Month: July 2020

The North Wind

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A month and a half ago I halved the intake of Fluoxetin, otherwise known as Prozac. From 20mg to 10mg every morning. So far so good. A couple of changes occurred, but I cannot tell if its psychological suggestion or chemical adjustment in my body. I want to understand this better, and discern between self induced effects, placebo effects and real medical effects. No matter what happens in my body, I am still happy and satisfied about what I am doing. Work is going well, very well indeed, I have closed a major deal for the company, and in a new field, aviation, which I like much more than automotive. I am very proud of how I handled this deal and the negotiations since January. It all went pretty smoothly and quickly. 6 months of talks for a very good outcome. I gave myself a good pack on my back. And so did my CEO and the whole company. We popped two bottles of good champagne at work, and F. made a speech announcing I had made the biggest deal in the company’s history. What a good satisfaction. And if I think that only 7 months ago I wanted to quit.

One thing I am learning about this anti-depression process: to cultivate patience, and to fight my perfectionism. More things I am learning, which I will write as I go.

Patience is a big deal for me. And acceptance of a certain routine. I realised that over the last 14 of my relationship with W., and even before, basically since I left Italy to go and live in Germany in 1998, I have not been in one place or one job for more than 2-3 years. Events in life, jobs made redundant, W. entering my life (he is still the love of my life, although we are no longer together), new passions being born, the quest for film making, the eagerness of seeing the world, the choice we had to change our lives when we saw fit and how we pleased, made me wonder around the globe, traveling across oceans to beautiful places, living in the turquoise beaches of the Caribbean, moving to South Africa to pursue a film career, going to Canada to work at the Olympics, going back to Italy for a short while (3 years) setting up a company I didnt want to create, getting angry at life in Rome, leaving again, etc etc. I realised I have not been in one place for more than 2-3 years in the last 20 years. Whereas my childhood and my youth have been very regular, filled with routine. And my youth was very happy. I realise now that Alain de Botton is right when he says that in love we seek to reproduce the familiarity of what we are used to in our childhood. I recommend one of his speeches at Zeitgeist. Where I am getting at is that, also in life, not only in love, we seek balance based on what is familiar to us since the beginning. Now, I still need to understand why I was so attracted to a life without rules, and I still am, but why this has over 20 years damaged my self esteem, my happiness, and my relationship to the greatest man for me. Everytime I didn’t like what I was doing, I (I should say, we) would pack up and leave. I am like Juliette Binoche in Chocolat: I leave from village to village at the blow of the north wind.

Once I returned to Switzerland, helas without W., it was 20 years after I left my home in Rome, the home of routine, familiar habits, and the love of my family. I wondered in this world for 20 years, 14 of which with the love of my life, and now that I am back in CH, my life has been shaken from the core. I had to stop, in a very harsh and hard way, and depression has been the climax of this journey. There’s more to say, but I need to get up and go to my next meeting. Life is full of surprises, definitely worth living every bit of it, even the suffering parts. I am growing through this process. I am learning to be patient. I will find my answer, but not yet today.

Tiredness

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I keep meditating in the morning. I am not trying to meditate a second time daily yet, as it is quite hard to take some moment off my daily schedule, once the day starts. I would like to increase the meditation time per day, (for now it’s 30 minutes) as I am convinced it would be helping even more, but for now I am content with what I manage. Even the yoga for the eyes was really good, but I have stopped that. Work has been absorbing me a lot, but it is giving me joy, so I do it with pleasure. I am happy these days (and months), it feels so good to have life and joy in the veins. For the moment I am mostly absorbed by work, and I want to make a conscious effort in balancing the elements of my life, so that I don’t have all my joy in one basket. I want to increase the sport level, which since COvid has been drastically reduced, and I want to increase the social life. I find myself too comfortable on my own since lockdown. I don’t know if it’s because I have finally found myself again, and am happy with my own company, or because of the effects of isolation due to the pandemic. December 2019 I was desperate because I could not travel as much as I wanted, and July 2020 I am happy travelling less. Is it because I am satisfied with my job now? Is it because of Fluoxetin? Is it because I have started granting myself the love and self admiration I had for so long abandoned? All of the above perhaps.

Speaking of Fluoxetin: I halved the dose 5 weeks ago. I can’t see any difference in my state of mind, and I am very happy about this. I am not sure if there are side effects to Fluoxetin, all I know is that it doesn’t produce addiction, so I should be fine getting off completely in a couple of months time. My next appointment with Dr. N. (the jolly Congolese) is in August. He’ll assess whether it’s the right time to stop. One thing I have noticed since two weeks, though, is that by Friday afternoon I am knackered. I am so tired that my brain can’t compute anymore, and on Saturday I wake up tired. I have had to take a long nap on both past Saturdays. Today is Sunday and I feel a bit more energised, I wonder if it is because I am not sleeping my 7.5 hours minimum, which is my ideal, 8 being even better, or because work has been so tolling these past weeks that I am just tired, as anybody would be. I must admit the sensation of tiredness on Saturdays, where all I want is sleep all day, scares me because it reminds me of when I was depressed and I was not motivated by anything, so staying in bed was the only thing I would do. This is not the same circumstance, I do have great motivation to get out of bed, I am just scared of depression.

Control your emotions

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I have not written in over 15 days. I have been thinking a lot about the diary, and I made notes in my calendar of what I was going to write next. Work has been overwhelming, as we started going out again, visit customers, and going abroad. But despite the more hectic schedule, I have managed to always meditate in the morning. I do it as I wake up. Mornings are when I have most thoughts coming through my head, and I process what happened the day (or days) before and I do my list for the day. This list promptly shows itself while I am breathing through my mantra, and I try to not put attention to this list, but rather to let go my thoughts, as meditation teaches. Not easy, Especially these days, when I find myself being very excited about work – amazing if you think that in December I was ready to quit.

I am presently charged with positive emotions, sometime I am so excited and happy that I want to burst. If I think back only 6 months ago, my emotions were loaded with negative guns, firing up through my stomach, head brain and Agata brain suffering (see Agata here). Negative then, positive now; I’d rather burst of joy than of sadness, that is 100% sure. But I think of ways to protect myself from falling down into the abyss of depression, and for this reason I want to control my emotions, even when they are extra positive. Meditation helps me in the morning. And breathing consciously during the day.

I often think of my boss these days, He is a charismatic, young and ambitious man who has managed to create a great innovative company from scratch over a decade ago. I am working more and more on international projects and often happens that I sit with him, and the creative juices start pouring from both our heads. He is very inspiting and smart, and I feel excited and stimulated by his intelligence, and feel that we are on the same wavelength. This shoots in my vains the equivalent of 20mg of Fluoxetin per day, making my day and week better. I feel the seratonin going crazily well, and I want this to never end. But, I have to be very careful, to not make a yoyo out of this. Too happy today, too sad tomorrow. No way. Plus I need to remember that I have halved the dose of Fluoxetin, it’s been almost a month now, and so far so damn good. I don’t want to mess up my good work. That is why I want to control my positive emotions, so that I know how to control my negative ones one day. It is super important.

By reducing the level of excitement for things happening today, such as a good deal made with a client, a beautiful sunny day out with my family, a hike in the mountains etc, I know that I will preserve my newly found self, and will be ready for the gloomier days in life. Cause those are part of our life, it’s not always happy moment, it’s difficult ones, and the only difference it makes in me is how I deal with them. Half full or half empty glass. I choose the full.