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,

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

Thanks, Anita. I will.

You can choose not to answer this. I can understand it might be too personal. But could you tell me how you reduced your anxiety and went from the figurative gas to liquid? What tools and techniques you used?

Girija

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

Thanks for the detailed response. I will practice to better deal with this.

Girija