again. That was my best friend. But you had found out, I mean, by this and knowing that it was like a DVD viewing. This was like your first knowing of that? This was it, yeah. 32:32 Yeah, I had totally forgotten about it at this point. what does that feel like? It's just like probably absolute terror because it was like, oh, everyone's going to know about this actually. But this was still kind of before the internet. Like the internet was happening, but like not everything in the world was getting uploaded on the internet. So I didn't really think about that. But I was like, it's in stores, so all the guys can find it. 33:02 my roommate came home and I told her what was happening. And then from then on, I kind of lied about it. I was like, he had a knife. I was scared because I was like, and I write about this like, I knew that I did not want to do that. And that was an assault, like not a physical assault, but assault can also be something that's like coercion. And I knew that's what it was. And I knew nobody would get it. 33:32 Unless you added some details. Now everyone gets it. Of course. who hears the story can get like, that's unacceptable. But like back then in the 2000s, we definitely didn't have any kind of... Yeah, we just weren't talking about it as much. Yeah. think, you know, and it makes sense that you had to add some flair to that to probably tamp down some of the... 34:00 Were you feeling like shame? Were you feeling all Everything, like shame and disgust and embarrassment and shock. Fear. Fear. Were you afraid that other people you knew were going to see this? Like family or I mean. Absolutely. Not that your mom would come across it, but someone she knows might. And I can imagine what that looks like. Does that put you into? 34:26 a space that is unhealthy, like a depression, does that put you into any of those things or do you just kind of keep moving through the world? I just keep doing a lot of drugs. Okay. Yeah. And there is depression in there. up a lot of stuff. Yeah. But the depression just feels like, I'm coming off E, of course I'm feeling down, you know, for an entire week. And then that stretches out into weeks and weeks. Yeah. But you're pushing this down. I mean, this is 34:54 We're talking at least a year now, right? That you've been pushing this down and now it's out in the world So let's push it down some more But we have more to push down with it because now we have this extra layer of like other people can see it You don't even think that someday we're gonna have high-speed internet that could Complicate things even more which in my mind I think at some point you have to hit this space where you have to process it Did you like did you? 35:23 Did you find a place in your life where you sat down with that moment, even though you can't remember some of the specifics, where you were just like, almost give grace to yourself and like, I don't know. I don't think I processed it until 10 years later, where I was like, getting some sobriety or I guess I went to a therapist in the next sometime years later, but I was really good at compartmentalizing and- Did you continue down the road of like trying to- 35:51 do modeling and stuff after that? did you? Yeah, I had been trying it at that time. Like I stopped for a while. But then after dropping out of college and moving up to Chino, I still had that longing. So yeah, I started to reach out to more legitimate places. Like I reached out to my idol because she was looking for models. And then that really opened the door for legitimate photographers. And I started to like 36:21 get my foot in. So after I find out about the existence of the video, I think obviously it was really traumatic for a month. told my boyfriend about it with the same lie that he had like forced me physically. He went out on his motorcycle that night, like he drove away. After hearing that, I thought we were done, but he ended up crashing and totaling his bike, but he wasn't hurt. 36:49 I just ended up taking care of him and then we never talked about it again. Like we'll just never talked about it again. That's a, that's a man of the early two thousands processing his feelings. Yeah. But it is impressive that he stayed with me, I would say without us talking about anything, you know? Do you think if you hadn't told him the additional elements that you, you believe to have added, do you think he would have stayed? I don't know. 37:20 I don't know. curious about the human psyche. Yeah. Because I think by adding that, it's like, OK, well, she had no choice, which you really didn't, right? Like you were coerced into this tragic event. But at the same time, like if his first reaction was to jump on a motorcycle and go as fast as he can and then crash it into something. Yeah. Very curious. We never talked about it, so I have no idea. Like there was a lot of not talking about things. 37:50 was able to forget about it again. You're really good at that. really skilled at that actually. And then nobody really brought it up to me again until I started to... I got published on my idols website and then started modeling for Playboy and started to gain a little bit of online popularity. Now there are more sites and stuff by now. Still very... 38:19 GeoCities era. And then the video comes up again, obviously. By now, I had it in my mind. Like, I forgot about it, I knew people in the industry can find this, whether it's on the internet or DVDs. So it was always like I felt like damaged goods, frankly. Even though you were getting some notoriety in a space that you wanted to be in. Yeah. But like Playboy doesn't work with girls who do hardcore. And I didn't have sex like sex in the video and do 38:49 anything majorly hardcore, but I did, I was coerced into things. Yeah, yeah. And things that you feel tainted the, the, what Playboy would have wanted of you if they found out. Yeah. And I want to say like, he took away those things like, that I could have experienced with a man for the first time. And there's some things I don't enjoy because that was my first experience with like, 39:18 someone disgusting, actually. And the fact that you've had to suppress it for so long, too, it adds a whole other layer to the thing because you've undeserved shame of it for a period of time. It makes everything like compound and worse. my opinion, it seems like it would just make like that's the last thing I want to do. People because I've held the shame for so long that I had to do it in the first place. It's like 39:47 no, I don't want to I don't want to feel like that again, because you probably it's at some points felt empty. Absolutely. Yeah. Like like like a shell of a person kind of walking through life. I get it. So at this point, you're you're finding success in the way that maybe it looks like success is the path that you're on. But now Internet's getting bigger. So now people know who you are. So I feel like it's natural people are going to go down rabbit holes. 40:16 Yeah. And find something. So obviously, eventually it gets uploaded by somebody. And by now, I'm like, have my own website and some people online know my name, and I'm not named my name in the video. And then there was like a Yahoo group of my followers or whatever. And then it got uploaded to the group and they were like, is this Kyla? And then it just exploded after that. 40:44 Yeah, there's Pamela Anderson said. Because back then we were like, you know how hard we were on Pamela Anderson. That ruined her career, actually. The sex tape that was stolen from her house and put online. she was like, every time somebody viewed that, it feels like a rape. Yeah. Which is a violation. Very just such a well- 41:15 That's how you felt? Yeah. Every time. And then when you, are you compelled to see how many people are viewing it? Are you compelled to try to get it taken down? Like how, how do you react in this moment or do you stuff it down more? Because either way could work, I think. I think what happened was like, I had a manager at the time and he tried to 41:44 Well, he had someone managing the Yahoo group, so I did not go in there and read comments anymore because they were scathing and terrible. And he somehow found out this guy's contact information because, I don't know, he found his contact information. called him and he was like, let's try to buy the tape or something. So he talked to this guy. Well, I wasn't on the call, so I don't remember it. But what was relayed to me was that 42:14 He said, like, he offered to buy the tip and the guy said, like, I'm not selling it no matter what she's blowing up right now. And like, I'm going to make a lot of money off this. And then my manager was like, don't you care that you're like destroying this, like young woman's life? And he was like, I don't care. And then he was like, but you like coerced her into doing this. Like you forced her. And he was like, I have a video that doesn't 42:43 that shows it not looking that way, which isn't even true because when I watched the video, I look obviously distressed at some points, like obviously distressed, which is like, I was like, why did you leave that in there? But it's kind of like some men like that. So. Yeah. I mean, there's probably all sorts of, we could go down a rabbit hole on what that, I don't even want to call me human being did, you know, like, 43:13 all the decisions that came after, that probably came before. I mean, you probably weren't the first woman. Oh, no. This was a video. This is how you know. OK, this is how you know a woman, because there was this big case, famous, not famous, but very publicized case. And it's crazy that San Diego was kind of a hotbed of like people trying to. 43:41 go after college coeds specifically to do hardcore. But there was this website called Girls Do Porn, which was very famous, or not famous, but very popular. And 50 women won a lawsuit against the guy who's now on the run from the FBI for doing similar things. And it was a thing that was happening at the time. The tape that I was on had five or six other women. 44:10 And it was a series of many. And this was like my first experience with the Asian fetish because I had just hung around Asians, really. This guy was white and I forgot the title of the video, but it was Asian something and all the girls were Asian. And I later went because I later years later ended up talking to the FBI when they were doing the case on this other thing. 44:40 And they told me by that time that my statute of limitations passed for me. But I was like, maybe I can find the other girls. Cause I'm not the only one who went through this. Like guaranteed this is, he knew what he was doing and it wasn't like, yeah. And I knew there were at least 30 girls, at least that had gone through this. Some of them were legitimately just porn stars. So obviously they were okay with this, but there were so many girls that 45:10 you saw once and never again. And you know that's just like not some girl who was trying to get into pornography. But yeah, it's impossible to, there's no way, there's no way to find, I mean, I guess I could post their photo, but like, why would you want to do that? But I'm hoping like when I write the book, like maybe some of them will read it and be like, oh, I went through this and reach out to me. Cause I don't know how to reach out to them. But like with that, I think there could be a class action civil suit. Cause yeah, the statute. 45:39 of limitation has passed for anything criminal, but I'm not a legal expert, but I think- Me neither. Yeah. I think there would be beauty though, if you did hear from some of these women to just share how you guys move through life afterwards and to realize probably you did a lot of the same things and what that could bring is just the grace that you may have found for yourself already, but maybe they haven't and just having these conversations of community of people that understand. 46:09 what you went through because as much as we can empathize with the emotions that you had and the things that you had without having that exact experience, we can't completely understand and knowing those. I mean, if you could talk to those women, you'd be like, I can't imagine what that would feel like for some of them or for yourself. That would be beautiful. Yeah, I would. I hope I hope I hear from I hope you do too, because, you know, what is the time period between like when 46:38 it was on the internet and kind of blowing up on the internet. now, like, what is that time period? that 10 years? More than 10? So I'm 46. So that was like a really long time ago. How long did it take for you to start living and owning and not pushing things down and being this version of you? So my legal name is Elaine. 47:05 And I literally have the separation of Kyla Yu, my online personality, and Elaine. So I've always been like, that happened to Elaine. There's like a very still disassociation from it where I can feel like, oh, that's like something imaginary that happened to Elaine. And I think my whole life and a lot of my therapy has been like trying to integrate those two. I mean, it hasn't fully happened, but 47:34 Yeah, there's definitely that's an easier way to deal with it. You know, it's a step by step thing. It's not like something that we can just go, bam, I'm done. I my mom died when I was eight. It took me like 20 plus years to like, just seek out therapy and then realize like all the shit that I did to myself because of not being ready to like heal from it. And like, so sometimes it just it just takes a while. I mean, it was like early 30s. 48:03 when I finally found the right therapist and they said the one sentence that I needed to hear 20 years before that. And they were like, you realize that every decision that you've made since you were eight was out of fear that someone else was gonna leave you or that someone was gonna be disappointed. And it was like one of those moments where like the clouds part like, and you're just like, I wasted all this time. Not if I had known that when I was 10, you know, like maybe I could have done something different, but like, I feel like. 48:31 for you too, not to say that this moment is something that you should look back on with any kind of like silver lining or anything, but all the things that came because of it and now what you're going to be able to do by putting your story into the world and maybe someone else out there went through this something and never told anyone and now they read your book and they're like, I'm not weird. I'm not. There's nothing to be ashamed of because it was a decision. 48:58 that I made to go there and then everything got out of my control and you know, life unfolds in the most mysterious of ways. Yeah, I feel like women just need to know like assault is not some guy coming at you with a knife and grabbing you all the time. Yes, that is what it is sometimes. But mostly, assault is a more subtle. Yeah, power differentials. It can be so subtle where you're just like the frog in the pot and you don't 49:27 really know what's happening until you're getting boiled, you know? Yeah. And for you too, it feels like you, were always kind of seeking the validation of others. And so you didn't want to also make someone mad or, or disappoint someone by saying, no, not saying that like, that's what you did, but like, could understand why we fall into these situations and then they happen. Yeah. You know, 49:53 But then we have to like find, and I hope you do find the integration of these two personas that you have more so because I don't think there's any shame or anything that you should be holding on to. And I hope you're not holding on to a lot of that because this was an experience that was a little bit out of your control and the things that unfolded after you could not have predicted happening, you know? And so I hope you're finding that grace for yourself because 50:23 the way I see it from an outsider that doesn't know you. I see it as something totally external and not something that I hope you hold on forever because I don't think it's worth it. I feel like I'm not holding onto it anymore. Like I feel like I processed it and like, but then I'm like working with my therapist and I'm like, there's still more trauma work to be done. I've done years of it and there's still more. who knows? I it's always unfolding. 50:51 I think at some point, maybe at some point you're going to remember that event and that's going to be really hard. Yeah. You know, but but maybe that'll be a new breakthrough. Maybe that's going to be another life shift for you. And I think the more we're open to realizing that we're full humans and we are allowed to feel all the things, even if it's mad, shame, happy, you know, like all the things are allowed to us. And it took me forever to figure that out for myself that like it's OK if I'm sad. 51:20 It's OK if I cry, even though I'm a guy, I'm allowed to cry. You know, like there's certain things that come with whatever we've assumed from the environment around us that like kind of really taint a lot of things in not a good way. What if what if you could this version of you 2025 sharing your story published book into the world telling your story? If you could talk to that version of you walking out of that apartment that day, is there anything that you would want to say to her? 51:51 And I've been doing this in my trauma work, but I would just give her a big hug and just tell her, love you. Like you're adored and you're perfect just the way you are. Yeah. And so I say this every time too, because I ask this question of people and that is probably the most common answer to someone that has experienced a life shift that was brought on by something else, by someone else. 52:19 because we feel so alone in those moments. We feel like we're unlovable, like nothing's going to be better. Nobody will ever understand. So I can't tell anyone about how I'm feeling right now. And everyone goes back and they're like, I don't think there's anything I could say. Like I would give them a hug. I would tell them that they're loved because they were and they always will be. So I'm glad that you said that and kind of just reinforces the human experience. 52:46 Like no matter what we experience, like we think about those moments of those versions of us and like want to give grace to them and some love to them. So thank you for saying that and confirming that the human experience is very similar. We're a lot, we have a lot more in common than we do different from each other, except for that jerk who did that to you. But yeah, what he, what he, what he deserves at some point. I hope I believe that. Yeah, I believe that everything and it won't be of your doing. can. 53:16 Let that go, you know, carry on with with your beautiful life and what you're creating for yourself. I think it's so important. If people want to like learn more about the details of your story, read your book, learn more about you, connect with you, maybe someone that was in that video is listening to this and wants to reach out to you. Like what's the if you've had experience similar and you weren't in that specific video, please reach out. How can they find you? What's the best way? 53:43 So it's just my name on all platforms, Kyla Yu, and my book is coming out in August, or I guess it's out now, and you can find it at any bookstore. And the title? Oh, Fetishized, yeah. Perfect. Well, we'll put the links in the episode description so people can easily click on your website, your social media handles. I really do encourage anyone that's listening that anything that Kyla said that maybe resonated with you, and it might not be the specific moments, it might just be a feeling that you said or whatever. 54:13 reach out to her and bug her and tell her that something that she said affected you in a particular way. I think that's how we bring each other closer. I think that's how we kind of create a better humanity out here by sharing our stories and just being vulnerable with each other. I didn't realize that until like in my 40s, essentially, where it's just like now is the time to connect more with each other. So I really encourage anyone listening to reach out to you. I hope you don't mind that I told them to do that. No, not at all. 54:41 Well, I appreciate you. Thank you for going on this journey with me, not knowing where we were going to go with your questions and just being open to it. think it's really valuable to me. And I say that this show is like this healing journey that I didn't know I still needed. So thank you for being part of my healing journey. Thank you for helping me heal. Well, so we'll see if that happens. Thank you for that. And I'm to say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks again. 55:20 For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com