Hi anita

There were a couple of instances –

1. We use an app called Slack to chat with other employees or groups of employees, at work. I was required to drop a message asking for one team to approve a certain workflow. They had 2 groups and I posted in 1 but got no reply, so I posted in the other after waiting a day for a reply in their first group – but I got a rude reply to the second message, implying I wasn’t following the process. It hurt my feelings. I felt the need to defend myself and I did. I explained what had happened and the person let it go. After that, I told myself the moment has passed, it doesn’t matter now. I am having to work to hold on to the moment. I can simply let it go. This I got from Peter and Tommy from the other thread, and you. Doing work when no work needs to be done. But also, I wanted to explore why it mattered so much – and using my questions – I was able to conclude that this was a mishap and doesn’t make me incompetent. Because, I think that’s what hurt me – that the other person was implying I was incompetent. And you know how much that has always bothered me.

Another instance, I am active on reddit where I both ask and give advice for developer related questions, including on one forum which has Indian developers. It is a male majority group. There was one post that was especially hurtful towards women. How people want to bring equality, but don’t consider men. I found that malicious because most developers know there are very few women and that is why this was required. Some of the comments were really offensive, implying they want women because they will do favours, if you know what I mean. This hurts because the treatment towards women is really bad, a lot of women quit here because of that. They get no support at work or home. And a lot of the conditioning that men have of women belonging in the kitchen plays out at work with both younger and older Indian men. But I don’t want us to quit because if we do we will forever remain in the clutches of our fathers and husbands. Some of these men are going to be those fathers and husbands. I made my own comment explaining why equality was needed. Another member was really rude, completely discarding what I was saying and instead attacking my tone and saying I am extreme and he hates that and went on to insult me saying it must be really hard for my team mates to deal with me. I was immediately able to recognize he was trying to prick at any insecurities I might have. This is new for me. I would have tried to defend myself. But this time I knew he was trying to get personal to hurt me. And knowing that, it helped me from not engaging in the conversation further. I was able to let it go thinking he said what he had to and the moment has passed, I am not going to change that.

The only reason I think I might be doing it wrong is – both those situations kept coming back on their respective days. I had to keep getting my mind away from them. Once you decided not to let the weather affect you because you can’t change it. Would it still come back? Or am I doing something wrong? My heart rate was high throughout the day for the second instance and I read that stretching increases the blood flow and relaxes our body. So, I had to do that multiple times in the day. Is it normal?

Also, since I brought it up, it makes me sad that a lot of men are not able to just let women be. The resistance to women having their own freedom breaks my heart.  The only thing that will fix this is having more women in the workplace, it wouldn’t be so easy to dismiss us. My team has a 5:4 women to men ratio, and just 3 of us women were able to slowly tire one of the men out and stopped him from making sexist remarks. It’s not like we coordinated it. It’s just that a lot of things women here used to put up with is because they had no choice. When we feel empowered, it is not easy to get away with treating us like a commodity and I think this is the reason for opposing freedom for women. I’m sorry for bringing this up here. I don’t have anyone to talk about this to. My family would just say let it go. But even after having my own freedom, if I have to let men walk all over me and accomodate the sexism, that is not real freedom.

Girija

Hi anita

Every time you let go of what you cannot change, you are encouraging a new mental habit. – that’s good to know. I was wondering how to kickstart new mechanisms. Thanks for your feedback. I’ll keep this practice up.

I have since discovered some breathing techniques – 4 seconds inhale and 6 seconds exhale is working for me. It calms my body down.

I have major Monday blues and this week there are some deadlines we need to meet, but I managed to not dwell too long on how we’ll achieve it. I decided I will be ok if I fail. This has been a breakthrough.

Overall there is major discomfort in letting things go. The physical sensations last longer but I am able to let it go and get my time back. My current moment seems good enough by itself, so I am not afraid of the future.

Another thing I realized – I am scared of anxiety itself. It is strange but I can be pretty aloof to what is triggering my anxiety or even get through it with the anxiety running through my body. Anxiety has been my default for so long, after all. My life has always been be really afraid of something, get through it and find a new thing to be afraid of. So that cycle is familiar to me. But the actual anxiety itself I never cared about. Now that I want to overcome anxiety, any time I sense anxiety in my body, I get more anxious. Almost upset that it keeps coming back. But if I look at it as just sensations, that it will go away too, it’s not a big problem. I shouldn’t worry about it coming back. If I calmed myself in the present moment, that’s a win.

About advocating for women. I have given up on Indian men. This includes men in my family. I feel bad saying this but they can be fun, supportive and a lot of other things but the overarching theme when it comes to women is downplaying our struggles and making us justify our needs and dismissing them anyways. The approach I take is I mentor the younger women joining our team. Especially with respect to not being too vulnerable and letting others bring them down.

Girija

Hi anita

it’s fear, isn’t it, based on the delusion that if you stop worrying about something (which you cannot change), you will lose control and bad things will happen. – Yes, you nailed it! Fear that if I let it go, it will come back and hurt me in an unexpected way. And I took time to understand why. I think it comes from my parents. I always felt like I had to keep an eye on adult matters, at school I used to pretty much tell my mom what she had to do or say with my teachers and my dad used to not come at all. Even though I didn’t know how because I wasn’t really an adult. But at the same time, I was expected to do well at school. So I had no support but all the expectations. I am repeating that at work, even if there is no support, expectations from them are okay and I need to meet them. Even if it is expectations I have set for myself. I go through this with my mom’s health as well and you may find this strange but it has to do with fear that if I don’t pray to God that my mom has been hurt enough and she deserves a good life now, he’ll give her health problems.There is fear that if I let go, there will be some kind of backlash whether it is with health or work.

But ultimately my childhood taught me to look ahead. I can’t really live in the present moment because my childhood didn’t give me that chance. It was always – look ahead, predict how things could go wrong and they were usually things I couldn’t change but it felt like if I didn’t think about it, nobody else was and we would be doomed. I have the fear that I need to make sure I know all possibilities because life was going to hurt us.

(1) Finding something new to be anxious about is the nature of anxiety for every person who is significantly anxious, (2) Focusing on the sensations of the body is like taking an elevator down from the abstract/ overthinking brain => to the concrete sensations of the body, from the abstract to the concrete: it lessens anxiety when you do that because anxiety and overthinking go together. – Yes, in fact, when I notice the sensations, I am bringing my brain back which is otherwise all over the place and I wouldn’t even remember how I got there.

Thanks for appreciating my mentoring, I wish I could do more but I don’t think it is safe.

I am editing to add, I was consistently disappointed by my parents’ inability to make us feel safe and it now has me unable to believe that life can be good and trust anyone with taking control. But at the same time, I think it has affected my ability to function and exhausted me, hence this topic and how it started.

Girija

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.

Hi anita

I am learning to let go just now, over time I’ll learn it’s ok to do so.. I’ll practice calming myself down in the meantime.

Girija

Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me, anita. It is very selfless of you. You guided me through one of the worst moments in the last couple of years of my life. I am eternally grateful to you for that. And I apologize for being impatient and making you feel like I wasn’t fully taking in what you were saying.

I’ll remind you again that you can also post here should you want to share anything.

Girija

Hi anita

I think the philosophy of death we have for individuals can also apply to us as a species. We can’t control the actions of everyone, so we take the consequences as they come. And the consequences are not just for humans but other species as well.

The only sad thing is that poorer and underpriveleged are first affected. This however will push the rich to action, so maybe the species won’t go extinct completely.

Hi anita

because air does not stay contained in any one particular neighborhood, city or country… because smoke and pollution in the air spread everywhere, then the rich and privileged have to breathe the same smoke filled, polluted air, just as the poor and unprivileged. The rich will breathe the air until it is not too bad for them. The day a billionaire or his children are bothered by the air they breathe, they will do whatever it takes to feel better. We don’t feel the poor air quality to the point of suffering, so no one takes it seriously. However, try to set up a factory or a dump site in a rich locality, see how it goes. The real pollutants are always geographically closer to the poorer ppopulations.

but if the poor people are sick and dying, who will produce and deliver food to the rich, in their fancy homes…Who will serve them? –The caste system in India is a great precedent and deep dive into human behaviour. To what point can you segregate into classes for one class to live in comfort. There were supposed to 4 main divisions, but lo and behold – we have subcastes within each caste. On the sites my mom creates marriage profiles for me, some subcastes don’t want to mingle with others because they are lesser. Even among the rich, there is a poor guy – poorer rather. He will service the rest. Maybe that’s why we feel like we’ve never earnt enough money. You never know when you will be the poorest person in the room, and we know money is the only value we have in capitalism

immediate financial profit, – this sometimes bring quick innovation and development too. Take the vaccines for example. It is selfish, but that is the way we’ve organized ourselves – left many a people behind because they bring no monetary value or refused to give people a chance to build their materialistic wealth throughout history – slavery, casteism. These were all devoid of empathy or unity. They were evil snd abusive. A society built on top of such an environment is naturally not ethical. The values it espouses are of looking for the very immediate financial benefit you mentioned, whether you are rich or poor. The only difference being the damage a rich person does is exponential larger and the positive impact they can bring is also just as large because of the resources they have. But positive impact is not what drives us. On top of this, there is no real punishment for exploitation. The rich get away. This is the society our ancestors built. This is our karma. We are suffering the consequences

Thank you for the compliment.

Girija

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by samy.