The slow silent killer

After a few years this anonymous female writer feels to share some thoughts and will admit some scary not so awesome things. I am confronted with thoughts of not being happy, not satisfied with my life and feeling empty inside… feeling.. alone.. To be frankly it’s not just lately. Actually way more longer than that. Let’s say for several years now. All the time I thought this feeling comes and goes that would probably be just stupidly related to my monthly period. I do have strong hormonal ups and downs that regulates most of the time my bad unstable mood. Unfortunately this covers bigger problem. 

Feeling empty, gosh, it almost sounds pathetic to be honest to see myself writing this now. It does label me how I exactly feel.  How far could I’ve let this cold dark empty energy go into my life, my soul and body. Every person on earth has gone through major changes. For some a difficult hard or even traumatic past and for the other a warm growing up youth in an ideal environment that consists much love and caring. I have been thinking where I am. Where did it all go wrong?  I will not explain my past including my youth. What happened cannot be changed. I only got the now and the future.  Which is in only my hands and god of course.

As a medical professional I am blessed in a way that I can experience private aspects of peoples lives that I see as my patients. Which includes the diseases they cary with them, problems and the moments when their vulnerability are shown. I daily become to start to actually see that lots of people, the patients, are taking antidepressants because they suffer from depression. They all got something very scary in common; they have a normal appearance. Most of them are functioning in daily life and have a regular job. The majority even has a smile on their face. And yes.. that started to let me think about myself.

In some way it confronted me in many ways with myself. Everyday I try to step out of bed and pretend I have this purpose for that day and life. I shower, dress up, take the tram to work and speak nicely and social to my co-workers with a big smile. In the meanwhile introspective another kind of process is taking place. ”Having fear and constant anxiety to lose control or being able to be rejected by others at any moment that occurs on a regular base”. Not having self-esteem is not making it any easier. Being rewarded by others will be at a certain moment the only way of becoming to feel better since I don’t give it to myself. But I remark I am even further away than that just that. I don’t search for social activities anymore. Haven’t spoken to most of my friends for ages merely some Watssapp contact but nothing in person these days. I feel all the time just tired and cannot handle any impuls. I try to ignore (dis)appointments and just do the minimal. Even seeing my family gets me irritated, moody and sad at the same time because I cannot change the fact that they live in a miserable situation in which I definitely cannot witness that.

In these couple of years since 2012 I lost perspective of my life. Not experiencing the lust of being alive. Not feeling self-connected has gotten me slowly dissociated from everything.

I notice I don’t live for myself anymore. Not having passions and hobbies that I used to have. Looking back to who I was by seeing the pictures and videos how passionated I was as a person makes me questioning what all happened. I gave up life so easily. I distrusted my own life by the thoughts of not being good enough.. successful enough or not even allowing myself to just ‘be’. I never believed in myself that I could do something good nor able to achieve my dreams. If I would just know my dreams pfff. I rather thought how insufficient I was and still am.

The way we grew up defines mostly how we deal with our obstacles on the long term life. But I do forget I have my own responsibility for how I am feeling now.

I don’t want to bother anyone with my problems or even show them how I feel to my surroundings. In this society most of the people only see it as weak or as a burden.  They think you are this unstable lunatic that will never be able to be a ‘normal’ human being nor a future mom whatsoever. I am scared people will see me that way and most of all people I truly care and love about. There is this nightmare movie playing on and off in my head. That this overthinking dysthyme woman will end up soon without job and just sitting at home incapable doing nothing and just stare to the white walls feeling only numb. Ending up in a mental institution in the future. That’s my most scary dramatic thought. Therefore the idea of not being able to create a warm loving family with my future partner and having kids because my depressed thoughts are not making me any more attractive fucks up my thoughts. Somewhere deeply inside me I do have dreams and desires. But the thought of getting there has gone away each day a bit further.

It’s a hell of a task to invest in yourself to really fulfill your own life with happiness and build up your self-esteem. I did try by psychologist, self-help books, podcast and friends. Sometimes it overpasses the winter or just a few months for a spontaneous remission. But I do feel this is an ongoing chronicle thing unfortunately. At this moment I am doubting to decide to stop even my relationship with my boyfriend which I truly love. I know it sounds unbelievable that even a person that doesn’t love herself can love another. He should not have a person like me in his ideal life since I am an overflow of lots of flaws. I am even jealous of how he has his life so perfect on track career and family wise. I know it will hurt me a lot to break up and even if I want to have him involved in my life I feel that every small unimportant irritation will be blown up in my head which I cannot handle at this moment.  The uncertainty of losing him is a paradox. I rather control my further loss for now than being dumped for my pessimistic or depressive behaviour that might appear soon if I don’t make any steps in a good direction. This rejection happened before in my past. I know this is not a positive message and I just want to share my real thoughts instead of the fake show. I know more people are out there with the same or more severe problem and I just want to say I understand partly how they are feeling now. Stay strong and let’s hope we find our power on our way for a better mental life.

 

The now versus expectations

What makes being in love easier? Living in the now would make it a lot more easier. But what if it is a natural thing to have expectations of your partner or the people around you? You will facing disappointments when you find out your way of thinking or your future ideals doesn’t match with theirs. It’s a big paradox of having expectations that comes along with disappointments versus no expectations and living in the now and just enjoy the moment as how it comes. I still can’t manage to respect the now as it is without thinking about the future. But I do know people who can and are actually happy by enjoying that little moment of love and fun that it brings. 

To be honest it’s a big challenge for me to enjoy the moment I have with people around me. Everything I deal with expectations that originate from myself of others. I think others have it too but it’s difficult to admit that we have them. It makes us in some way dependable and weak. Of course it is a strong thing to say to people like I do not need others and if certain things don’t happen it is oke. BUT in reality it doesn’t feel like that unfortunately. In buddhism there is this common quote..

”  you have to be able to let go what you love ”

They say you should not be attached to material, people nor certain expectations. So you will not be disappointed and thereby create are more happier life.

We people are having a difficult time to manage with our own inner pain. Instead of analysing where this pain comes from we try to ignore it and hide it behind doors. Thus not mindfull in this situation. We could manage this issue by being aware about our inner pain. This relates to the old patterns that make their comeback everytime when we not solve and process our passed problems. Instead of this we create expectations because we don’t want to deal with our own problems, our inner pain. Other people should deal with it and make adjustments with us self. We are often stuck with our old pattern behaviors from our past that keeps us having expectations. Too bad because this will always makes us unhappy. Every little related issue could make the recall from our past and makes us respond the same way we are used to do to that specific problem.  Therefore a beautiful relationship can break or friendships will end sooner when it is totally not necessary that this should happen. And still after writing this I cannot convince myself of letting things go. It will always be a challenge for me and it will be something I have to work on everyday.

But anyways, it is a good thing to be aware of at least. So we could try to be step by step not disappointment and happy. Life is a big paradox. Being in love is such a nice beautiful thing but also comes with having the risk of losing that love. The same goes with achievements in career. The higher the results the more pressure you will have for keep going the good work and the more in control you want to be. Which will have disastrous consequences. We all know that losing something in any aspects can hurt a lot. Thats why we have to learn to let go what we fear the most, losing love or failing the job. Lets not have expectations of ‘having’. Let us just be what we are and have what we have in our hands now..

Leave the sun for the rain

How far do we people go to reach out for our goals? If it’s not our goals, but for good human intentions, would we be willing or able to do that? Who would leave the sun for the rain? And does this always must have a negative meaning or is it just a temporary state for the higher soul? 

I do relate myself to this last sentence. I do leave the sun for the rain. I think everyone with a good conscience is willing to do so. But might not all be able to be strong enough to pass the trouble that it brings. To give a short example how I would see this clear pictured; Love is a big keyword, which visualizes the leave the sun for the rain quote.

Love makes everything being worth it, to go through the good and most important the bad.

If you love a person truly nothing else counts except the inner connection between you and your beloved one(s). Of course this might sounds fairytelling for you but this cliché-talk sounds actually very real for me though. Everyone has experienced this in multiple ways. For example a person that is so ambitioned for their profession and thereby giving up everything else that is normally important (the movie Whiplash shows this perfectly! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d_jQycdQGo). The other could pass this through a love relationship in which could be complicating by circumstances. Such as long distance or toxic love. Where you know a person is not good for you but you can’t unbreak yourself from the chain because you always see the good in every loving person.  Or maybe you witnessed this in a situation of an addicted person.  Where parents standing unpowered, having paradoxical fights with their child not able to define the boundaries. And therefore just not able to put their kid on the streets. Tough love I would say. I don’t see love completely as a solely feeling of happiness actually. More of having a pure sincere connection that stays stable in every circumstances; the good and the bad. In worst case this means going through life by lots of struggles… and sometimes it would be just easy to give up, being a bit ego and letting go. But still I won’t do that because of the strong inner power of love. Could this lead to unhealthy situations, yes..

It could be really hard to experience the unconditional love. You could see it in a beautiful way in sense of fighting for the people you love. But also suffering for not being able to let go a person even when important boundaries are crossed.

Boundaries are to keep yourself save and not losing yourself by other peoples problems and projected negativity.  In which you can’t make any difference in their perspective or getting in any control of that.

And, that’s tough thing. I experience this type of unconditional love in relationships and family-matters. I left the sun for the rain at moments where things are becoming hard and difficult to deal with the people I love, where I will fight with them or for them. Even when I know it hurts me to be around them.

When the true reality of your dream job reveals, what now?!

Many people probably experienced this at least once in their life. You might get the chance to start the perfect job you were dreaming of (doctor, lawyer, entrepreneur and so on) but in a while noticing it was not really typically what you thought of before you took the offer. How further? The big crowd first tries to overcome that period of insecureness by denying it. Then they start to feel consequent unhappy with what they are doing. Just working their ass of everyday without enjoying it and the problem starts  becoming confronting. The moment you experience your dreamjob as a hard thing not worth to go for than it’s getting time to rethink your perfect future job! With everything feelings thoughts and ambitions changes by time. Even when these ideals are long time fixed. But as humans of course it could be difficult to let go of some of them. When we are not able to do so it’s possible to be wrapped up into a way of life in which you could never be happy with (do not go there please!?) Realizing that your ‘dream job’ is not 1. fitting you 2. needing too much work efforts whereby 3. fading the ‘you’ away or 4. just not liking the job anymore are very important indicators for standing still by the thoughts of this situation. And if NOT the results could be evolve into burn-outs & depressions. Which are frequent events that overcome our population easily (especially in this society) that actually makes it a healthy decision for  us to stop what we are doing now! But all situations have in common that we are most afraid for falling into a black hole. We just don’t know anymore what our next step is because we never thought of anything else before. And if we knew the alternatives it seems we are good in doubting and untrusting our own perfect suited plan. For me it overcame me several moments at my 26th and 28th and it got me out of the total run for five months and resulted literally in doing NOTHING. But it did help me figuring out what I want and don’t want. This is what I learned and experienced from it.

First I need to mention why I am writing this article. Uhm well, it started all after quitting my last job.  I had a high status job in the medicine world as a resident (doctor degree) getting experience in the intensive care department. This was everything I always wanted(emergency medicine, really cool ;)!! Growing up as a medical student there was always a ‘thing’ that all effort you make was only for becoming a doctor. It was written up as your own true identity. Thinking about becoming something else was weird and nobody would understand me for thinking about stepping over to some other professions. I always thought about becoming something else, different, creative in another way. Like for example being a graphic designer or webdesigner ect. But I never dared to be something else. After my study I have gained some experience in South-America working in several departments which was a tough period but very exciting, adventurous and informative as well. After that I came back in Europe and again getting work experience. Somehow I caught myself on being too perfectionist(already since early days). In work everything had to be accurate with perfect quality of work. The downside of this; it took lots of me in sense of time, effort and most important ME. I lost myself in my work and thereby dropped all personal activities. And found it difficult to handle the pressure and responsibilities. Not seeing friends nor family and only mulling about work at nights was really hard. I was trapped in a so called pre-burnout. It was heavy at work to deal with the daily stuff because of having no concentration and experiencing anxiety all the time. Also feeling extremely tired and most of all just worrying about everything, NOT GOOD. Somehow me living in distance from acquaintances/family and the job specifications that didn’t  fit me personally doesn’t mean I performed badly. Thank god I was willing to accept the idea of quitting my job and that was the most difficult decision making in lifetime. For that time moment it felt as giving up..

Why was it difficult? It was always important how other people thought about me and most important my parents. By growing up in a bit of a problematic family I was always trying as a child to compensate for all the things that didn’t go perfect at our house. I did this by having the perfect results at school & university. I learned myself a pattern that having good achievements means being perfect & good myself. Having no succes was equal as  being useless and worthless. Quitting that job was hard in a way that I was putting too much weight and value on this job. I saw my selfworth on that job. After a period it started to feel empty inside. The whole idea of being a doctor became something I did not want to think of anymore. But how would I project myself now on the working field. I really don’t know.. The only thing I studied for was medicine. And therefore by starting that I committed my whole life for being a doctor! Now I am 28th, what now? It’s a good thing you have different options within this degree, thank god!

After quitting ‘the job’ I start figuring out there was a life after letting go my ‘old ideals’

The so called break up with my life, my old habit of thinking, did me very good though. It changed me into a person that sees life more in a dynamic way. Like there is no good or wrong, it is only called life! The trial and error even seems amusing to me after some errors. Talking with others about being jobless could feel confronting, but actually nothing to be ashamed for! You will even notice that others have been going through the same experience and respecting the hard decision you made. Because they did not have the guts for doing what you did! No one including yourself would be happy if you coldblooded continued your daily status job you hate and going under by a depression and burn-out. Which is way more tougher to escape from. Take advantage that you have the time of the world for getting in touch with yourself again, be into nature, be physical active and most important do the things that make you desire for. Lots of succesfull people came from a place where they literally had nothing (no certifications, broke, no work experience) but they have all in common that they know themselves and what they  truly want. They are extremely motivated, hardworking because they love what they are doing. You could be one of them, I believe it for myself and for others. Don’t be afraid to make the move if you are not happy in the place you are in now!

PS: A small update; nowadays I got a parttime job getting experience in a less chaotic department of medicine. Fine for now and it’s cool too! Besides I am trying to write and creating creative concepts which I love!