Category: Mental Health

You know that feeling when you felt like you had already felt everything in the world and you have nothing left to be excite?

Maybe it’s the sign when you’re going in your thirties. Before I’m going to sleep one night I just remember some of my past, my habitual past, it creates pattern. You know those feeling when you encountered some particular problems or issues. You know it very well. You know how you’ll react with that feeling. You know it very well. At that moment you just didn’t recognise it. But after connecting the dots, you realised that everything you did for the last twenty plus year was basically the same. I’m not really changing. We are not. What changes is just how we perceive those stimulus. Maybe because we encountered it multiple times we’d be more calm to some situations. We know what will happens next, or at least we could predict what will happens. Even the outcome did not exactly match our prediction, that’s okay, because you are not a stranger with surprises. You just have to go with it. The main idea basically the same, it’s something surprising, stressful, thrilling, whether it’s a a bad news, a duty, or an intervention, it’s something you did not expect. And you just have to remember that it’s not your first time. You have to tell yourself i’ve encountered this before so it’s just another wave. And then you just have to surf the wave.

And that night before bed I realise that all these times I was consumed by my own imagination. That sometime I will encountered that dream. But I need to wake up before even sleeping that those things will not happened. Because it’s too far.

Sometimes I dreamed I’m a French, born French, have French physique and friends and work and living in Paris. Never going to happen.

Sometimes I dreamed winning an oscar and working in movie industry. Most probably never going to happen.

And sometimes I dreamed I had a very good friend, that I could share everything. That we met on a busy metro or tube, initially a stranger then we met and match. But yes, this is not going to happen as well.

Sometimes I dreamed I could live in a foreign country for the rest of my life. Due to my circumstance that I’m a licensed doctor in my country, that will not going to happen again.

Then I ask myself that night, what do I want?

What do I really want ?

Then I don’t really want anything. I didn’t. I already surrender with all my false hope and let life just rolled. Like everybody did. Like most everybody did. I do have hope. But my hope is just for me being a better person. But not again I’m hoping in a special circumstances as a dream city, job, group of friends, intimate others, situation. Because expectation creates worry and fear and doubt and other destructive things.

Expectation leads us run from being grateful for what we have now.

So now I was thinking that we ourself creates happiness. But I don’t believe in that word anymore, happiness. It’s artificial.Saying I’m happy is saying I’m at that moment happy, it’s only a state of emotion. Runs ups and downs. I believe more in mindfulness. WE ourself creates mindfulness. Peace of mind.

For example, I’m happy after watching a good movie. Then I want to applicate my life with everything that occured in the movie. I want to be like in the movie. Or a series show. I enjoyed it and I crave for it, looking the actors, the interview, giggling through the whole archived search, but in two weeks, three weeks you’ll going to forget that. You’re going to move to another state of liking something else. Because I know myself, I’m easily interested with things but easily bored as well. That’s my habit of thought. Maybe some others as well. Maybe we all are. We’re moving from one thing to another thing. We crave for new stimulus. And I’m not yet talking about social media.

Life is a repetitive act of habit.

Now that I already know or felt everything, I tricked myself to be mindful in every thing that happened. Because I life for almost thirty years and I have experienced a lot of things. The next thirty years (If I have that many years) will be a repetitive act of response on internal or external stimuli. And now that I’m calm, I’m just gonna sit and enjoy the journey. Without expecting. With regrets. With grateful. With mindfulness. With myself.

Things were getting intense lately. The whole self isolation thing is getting on everyone’s nerves. In my hospital, people were blaming others, people were giving some debatable instructions, it caused many chaotic event. I personally think that for some others that did not relate with treating corona infected patients, the most challenging case is to stay sane. To keep up clarity during at home. I think the changes occur in my office were never happened before. It creates history. It was something new that we need to be brave on our choices. But to be mindful is not an easy task. It requires lots of practice to become eventually a habit.

I am getting to know one or two thing in life, like the limit of our fear, and that sometimes if we’re really able to be bold enough to do anything, we could push to the limits and suddenly there will be no limit. So what I want to achieve here is that being mindful is a hard task , but workable.

I am drifting..

For knowing that I am here and know nothing about my future or next plan.

I am enjoying the sun that still rises daily.

And I’m grateful enough for that.

Suddenly you have all time in the world..with space restriction. Here are some tips to fill your daily tasks so you’re not turning into zombie and trap in prison of consciousness-here we are :

1. Learning new language

It’s the time for you to actually learn the language that you’ve been craving for but you have no time.. for me, it’s French. Take some online classes or enjoy some of the movies with subtitles. I’m really interested with FluentU online classes, I think I’m gonna give it a try for free trial. I’m wondering to spent sunny day in Paris just like I had last year, sitting on a café and ordering menu but this time with a proper French language, instead of using the english where some of French people surprisingly did not talk very fluently. I think that would be fantastic, if we survive all this world war Z ( we hope so).

2. Conference call tutoring class

I’ve tried it with my friend. So he’s going to have an exam next month to get into the same residency where I’m currently enrolled (yay for more friends) and I also have an exam next month. So I just found out earlier is the best way to study is to teach people..that’s why the teacher is always the best student. So me and my friend use zoom to tutor. It’s great so far, because since I want to give a legit material I have to read it thoroughly before I explained it to my friend and give the easiest explanation as possible. And he would give feedback giving questions or re-stating what I just explained so it’s a great active way of studying. A little tips for conference call : do use sharescreen tools so you are on the same page with your peers. For example opening the page of ebook or since I’m studying material with lots of picture needed I opened google images and typing everything that we’re currently studying. It’s quite effective since you’ll see lots of familiar picture so you’ll have a great picture-memory shot and sometimes there are some photos of slides or screenshot from the textbook that points some of the important information.

3. De-clutter your stuffs

So you might ever heard about Marie Kondo? If not then I felt sorry for you. This is the right time to re-organise your stuffs and remove all wasted stuffs. There are some easy ways to declutter your closet or your room according to Kondo. If you’re not keen enough on reading the book, you could just jump to some of her youtube tutorial. And it’s amazing because not only it physically make your room great again, but it also give mindfulness and calamity.

4. Follow the news

I know there were lots of false and hoax news supplied our social media or social chatting app, but it’s best for us to actually know what happened outside. I’m a very big fan of Live with Lucy Hockings for BBC global news. I think not only we’re following a legit information source but it’s also good for our mindfulness that we’re also care about the international conditions instead of being busy with our little world.

5. Practice Meditation

It is a really good way to spend your time. Take it lightly once a day maybe, but once you’re getting into it, it helps to calm us during this indefinite moment. And after the whole lockdown is over – yes, I’m optimistic, we might want to use in our daily basis.

You could also read the other tips on my previous post here.

Me : Well.. where do I start. I am going to be honest, once and for all. I’m trying to reflect on what had happened for the last twenty years I lived and I felt I kept doing all that wasted things.

Therapist : What wasted things ?

Me : Mmm.. I’m doing lots of bad things. It maybe not harmful for the others, but it is wasting my time and it was harmful to me. I became corrupted for what I did.

Therapist : Can you explain ?

Me : For example, If I have a free time, I’d be daydreaming about me doing all this great thing in the world. Or me being another person doing all the great thing in the world. I listen to my music and I’m just lost into it. I walk around my room and wasted an hour or two about it. At night, sometimes I’m just wasting by watching movies. Lots of movies or tv show, and I’m getting aroused by them. I daydreamed again because I want to be a part of the movie, and all the lust and desires coming to my mind. And another thing, this is sometimes harmful to others, I could not take other people’s talk lightly, sometimes I would just mad and express my anger towards them, or to the people I loved, like my parents. But even worse, I’m a religious man, I prayed five times a day, I go fasting twice a week, I read the Quran. But I’m still doing all those bad things.

Therapist : Do you want to change ?

Me : …

Therapist : You are in doubt. You want to change, but you know deep inside you don’t. You felt comfortable with your time table and habit. You have this self-defencing mechanism to express your stress by distracting yourself into imagination, a better world. But you live in a perceptual hope. You know it won’t happen to you in your life, because you dream way too high but you’re okay because somehow it relieves you from the reality. You always say to yourself before doing this conscious habit ” I need this. I need to run away from this”. Maybe it’s boredom, maybe it’s feeling not enough, maybe it’s anger. You channeling it right, you don’t harm others by daydreaming, but you realised that it took all your precious time. Sometimes you’re going back to God, you have the acceptance and you the urge to be in peace, but did your religious rituals change? No, sadly, because you’re doing it in automatic mode. You’re not doing it wholeheartedly.

Me : What should I do now ?

Therapist : First, the devil trapped you in three ways: anger, lust, or disgraceful to God. Once you trapped with it, they’re going to attack you with their greatest weapon : being hopeless that you will not be forgiven. Allah is the most merciful. So don’t lose hope. You could still repent from your sin and change.

Me : Okay, how do I start over ? I mean I have thought of that lots of time but things were always the same.

Therapist : If you’re start over, let’s just say the synonyms is reborn. And as a child, you will be exposed to everything new. That is start over. You want to perceived everything, your praying, your reading, with the sense of taking it wholeheartedly. You can not change your body, your gender, your home country, your family, but you could control your habit. Habit changes attitude and it changes character as well. And remember, habit is not only physical habit, but also mind-habit. Do not swayed with all your false reasonings to make your wrongdoings is justifiable.

Me : Could you give me an example, like in an actual way how to perceived this idea ?

Therapist : Let’s see…Okay let’s break down it a bit.

Next time you have the urge to walk around with music and daydreaming about being your whole different you or different imaginary person, you might want to observe your mind. What caused this? It is mostly probably by receiving impulse from others’ success story or your failure in life. You know what ? Now that you have a platform to it, write it. Write it down. Your jealousy, your failure, your bad temperature, share it to to others. If your talking to other people like your friend, you might get upset if you don’t receive the input you expect, but by writing you could just express everything off without being judged.

Now, next time you have the urge about lust, this is pretty hard. It was difficult because you celebrate celibacy and you’re not married yet. But it doesn’t mean that it justifies all your wrongdoings. You might want to observe your mind. What person attracts you, and you might want to think that the person was just ordinary. You’ve seen lots of things and it doesn’t worth to think of. So my best advice would be, sleep it off. Distract your mind. Think another issue that was interesting or stressing even.

The anger part will be flight it off, do not fight it. Wash your face. Take a meditation. Feel your breathing, your existence, and remind yourself that other people short words won’t disturb your mindfulness. Laugh it off, take other people’s words lightly, be silent and smile or doze it off.

Me : Okay..but what will I do if I have free time ? I felt lots of enjoyment with that. The daydreaming. The movie. The desires. That is why I keep living by. Thats my entertainment.

Therapist : I know.. it would be difficult. But it doesn’t mean that it could not be change. It is not a waste of time if your enjoying it. That is your slogan right ? But now you have been a lot mature and you’re not enjoying it anymore. Your time had passed. The enjoying time had already passed. Now you’re in the midst of boredom with your old habits and you want to create new things that matters. For starters, if anything comes up from all that we discussed : write it here. Channel your time by explore your writing, instead being a consumer, be a producer. Produce something.

But remember, you don’t have to stressed out to make every time is productive as possible. You’re just observe your mind first everytime you’re about to do something. Distract it with other thing that could probably spent your time a lot better.

Me : Okay.. thank you for now. I could sleep and I will be back if I need you.

Therapist : Thank you for being mindful and have this self-talk. Good night.

My room, Day 2 Lockdown , 01.00 AM.

Hi, I hope you’re healthy and safe in this crisis condition. Today is the first day after my department started the shift to work in the hospital, so basically we minimise our interaction in the hospital, which had been found that one of the residency in my hospital was found positive, and since the hospital is the biggest one in my city so they had to accept treating the co-vid patients. In midst of these condition, my country started the lockdown starting tomorrow. No one could get in nor get out of this country, which is good. Preventive matters.

Now that most of the time we should considered staying at home, these are my ideas for spending productive days (and safe) at home :

1. Protective Measure

So with the recommendation of my friend, I bought a sterilization lamp online. It was actually designed by Xiaomi for pet, but this sleek and mobile design could be used in another place and for human’s surrounding as well. So we could put in a room, leave the room then let it work for around 30 minutes. I know you might think that this not quite useful, but considering the case that nowadays people still in the midst of not doing the full protective measure ( people still go outside, masks were not obligated unless in my working area, there are still cars around) so it’s not a total self-isolate process. We are still allowed at home. But this could be useful in the future as well, so before the price is getting increased dramatically just like face masks, I decided to buy it. I also considered whether or not it is really important to go outside, and restrict people’s interaction. Yesterday I went to another hospital to visit my friend that just had a baby and they restrict and not allowed us to go visit my friend and her baby. But for what it’s worth I think it’s for a better reason.

I also bought a lot of yoghurt( a french one !) , juice, some frozen foods, and snacks to make myself comfortable at home. It is quite possible in the near future that my government would not allowed public transportation and ordering uber or even making strict regulations not allowed us to get out of home. My home was actually pretty close to two of the crisis center hospital, and also close with a big institute that had been full lockdown due to the rumor that the dean was infected and just last weekend he attend the graduation ceremony. So, yeah, preventive measures is needed.

2. Calling Friends

Being self-quarantine also a good opportunity to connect with old friends because I think it’s the one thing that keep up myself sane, because i would be degraded by my own mind. Just last night, I was thinking that I’m considering to discontinue my dream for studying abroad, because..why, I just can’t find the way to actually getting a decent work in other country, moreover when you’re a doctor when lots of countries have strict regulation giving work from international graduates. So yes probably I’m going to work in my country but spent some weeks or a month going abroad. I hope I could get a shot working in the capital city, and it keeps distracting my mind so I decided to call a friend and we discussed it and she agrees that it is quite reachable reality, instead of stressing myself to get job abroad. So the point is being mindful. We could not predict the future, so let’s just work what we have right now and accept wherever our life leads us too. So calling a friend is a nice way to spent our time without having to spent our money at the cafe, and we could do it just right from home.

3. Writing

Yes, continuing this, it keeps me on track, rewiring my brain and dissecting all the thoughts in my mind. It’s theraupetic. So probably I would write a lot more in this blog. Fingercross.

4. Movie Marathon

YES. I could not explain it more, but my heads were all up for French movies for sure.

5. Study in a fun way

I would think for a study group with us doing the video call but if that’s too much to do, probably the best thing is finding a way to keep interested to read textbook while you’re not taking care of patients in the hospital. Most of my active reading was motivated from taking care patients in the hospital and read about the disease, but I just found out that there were this amazing formula about studying : curiosity. And the formula for Curiosity = Wonder + Awe. So instead cookie-pressure ourself to memorise all the information, let’s take another perception of we’re studying because we want to know about lots of stuff and be awed with all the amazing things that we did not know yet. By involving emotions and being active it is easier to us grasp the information that we received.

6. Playing Games = Increase our focus

Yes.. I wish I knew it sooner. I usually don’t like games, but I had this one game that keeps me hook, it’s a simple searching hidden objects game, but it’s really addictive and you know what.. I just realized that by having a time-limit we are pushed to increase our focus to win the game, and my mind suddenly worked like a charm that in order to find a hat for example, we have to know the exact shape and colour of the hat, then we search it in the ordinary way it was put, but if it’s not there then we try to continue search in other spot, but remember search the stuff once at a time. You will not be doing anything at all if you’re searching for everything at the same time. And that quite reflects how we study to be efficient. We aim what we want to know, go into the right book and page, and stored the information. That is active studying. And by doing the time limit, it increases our time to read a long line of paragraphs without did not understand the meaning at all.

7. Cooking

Trying out new things is impressing. So I decided instead buying foods, I am making one. It’s also a great way to spent our time with people on the house.

7. Reflect Ourself

So I hope everyone is doing all the best for our survival. Remember this is the most important thing : This is the best way to reflect to ourself, to connect us more with The Creator, since we fought with a very little tiny and microscopic creatures yet we’re still losing it. So we are a very weak human being, aren’t we? And we might forgot that all the routines we did were mostly bless from God that we are healthy and being able to do lots of stuffs. And remember don’t forget to have hope..hope that this will be over soon, hope that will be okay in the future.

So, have a great lockdown – may we all protected from the virus. Cheers.

So today I had some issues with my fellow colleague. Basically I think the issue was because of me feeling superior than my colleagues so when I want to talk about this one patient, my colleagues thought that he supposed to work-up this patient. Well, I’m kinda mad with my colleague, it was as felt I don’t want to work while actually I’m doing quite good work that day- so I keep my emotions and working in silence for the rest of the day. Eventually, this person complained about my attitude to my friend, and yes, problems started when we talked about it.

Interpersonal relationship problems came when we talk about it. Because there is this ambience about being good in front of others, there’s this ego, there’s this superiority complex , and lots of everything else. So what I want to underline is : I think it’s important to keep ourself being mindful. While being mindful and calm handling every situation, I think it will be okay. But If I’m doing this silent treatment thing so people understood about me- that’s not going to solved anything. That’s what just happened with me and my parent the other day ( see my previous blog post). No matter how mad you are with a person, I think smiling and keeping up the dialogue rather than not answering him or her is essential. Or probably it’s even better you could talk about it nicely. This silent treatment attitude doesn’t work at all, it gives you heartache.

Remember, we don’t let our ego, our sense of “being someone important” involved in our daily relationship. It’s toxic and dissolving. Rather than playing it like I’m the boss, maybe you need to lower your head a bit and played “I’m no one but I’m doing this as best as I can”. I need help only if I really could not do it on my own, but as long as I’m capable of doing it at the moment- and human are capable a lot of thing, really – I’m not gonna my lazy-ass mind be the boss of my mentality but instead get to the warzone and work it right.

One another important thing, fight or flight.

Most of our daily activity requires fast decision whether is fight or flight. When someone is giving us this huge emotions, remember we fight about it or just let it flight. Most of the time, lots of things are better be flighted out- because it’s not important enough to be fighting for. Winning doesn’t have to be going into the battlefield. Sometimes we had our faulty thought as well, and better to be left out rather than giving a whole another stress of fighting.

So yes, one of most underrated but happened daily is interpersonal relationship problem. And in my case, it is mostly due to my ego – my high persona – that I was blamed for. Being a lot more humble person and accepting other person’s flaws, I think it’s needed to have a good relationship with others.