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[dear-anxiety-blog1]

What is the Best Advice You Have ever Gotten?

Ooh, this is my favourite.

Once I had a big anxiety issue with speaking in front of the class. I am deeply afraid, a lot of ‘what if’s running through my head. I focused so much on trying not to pass out.

I went to my school’s psychologist to get help, and this is her best advice ever.

Me: “What if I faint again? I do not know what might happen, I could not control my body...”

Her: “What can you do about it? So be it. Pass out. If you had tried your best in delivering the presentation, believed and controlled yourself, but still faint... let it be. At least you did your best. If you had done everything you can but your body says no, you can’t do anything.”

And fuck it helped my presentation. It was like someone smacking me.

I was able to talk slowly, able to control my breathing, pass my presentation... and did not pass out.

I learned that to let my body take over when I could not control myself. To shut my mind, meditate--clear my thought as much as I can by meditating and focused on my breath, or listening to something that would prevent me from thinking, and let my body rest first.

I was damn afraid passing out in the public again or during a presentation.

The last time I fainted? Was taking a loo in the toilet in the middle of the night and suddenly my eyes faded out and when I woke up I was on the floor outside the toilet with my pants on.

Weird, I know. And I took pride in it.

[dear-anxiety-blog1]

All the Small Things

It is always the small things that bother me, but there are so many of them that they start stacking themselves one by one until it becomes a huge wall. 

And by the time I opened my eyes, trying to get a grip to get back to reality... there is a huge wall standing beside me. The wall scares me, it is huge, unbreakable, strong--it does not stand only, but it emits an aura which ready to beat me every time I want to go near it.

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This is entry #1. A combination and a bunch of thoughts that are flowing through my heads. Each paragraph may or not relate to each other. These are my thoughts and my concerns day by day. And maybe random thoughts that soothe me.

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I am doing my internship now. No big deal. I secured a great company, great supervisor and friendly colleagues. They are supportive most of the time (well, everyone has their own business to do). They gave me advice and a lot of words. How to handle this and that. Which one that I need to be precautious at. To be honest, I am really grateful being with them. My supervisor gave me work that is not easy--not something that is time-consuming/very administrative, he gave me a problem that no answer is there. It is not PPT Presentation Making skill that I get, not Excel VBA, or anything. To be honest when someone asked me what technical skill I learned... give me 5 minutes to think about it and I will be able to tell you one or two things.

I learned a lot.

But, at the same time, I suffered a lot.

I learned a lot of social stuffs, communication skills that I have never had before, how to ‘waste’ my time by talking to the operators and ‘have fun’, how to do old man jokes--putting a mask on myself and enjoy it. I can’t really say I am faking myself. I pushed myself to be someone who I wished to be. I wished to be a happy-go-lucky kind of girl, with little regrets and just keep going on. 

Oh, how I wish I could keep this mask permanent.

It is hard for me, where social skills are damn important in the field and your administrative ability is not being used (e.g., typing fast--hey, not everyone has this skill and willing to do data entry that needs precision). I was proud of my administrative ability. I felt like I am being pushed around by myself, doing things that I am not used to. Even after four months, I feel dread every day. I could only deliver bad to mediocre job. I could not give an excellent job or anything that would benefit the company. Even the projects/assignments that are given to me are not ‘completed’ by me. Execute a plan? Nah, somehow it worked by itself and I just take note.

I took a long breath.

...

..

I learned so much, though. I could not believe I am still alive now with this kind of environment. I could not believe I could push myself to be this brave. Sometimes I am proud of myself that I could still smile and laugh at the office. It might be me putting too much expectation on myself that puts me low, but sometimes I think the expectation I set for myself is realistic.

“I wish to leave something here, a trace of me, a memory of me. Something I did.”

I am not sure whether I will be able to leave anything or not. 

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The thing with my anxiety that hinders me from progressing is, “what if?”. Over thinking. There is a lot of ‘what if’s in my daily life, even activities that I have been doing over and over again. 

What if the last time I did was okay because this and this happened, but because now they are not happening, I will fuck things up? What if now people changed their mind? What if now their mood is not good that they will act aggressively towards me? What if this is going to be the last time? What if I will go crazy this time?

Sigh.

Sometimes when I look back, these ‘what if’s scare me. I am afraid of my own thoughts. When these ‘what if’s start attacking me, I could not control myself. I run away and hide. And most of the time, it hurts me. It might make me feel secure for a moment, but it hurt me much in the long term with another sequence of ‘what if’s.

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Punk rock music, well the one that I am hearing (just noting down a few; Blink-182 and Sum 41), is my all-time favourite genre of music. It sometimes motivates, but most of the time they are telling stories and their opinion. Screaming about injustice, screaming about all the things that are happening in this world... acknowledging the facts and willing to fight. They are my motivation to be strong, to go against myself