Thanks for sharing, anita.

I read your message a while ago. I was going to ask you permission to ask specific questions about your techniques as I could apply some. But I couldn’t respond. I was in the middle of feeling very anxious. I laid down in my bed. I have had 4 bouts since. I don’t know what caused them though. I feel them in my chest and stomach. I tried being mindful but it got more intense. I don’t know the cause. How am I supposed to handle this? They went away on their own. I became more sensitive to the sounds around me during that time.

Girija

Hi anita,

Belated congratulations for your 2020 promotion and thumbs up for your expected promotion this year (if I understood correctly) to a senior developer role! – you have understood that correctly. Thank you for congratulating me.

Thanks for organizing my novel of a plan, you asked if you got that correct, and you did.

Girija

Hi anita,

I was able to come up with a plan sooner than I thought. Do give me your feedback on it.

I have written out how I will handle emotions with questions at the bottom. A prerequisite for that is that I am not dismissive about genuine fears/flaws that I want to work on, in order to distinguish between things I can control and can’t. So first, a couple of things I need to work on:

I’ve created one year goals and broken them down where possible –
• Physical Health: I did lose weight in 2020 but gained some back. My 1 year goal will be to lose 10-12 kg. This will be 1 kg/month. Which is doable. This will involve diet and exercise. Gather courage to go to doctors about asthma and other issues. This will take longer but adding it to a checklist is a first step.
• Mental health: I watched a video about daily routines for stress and anxiety. Suggestions include exercise to burn off stress physically. Having a checklist everyday for a todo list. Reducing caffeine. Not running away from anxiety i.e., ignoring it or going harder at whatever the anxiety points to. In my case it would be doing nothing about health or my job, or overdoing weight loss or interview preparation. I need to instead slow down. My questions might help with this.
• Job: It is time for me to change my job. I have looked at other people’s interview experiences and there are tons of blogs highlighting what to prepare and practice. I need to factor in rejections as well. I will need to set a 3 month deadline for a major chunk of my prep. And start interviewing from month 4-5. Also, an update I never gave you. I was promoted once in 2020. And this year will go to a senior developer role. It is harder to switch at this level but not impossible.
• Mom: My daily checklist will factor in ways in which I can help my mom out in the house as I feel guilty about not doing anything.
• Finance: I need to look at investing to generate passive income and feel more financially secure. I will use a major portion of this year to learn. Job search will also contribute to this goal.

My daily checklist will involve –
• Exercise
• Achieving/working towards one task my job requires
• Interview preparation has multiple components. So I will have one checklist item for each of them
• Helping my mom out – Lunch/dinner/laundry/cleaning the house
• Stepping out of the house for groceries or other small tasks – I need to reinforce my confidence in social interactions and it helps to have small doable things on the checklist
• Dedicated time to acknowledge that the day was good.

Now, coming to how I will handle emotions:
My triggers are typically –
1. Feeling judged by someone else when I do something, like cause a problem or fail at some task. I could be the one judging myself. My questions will be
• Question 1. What do I think or what does this person think I am? I will name it A. A could be I am not smart enough for a senior, I am silly, ugly, boring, etc.
• Question 2. Why do I not want to be A? I will name it B. This is usually – I will get fired and won’t find another job. I won’t have good friends. I won’t find love, etc.
So A is a cause and B is an effect. I recognize that it is the effect that is the trigger for me. If someone thought I was incompetent but I knew I won’t lose my job, I would be okay with being incompetent. Also being competent wouldn’t guarantee that I won’t lose my job. So I need to address the possibility of losing my job. I need to address B. Accept B is possible and create a plan if needed. So, accept I could lose my job at any time and prepare to be interview ready. Accept I may never find another job. And just accept it, there is nothing I can do if nobody wants to hire me. Even my inner voice found that possibility silly. If I am interview ready, it is likely that someone will hire me. Other things include accept I may not find love and so on. And decide, if there is no love, then what, what shall I do now? Socialize without the stress of finding love and live my life 🙂
• Question 3: Am I doing something to address B. If yes, we are good. Take a deep breath and resolve the sensations. I am looking into grounding techniques for this.

2. Untriggered ruminations over financial insecurity, my mom’s health, etc.
I have guilt over whether we did everything we could to give her the best chance at beating C long term. And with finances, exaggerated fears over losing all my money.
• Question 1: Can I do something about this now? Give my mom a hug. Help her out with something. Look at my bank balance. Take a deep breath and decide – Today, we are okay. We will see about tomorrow.
• Question 2: Can I do something long term. If there is something it will go into my checklist. I need to then resolve the emotions physically. Like I mentioned earlier, I am looking at grounding for this.

This is what I have for now.
 

Hi anita,

Thank you for appreciating me.

I will create a mechanical series of steps or questions that I must go through when I feel emotions. This might help. I will formulate these questions after more research.

Also, I forgot to respond to your last paragraph, anita – I will gladly continue communicating with you, it helps me a lot. Thank you.

Hi anita,

She seems calm to me.

The bedrooms system is the same. Not having my aunt here is great. She never felt like family, was always selfish and treated us as less than.

didn’t know that your figurative tail often wags outside of the context of daydreaming. In what circumstances does your tail wag? How does your excitement looks/ sounds like?  – I seem to be desperate for connection. I open up to people when I first meet them, easily joking, having fun conversations and readily discussing problems. This is what I mean by tail wagging. Although I seem to trust some people and not others whem I first meet them. It will take more observation to figure out why that might be. My excitement to me used to feel genuine and open. Now, I feel it is chaotic. Just desperate and needy.

I can imagine lots of people figuratively wagging their tails because of being around you. I bet that you imagined it many times, while daydreaming, imagining that this or that person, a boyfriend perhaps, was as happy to see you as you are happy to see him. Did you? – My daydreams are complicated. I am never able to imagine the long term of the relationship. It seems off. But in the beginning, I would feel loved but it would not help me see what that relationship grows to be. Like what is happily ever after for a married couple. I just know how I wanted to be talked to or treated but not how the long term would be. And it makes me sad. And who I am in those daydreams often changes. And it is strange but I’ve realized I mimic other people, even in real life. Someone else’s confidence – how they behave that I think is confident. Someone else’s kindness and so on. I do know I am a kind person. But if another person’s behaviour seems more expressive, I mimic that. And I think my daydreams are confusing because of that. I don’t know that I am that person.

Can you describe to me a situation/ circumstance in which you were excitedly anticipating a real-life interaction with another person: how did your excitement show, and what was the other person’s behavior during the anticipated interaction?  – My colleagues. We would joke together, discuss our lives. I used to feel the excitement, which I wonder now might have been needy, wanting to joke and laugh. But they would be rude, out of nowhere. It feels like a punch to the stomach. I still go through this with them. Even when I see evidence that this is not where the connection is at, I still go through that cycle.

Imagine that you are assigned with writing an academic essay, a one-page (or shorter) essay, describing this “self” that you are referring to. You are welcome to post such an essay here. – ( I am going to use “she”). She seems disturbed to me. Always ready to go into a frenzy. Not sure she has ever felt true peace. She believes that bad things will happen to her, so she is always looking out for it. She is also super scared so she is constantly seeking out to be protected. No amount of life experience seems to build her strength. She just gets through one thing at a time and it does not contribute to long lasting good qualities. She is very weak. Every negative possibility bothers her. She has to ruminate over it, worry about how to deal with it, know she is not cut out to deal with it, desperate for it to not happen. She does this with everything. She morphs into what she believes will keep her safe but it just comes off as desperate and she is always left alone. She knows she will not have anyone but still tries. Everybody is above her. She has never been in a situation where she felt right, in the few situations that she started feeling good, other people have torn her down, whether it was their intention or not. Everybody’s tone matters, expressions matter, opinions matter. She has never gone a day where she had to face something and she knew what she was doing. She doesn’t trust anyone including herself. So she is putting herself in situations she doesn’t want to be in. I don’t think she wants to be in any of this. She wants peace but won’t find it. So she is letting life whiz past her. Never feeling like she has finally arrived.

Can you share specific details about some of the features of your looks that you consider “ugly by societal standards”? – I have a giant forehead, nose, lazy eye, thinning hair, crooked teeth and I am fat.