Category: confidence

How to not self-boycott my mind

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It’s been a year without a therapist that can guide me through difficult moments, and remind me the good mental practices during the difficult moments. I am in the process of finding a therapist, one who speaks English and that I can afford. It’s a longer process than I thought. In the meantime, I do have the tools to detect red alerts when they are coming. And this is a red alert time for me.

My final attempt at passing Principes du Vol (branch 080) is coming up, 13 November, with pre-exams this morning. The self-boycott phase started weeks ago, and I must stop it. Since my last post, when I was already complaining about failing the exam and things going bad from now on, a few good things have happened, which I need to remind myself of. To counterbalance the bad thoughts that want to drag me down with them.

Good thing happened: I traveled to Asia for work, and I discovered two new cities in countries I had never been to. Since I love to travel, this is positive. Another great thing is that we managed to finalise the biggest deal at work, it had to happen before 31 October, and signatures have been digitally initiated yesterday. This is big, and I should not dismiss it as an easy accomplishment, cause it was not (it took almost a year).

See, my mind works in a way that one negative though feeds on another one to justify itself. It’s what my old therapist used to describe with “fascination for dissatisfaction”. My mind (like my mom’s) scans very fast through all the thoughts that could be negative in my mind, and binds them all up like grapes; this way the little negative thoughts become an army of negativity, which then justifies my miserable self. Ah…… great tactic! I should tell Macchiavelli about this one!

These days I am seeing a pattern going on that fuels this grape-like construction. My brain is finding a way to justify my failing at flying. If I fail 080 this fourth time, I have to repeat the whole theory, about 9 exams I already passed. There is no way I am going to do that. The thing is, I am not sure I’ll pass, I am studying a lot, a lot more than for other branches, but there are always questions in the multiple choice tests that I can’t answer correctly. This is a subject that I find difficult to digest. The whole aerodynamic laws, the lift and drag, the Bernoulli principle, air flux, Newton, Archimede. The whole lot. I am intelligent, but I am not a scientific mind, I am more into feeling and intuition, talking and speaking to a public, making podcasts and listen to people’s stories. When it gets to formulas, I go with intuition rather than with calculation.

So, here’s what I have been thinking these days: if I fail it will be bad for me, company is paying for the lessons, it is important for my job, if I fail I won’t be continuing the pilot licence, I will not become a pilot, if I fail at negotiating my salary with HR next week it will add to the failure of the PPL, plus I find the whole electrical subject difficult, and that’s my line of work, all of the eggs I put in this basket will fail all at once, and I will be miserable again, I have no partner, I can’t find true love, winter is here, days are dark and cold, less sunshine, what if my parents die this year or next, I will be weak for all this to endure. Etc etc. That’s my self-boycott process. Result: I get in a really bad mood, I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart burns. No advancement there.

So, I say it here, with the diary as my witness: I will endeavor to chase away all negative thoughts that want to grape up in me in the next weeks to come. I will be strong and will rely on my intelligent self to see the strong woman and not fuel the weak one that wants to come out (I mean, I have thoughts of being homeless again! can you imagine?). This is a difficult time of the year, where weather and season put a layer on top of the regular thoughts. But as that woman said in her video, the world is neutral. We tone it positive or negative with our own thoughts. So, stop being negative. I will pass the exam and will continue the PPL.

There’s no way I am going to fail my flight license.

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Yesterday I was very down, I failed for the third time the theoretical exam “Flight Principles”. The morning had started badly with a nasty call at work. Bad mood set right there at 9am. My exam was at 13h15. I didn’t feel it, despite I prepared. The thing is that I prepared based on the QPPL app questions. But the Office Fédéral de l’Aviation Civile puts other questions out. For the third time I made one mistake too much. You are supposed to pass 75%, which is 9 questions out of 12. I made 4 mistakes. Till the last moment I had the fourth question right. It was the section of a body that makes the resistance in an air flow, not the surface. I had clicked on “section” and then the doubt came. I switched to “surface”. For one wrong click I have the stress of having to pass my last chance, if I fail the fourth time, I have to redo the whole theory (13 exams). No chance I’ll do that.

The negative thoughts are so good at piling up. One negative thought is enough to fuel all others. In my head right now, I have this: a pile of negative thoughts, a scenario of a black future: no more ideal job, no more flight lessons, winter coming, no more sex friend…. Pile on pile on pile.

The good thoughts are being stacked elsewhere, where it doesn’t matter. I received the Swiss citizenship, I am flying to Japan and Korean this week, I will give two speeches at a Japanese conference, I am having a good time at water-polo, I have a new co-locataire for the house who is very nice, the weather in Geneva has been spectacular, sunny and warm to this day, my parents are alive, my nephew just turned 30 and my brother 56. I started interviewing candidate therapists to coach me in winter. Life is good.

And yet it could all go wrong. Hell no. I won’t allow it, for God’s sake.

Yesterday and today, I was feeling like shit, self-commiserating, poor me I can’t get an exam right, damn me, I can’t get an exam right, and work sucks, everyone is so inefficient, people unhappy about my pushing too much, yara yara yara. What the f**k. I stop it right there. I want to take this opportunity to stop and reflect on the reaction in my guts, on the irritating and revolting feeling I feel in the stomach, and how to revert this sense of pins and needles in my head, that come from being disappointed, angry, sad, frustrated all at once.

Meditation is still not my thing, too calm for my mind. But I can listen to some ted talks and put my mind at peace for a while. I found a podcast about therapy. I hope I find a good therapist who can accompany me during winter time. Winter is coming and I feel I am not prepared this time. Red flag, red alert.

Pain and discipline for my happiness

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I am happy these days. Things are going well. I moved to the new house. It’s gorgeous. I am playing water-polo, I am doing spinning at the gym, I am studying for my private pilot exams and I am getting ready to my first solo flight. Work is going well too. So, all in all, great times.

When I was spinning this morning, I was thinking about the pain that I feel while doing the physical effort, and how much this gives me motivation. My body feels great after a workout. Same thing with water-polo: there is not only the physical pain of suffering during the training, but also the coaching time; the authority of the coach, the discipline; the orders, in a way, comfort me. They make me feel kind of safe. It’s not easy to explain, but I find that an environment of school, like learning waterpolo, learning to fly in a classroom, it all brings me back to the comfort time I had back when I was little, when life was good and free of worries. And now that I think, sports was a big part of my youth. The pain and the discipline of those days, be it at school, at sports or at home (with my dad being quite authoritarian) make me feel good. These are elements I am familiar with, and I associate good times related to those years of my life.

Yes, studying was tough, doing competitive sport was hard, receiving instructions from the coach was tough sometimes, but it was what I was used to. And it makes me feel good today. I realise today that I have picked activities that give me a similar amount of pain and discipline as when I was 14, 18 or 20. This makes me think of what Alain de Botton said about love and marriage. In the article “why you will marry the wrong person” he says that “what we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood”. You can check out the article here. In my case, I was looking for pain and discipline in very specific environments. By reproducing these, I have been able to re-create a space that feels familiar, in a good way. I am filling the baskets with lots of eggs that give me plenty of goodness.

So great to think back to only 2 years ago, when I was still depressed and on medication, and looking at today, with a good life and a stronger self. Pain and Discipline: be welcome. Love: I welcome you too, whenever you decide to knock at my door (’cause I ain’t doing Tinder!).

With hope.

Laura

It’s not about me

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It’s been almost two years since my first Fluoxetine dose. December 2019 was when I started. Then I took it until June 2020, and reduced the dosage by half, until September 2020, when I stopped completely. By end of October 2020 I was depressed again and had to resume Fluoxetine early December 2020. Today is 24 October 2021. Unlike last year, I have not attempted again to stop Fluoxetine at the beginning of autumn, but will do so next year, 2022, around March-April, when the best season for me starts.

This is an introduction to say that the way I feel now is different from last year. Today I feel confident, not depressed, I have energy, not lack of living fuel in my veins; the problems that arose last year with work (a contract that has deteriorated over the months) is persisting this year, with a new challenging turn, but I am taking it in a different way. This is a progress, and I’ll take anything but depression. Depression is a plug that is torn from my body, energy that turns off without a turn on button on the instruction manual. Anger, on the contrary, is a feeling, it makes me feel alive, although it’s not as pleasant as joy.

Anger is what I feel today, and what I have felt the past weeks. I have given so much to my job, working more than necessary, believing in the product, and I have received zero recognition and support from the management. I told this Mr. G., my psychologist, whom I see every 3-4 weeks, and I expressed him my frustration.

Frustration: the feeling of being annoyed or less confident because you cannot achieve what you want, or something that makes you feel like this

Cambridge Dictionary

So, I’ll take anger, because if I think back only a year ago, I could not move from bed. But I need to harness this feeling, which I consider not a happy one, and transform it to a positive one; Mr. G. told me that I want everybody to love me, and I seek everybody’s approval and recognition, whereas this is not what I should be aiming at. I should be happy with how I feel about me. It’s ok if not everyone loves me, it’s ok to have “enemies”, I need to remember that these are all feelings, not the universal truth. Reality is the way I perceive myself within my own circle of relationships.

It’s not all about me. I came across this video on Youtube and it made me think. Frederik Imbo, the author of this Ted Talk, says : do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? He advocates to use discipline and training, to train your brain not to take things personally. He became a referee to train himself to not take things personally. He shifted the focus from Me to We, and look at the other person’s intention. ’cause it’s not about me.

And what if it is about me? In this case I doubt about myself, because I haven’t come to terms with parts of myself, I am not confident. And I don’t take into account other people’s needs. This is probably rooted in childhood (maybe you were never good enough, or you were spoiled too much, always having your dad’s back).

I have started exercising not to take things personally. Easier said than done, but at least by trying I am training my mind to protect myself. It’s usually not about me, in which case the problem isn’t there, it’s the way others see themselves. When it’s about me, what can I do? My ego wants to be right, it wants to be acknowledged. Me, myself and I.

I am sad if I don’t get recognition. Imbo says: then open up without blaming the other one, vocalise your needs. Give yourself empathy, speak up.

I will adopt this strategy next time I am sitting in the same room with the CEO.

PS: did you know that we have 50’000 thoughts a day, and of them 10’000 are positive. 80% of what we think are negative thoughts. We might as well concentrate more on the positive.

Noise Off Distractions

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Last night I had dinner with my boss. I invited him over. It was a good exercise to discuss with him. this morning I figured out why. Waking up, while my thoughts are at best, free from distraction, and free to roam in my brain without noise, I realised : “noise”! That’s what it is. This is what I need to work on. I can best compute, reason, tink, work, judge, when I am free of noises. I am sharp when I don’t have distractions.

What I realise this mornign is that people are my main distraction. And by distraction I don’t mean something negative, I mean a distraction from my ultimate goal in life: be in peace with myself.

While waking up, the thought of distraction brought me immediately back to Will. The love of my life. Why did I leave him, why did I suffer so much for leaving him, and why this and why that. I think I know now: it is because he was a necessary casualty to free my self from distractions that don’t make me see me.

Distraction: something that prevents someone from giving their attention to something else:

Cambridge Dictionary

That’s exactly it. When I am with people, I am prevented from giving my attention to someone else: me. When I am with someone, I tend to reduce me in order to let the other express, shine, decide, say, feel respected. By doing so I let my own self pass on second rang. For the sake of others. I wrote a page of my diary about this, I need to find it again. ’cause its true. this has been one of my main difficulties in life: how to joggle between me and others, how to act and preserve my self against other selves. I see this in my present job, which I like very much, but it gives me pain as well, cause I don’t feel myself enough heard, appreciated and followed, as I should. And when I am with my chef, my superior, I lose my self, and he becomes a distraction, that doesn’t make me see me and my reasoning. How to pierce my own view into them. me against them, woman against a world of men. That too I am sure plays quite a role.

The medicine is giving me more strength and helps me detach from the situation. But I am still vulnerable, and I am still months away from being confident that I will make it without the drugs. I had a dream last night, that I was depressed and felt like doing nothing. The worst nightmare, it reminded me what it feels like to have no motivation.

But waking up, the motivation is there, and I thank God. Nature maybe :-).

Enjoy!

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I hadn’t visited my psychologist in a while. I notice, after two years of this “psycho-routine”, that I go when I am down, and I don’t go when I am up. I mean, I don’t want to spend money or take extra time from my busy schedule when I am feeling good. But that is the point: unlike other organs in the body, I am learning that when the head aches inside, it is not such a matter of a day or a month to heal, and it won’t heal with tablets only, it will heal with work, loads of work that I must put into it. And I am learning that I need to be constant with the psychotherapy, and do it when I feel good and when I feel low.

It was actually good to see Dr. G. again. I don’t particularly like him, he is very Swiss in the “detached” kind of way. Plus he is a psychoanalist, and I don’t particularly fancy that practice, cause they often boil it down to the mom-related issues. There’s dads too. And loads of other elements that shape our identity. Plus, it is a loooooong therapy, it takes years, and looking at my budget, I feel I could use that money for more fun things, such as financing my podcast.

I realise though that this reasoning it to my own detriment. I am earning enough money to do both, and I live frugally anyway, so money should not be a problem. Away with this. So what’s the problem? Che ne so. Or, yes I know, I am learning to figure out, identify my problems. The source of them, how to catch myself getting into the wrong habit, and how to remedy that situation. It is such an invigorating process. I am doing it now that it is summer, the days are long and warm, sunshine has finally appeared at my doorstep, after many spring weeks of weird climate-change slash climate non change storm and snow in the month of May and June. Bring it on: Covid, weather unpredictability, solar eclipse, sunset sunshine, rainshowes and wind. I take it all, because I am happy at the moment, I am content, satisfied, proud of myself, on many fronts, and it’s all due to my own doing. I pet my own back and tell myself: brava L., you are achieving the potential in you, the famous or infamous potential everybody tells me about. Oh, you got so much potential, you are beautiful and smart, you can conquer the world… etc. Well, it gave me pure rage when I heard it during my low times, because I KNOW I am beautiful and smart, but somehow, this isn’t taking me anywhere… wasn’t. And I couldn’t see the path, I wanted everything and now, hic and nunc, and it doesn’t work that way. not for me. I have learnt that I need to be patient, and things will come in due time. I have to put effort on what I do, things don’t just fall from the sky, I make them fall in the right place, through my actions, my intelligent, my luck, my destiny, ma chaos, my fate, my doing, my education, my encounters, my new and old friends, my family, the good and the bad of everything.

We are yin and yang, I am coming to grips with my internal strength, I am learning to protect myself from others regards, I am learning, and it will probably take my whole life. But the beauty of life is the process, not the end.

Dr. G. was happy to hear my story, me learning, me doing exercise to not fall into traps, to learn to avoid OCDs, to go through them when I stumble into them, to prepare happiness when winter comes, when the days are shorter and gloomier, when I won’t feel like getting out of bed… I will be ready then. I will not allow myself to go lower than what I can handle. I will be ready. “Enjoy!” he said.

Enjoy this state of mind. Enjoy !

Side Effects of Fluoxetine (Prozac)

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If I dig into my older diary pages, I will find my notes about side effects. I will check later. I thought this morning I would check again on the Internet, because I have two clear changes that I feel to attribute to taking Fluoxetine. I am sort of doing a self diagnosis, based on the fact that I have taken two long repetitions of Fluoxetin, and I notice the same pattern. Nothing major, but to be monitored.

The first time I took Fluoxetin was December 2019 until June 2020, the second time was December 2020 until now (April 2021). in 2019 I starting reducing from June to September, taking 10mg instead of 20mg, then I stopped in September and October, but by November I was feeling depressed again, and I started again December until now. I still take the same dosage, 20mg. In both cases I had no Fluoxetin in the gloomier months of the year for me: October-December, and I had to wait until end of Jan in order to start feeling better. I confirm that it takes 4 to 6 weeks for Fluoxetin (Prozac) to kick in. So, in both cases, I have the same pattern developing: 1. once my mood stabilises and I feel happier, I start dreaming very vividly; 2. I become more cocky, blunt, sometime verbally aggressive in my reactions. As if the social mask that inhibits our very being from expressing itself was taken off.

These are not amongst the common side effects of Fluoxetine. If I look at the NHS in the UK, the side effects that happen in more than 1 in 100 people are:

  • nausea, headaches, being unable to sleep, diarrhoea, feeling tired or weak.

    • I am far from that, I actually sleep like a baby. And I have these vivid dreams, they feel so real that I wake un in the morning remembering them as they really happened. Last night I dreamt something that has been recurring to me: I was missing the plane, and I felt this anxiety and breathlessness because I was stressed, I had to take that plane, and nobody around (my family) was helping me getting there in time. My father, who usually likes to get to airports 2 hours in advance, was telling me to not go until an hour from the flight time, but this was not going to help, as we were on the other side of London (why London I dont know…). I had this dreams in different sauces several times. It is not a happy dream, but it is not a depressive one either. It kind of gives me adrenaline.

    The other thing is feeling cocky. The only common point I can interpret from the NHS list of serious side effects (happens less than 1 in 100 people) is this

    1. headaches, trouble focusing, memory problems, not thinking clearly, weakness, seizures, or losing your balance – these can be signs of low sodium levels

    2. thoughts about harming yourself or ending your life

    3. fits, feelings of euphoria, excessive enthusiasm or excitement, or a feeling of restlessness that means you can’t sit or stand still

    4. vomiting blood or dark vomit, coughing up blood, blood in your pee, black or red poo – these can be signs of bleeding from the gut

    5. bleeding from the gums or bruises that appear without a reason or that get bigger

    NHS article on Fluoxetine

    I feel number 3 is close to what I feel. During the day, when working or doing my own personal projects, I feel I am regaining confidence, and strength, and I tend to cast away everything that threatens that confidence. I don’t feel inhibitors in telling people what I think, and I feel good in what I am doing. Work is going better, I started (yes, finally!) my podcast, it feels good.

    But I need to be careful not to exaggerate. I live in Switzerland, not in Italy, and the direct way of confronting people is not appreciated. I even thought of telling my CEO that he was wrong in doing what he did to one of my clients. But he is the boss, I have no right to tell him what I think, right? And he is not the kind of person who will easily accept a critic. So I need to be careful to not ruin my own happiness by saying too outloud, or being too enthusiastic (euphoric sometimes yes).

    All in all, I am doing well, I feel that the medicine is helping me. Unlike I read in another article, I don’t think it is like a placebo. But I need to prepare my own internal medicine, my own mental weapons to fight depression if it comes back after I am out of Fluoxetine. When will I stop Fluoxetine? I don’t know yet. I am scared of the gloomy depressive winter. I will check with my Congolese psychiatrist.

    Anger again

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    Yes, anger again, same as last year. A cycle is kind of repeating: in the winter I am depressed and start taking fluoxetin; the medicine slowly but regularly starts having effect and equalises my moods, making me happier and stronger every day. It takes about 2-3 months to get stable. I am miserable in October-November-December, then from January things start getting better. Then around early spring (about now) I start becoming cocky, and angry at things and events; it is as if I was gaining too much confidence, and I can face any event or situation; I need to be careful, because at work I risk to respond abruptly to people (and to the Management) and I know I will regret if I do. So I tell myself “stay humble, don’t explode”. So I do. I try my best. So far I succeed, but sometimes I am really eager to give the proper feedback to people. I play it in my head over and over, as to rehearse the perfect speech.

    I remember last year I was angry against W., my ex (the love of my life), for not fighting for our relationship, for letting me go like that; the anger was good to not think of him too much, self defense I reckon. As I already wrote in another page, I’d rather be angry than depressed. And I remember that last year, around late spring, I decided together with my psychiatrist, to start diminishing the dose of antidepressant. Because I was feeling strong, and because I knew I could manage reducing the pills. This year I feel I am doing well again, I feel I could let go of Fluoxetin, but I want to be more careful, and not rush things. I don’t want to end up later this year with a winter coming and depression galloping again in my brain.

    Man, it’s so challenging to find a balance. I said from the beginning that I will win this fight, and I will. It feels though like a lifelong battle, that this will be my fight until the end of my days. I must never let my guard down, I must remember that there is always a risk of falling into depression. Like asthma. You have it and then it stays with you; you can calm it down, thame it, but never lower your guard, never underestimate the enemy.