Month: June 2020

10mg

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I am back in Rome for a week. My mom had an urgent surgery due to a hernia that was pushing against the root of the nerve (L4 level), and caused her tremendous pain plus was preventing electric impulse from flowing in her left leg. Bref, as we say in French, I had to rush down to Italy from Lausanne, which was not easy, since COvid measures are still not totally relaxed between countries, and I had to start a sort of pilgrimage to the holy city, which entailed taking the train from Zurich to Chiasso, walk to the Italian border with a big luggage, the laptop bag and a plant for my mom, catch a bus to Como station, and jump on a train hoping it would lead me to Milano Centrale. Almost, it took me to Porta Garibaldi, a few metro stations from my destination. I slept in Milan at an Airbnb, and at 6am the next morning I took the Frecciarossa train to Rome. It took me almost 24h to get there.

A few days earlier I had asked my psychiatrist to reduce Fluoxetin. As I said in another post, the self isolation time has helped me work on myself, and do mental exercises that have helped me get stronger, and feel that my core happiness that I am regaining is due more and more to me and not to the medicament. He agreed to reduce from 20mg to 10mg. Big step for me. I was worried about the consequences, and the effects or side effects it would have on me. I am still very careful, and am being vigilant to the mood shifts I may have. I started 10mg on 5 June, and today is 15 June. Already ten days.

I can’t tell what exactly is the effect of the reduction, but I can certainly tell that my stomach is adjusting to the new intake. I was taking another brand of Fluoxetin, which was in gel capsules (with powder inside), and I had to change it to another brand (solid tablets) because I need to cut the tablet in two (there is no 10mg pill, at least in CH). I can tell that my stomach has been burning during the day, and I am sure it is because of this change. So, that is clear.

What is less clear is whether the reduction is making me more angry, or whether it is my hormonal state. It so happens that I started the reduction just as I was about to have my period. I take Estrogens and Progesterone regularly because in the past years I had started having less and less menstruation (at about 42), as if I were in pre-menopause. I know now that this pre or peri-menopause is due to the stress my mind and soul found themselves in, a slow process towards depression that has blocked my body functions. Just like a high level sportswoman who has no more menstruation because of the strain the training has on her body.

In the past 4-5 days I have found myself angrier, and more “delicate”. I love this word, delicate, Roy from “The IT Crowd” very cutely says it at the episode called “Aunt Irma”. You have to watch this : Series 1 Episode 6 . Hilarious. So, yes, I think I am sensitive because of my period, but my period started and didn’t continue at this round, so that’s another story. I am guessing that I have been hormonally challenged, and on top of that work has been exciting yet stressful, a lot to think about and to follow up on; couple that with the long journey to Rome and the worry that the surgeon might injure my mom even more, I was ready to kill somebody 3 days ago! I didn’t literally kill, but I was very vocal with my words, and found myself being angry at every little thing that was happening to me, all the more when the little thing was against my self. Example: a colleague who didn’t want to help me at work, or the train manager who didn’t want me to get on the train; the lady at the Airbnb who was not talkative and was rather dry (she did her job though, handed me the keys to the room and showed me the kitchen), but I wanted her to be more lovely, just like I am with my guests at home.

Bref…. (long story short), here I am in Rome, I finally made it. My mom had her surgery, she is fine and now I will work from Rome remotely, nursing my mother and giving my father a break. They are getting old. I still don’t know whether my mood swing towards anger had to do with the 10mg, or with my period. Maybe a bit of both? I will monitor the situation and will revert asap.

More soon.

OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]

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For sake of defition, here is a meaning of OCD that I have found on the internet:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental illness that causes repeated unwanted thoughts or sensations (obsessions) or the urge to do something over and over again (compulsions). Some people can have both obsessions and compulsions.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/obsessive-compulsive-disorder#1

I think that each of us has some OCDs. I wouldn’t talk about mental illness, for the OCD I am referring, but I’d say they are little personal compulsions and obsessions that we feel the need to execute, otherwise we can’t proceed with the rest of the day. If you think of my OCD, I can find many. And now that I an working on knowing myself consciously, to strengthen my inner core (not the muscles…), I feel that OCDs are part of the things that distract me from being a better me.

WebMD writes: “OCD isn’t about habits like biting your nails or thinking negative thoughts. An obsessive thought might be that certain numbers or colors are “good” or “bad.” A compulsive habit might be to wash your hands seven times after touching something that could be dirty. Although you may not want to think or do these things, you feel powerless to stop.” (source link).

I definitely can live without washing my hands seven times an hour, an excessive cleaning of the house, repeatedly going up and down the stairs, or rearranging objects to ensure a specific symmetry. If you search for common OCD behaviours you’ll be surprised. But: I do have some impelling push for certain things that comes from within inside, sometime during my regular week. For example when I am looking for a specific tab in my browser (I usually leave 10-15 tabs open for work), I can’t but look at all other tabs and close them or act on them, before I finally get to my tab. Sometimes I feel the urge to clean the room where I am working before I can work; I start with the PC table, and then continue with other surfaces (the kitchen is just behind me, with a long long metal counter that asks me to clean it well); if I don’t stop, I can continue with an OCD propulsion towards cleaning up the whole apartment, getting the vacuum cleaner, the calc remover for the bathroom appliances, the dishwashing soap for the two glasses left in the sink from the morning breakfast, etc. This behaviour has been more evident to me since isolation time due to COvid. Being at home most of the week, I end up being a lot in company of furniture, sinks, WCs and showers, and have started cleaning more than usual.

I remember my sister in law had an OCD that would drive my brother crazy sometimes: after dinner she had to clean the kitchen spotlessly, and she would not relax until she did; this involved mopping the floor with detergent and all. Like deep deep cleaning, not just a wet cloth over the dinner table and off you go.

I am not too interested in why we have these compulsive behaviors, I find them amusing and irritating, I find them as an organic part of who we are as human beings. I haven’t met a person who has no OCD, small or light that it might be. In my case, some of my OCDs are distracting and I want to sever them from my everyday life.

So, part of my conscious “getting better on my own” process involves forcing myself to catch these OCDs and correct them. Not easy, but if you want to try you’ll realise how liberating it is. I give you an example: instead of cleaning all the surfaces of the apartment at once, I force myself to clean only one or maximum two, and stop. I put the cloth back to the closet and resume my work on the laptop. Easy? Hell no. But when I have done it, I feel satisfied, as if I had won a lottery! Another example: I follow my train of thoughts in an extreme way, a little bit like in James Joyce’s “Ulysses“. This is the most distracting of my OCDs, as I start off with one aim, say going to the bedroom to pickup my phone, and on the way I find an empty glass that I feel the need to put in the sink, so I do, and while doing that I am reminded by my car keys on the living room table that I need to change the parking disc in my car before the agents write me a fine; and my next thought goes to the paper I need to pickup at the office with the car, cause I can’t print at home anymore; more thoughts surface and after many minutes I still haven’t fetched the phone in my bedroom. Thoughts and objects distract me and oblige me to act immediately iupon them, for fear of forgetting (my short memory is as bad as Dory in Finding Nemo) :-).

I have found a solution that works for me, which helps me not only remember and not distract when I go from A to B, but also to be more organised: I started writing post-it notes in the places where it makes sense. I need to change the car’s parking disc? I will write a quick note next to the keys (or set the phone alarm 5 minutes before); do I need to respond to a client and at the same time I get another call where I have to urgently finish up an email for a colleague? I take the ten extra seconds required to write down task n. 2 so I can finish task n. 1 without stressing. This is so helpful, and takes a lot of pressure off me. If I find myself too stressed, I take a break, go for a walk, pause for 20 minutes-half hour and resume later. I take more the time to breathe and this makes me enjoy the moment more. It’s such a great excercise. I feel good about it.

More soon. Oh: this is day 3 of reducing the intake of Fluoxetin: 10 mg a day instead of 20mg. So far so good.

Perfectionism: how to’s

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In another post I was talking about one of the reasons I have slowly and constantly come to depression. It’s my sense of perfectionism. There are a lot of words ending in “ism”: we borrowed this suffix from the Greeks and the Latins. If I search for its meaning, I stumble upon the Dictionary, which defines it a suffix used in “the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence, etc.“. There’s criticism, egoism, intellectualism, humanitarianism, instrumentalism, photojournalism, fraternalism, etc. In medical terms, it denotes “a medical condition or a disease resulting from or involving some specified thing” (from the medical dictionary). Wow, a disease, even…

Just when I thought that perfectionism was a strength in somebody’s character, I realised it can be either way, and for me it was (it IS) more of a “condition”. I won’t call it weakness, as opposed to strength, because I can see how perfectionism can serve us well in many situations. In my case, over time perfectionism has become a hindrance. Why? Because, unless something was perfectly executed, it wasn’t worth spending time on it. I am talking about everyday habits as well as work practices or sport. I won’t put makeup on unless I have a nice dress, matching shoes, and a good hairdo. I won’t clean the kitchen after cooking unless I clean it to the very last corner; once I start cleaning there’s no stopping me. But because it’s such an endeavor in my mind, it is rare I do cleaning every day after cooking. another example: I will procrastinate writing a report for work, because I can already envision the whole picture as being complex and a lot of work to execute perfectly. So I leave it to another moment. And I postpone by telling myself there are other easier tasks I can do before I get into that bigger task. So I start making calls, updating my calendar, add customers to my CRM, etc…

Oh, yes. Procrastination. It goes hand in hand with perfectionism. A podcaster’s account on her perfectionism felt so familiar when I listened to her 7-minute story. Listen to her: it’s really good. Elly Varrenti. So, immediate gratification is partly the reason of our constant dissatisfaction. If we don’t get it now, we don’t want to do the effort. And, even if you do succeed, you won’t be happy anyway. Failure is considered by me failure, in a negative way; but what if I start looking at my results, albeit not perfect, as positive? Elly says: “There’s good failure and bad failure […] as there’s a difference between passion and ambition, winning and accomplishment. […] The secret to happiness is rising from the ashes of disappointment, humiliation, aching inadequacy, and just getting on with it“. Like Winston Churchill said: “If you are going through hell, keep going“. Thank you Elly for quoting Churchill. He must have been a very interesting and wise man. He is also the author of the line “Never, never, never give up“. And I shan’t!

A bit of diversion that took me to Churchill and to the Australian correspondent to ABC, to remind myself that now I now know one strategically important thing: I am a perfectionist and I can recover from it. I am already working on this, and believe me: it is a super difficult task.

Oh, and we haven’t spoken about OCDs…. oh well, let’s tackle it in another post.