Tag: anxiety

Post-Accident Packing and Travel Anxiety [en]

I’m on the train to Paris. I’ll be coming back a week on Monday. It’s a comfortable, easy trip. The reason for my travel is I’m attending a two-day course on burnout – part of my training at the Gregory Bateson Institute. I’d planned on postponing this module until next year or the year after, given that my main priority now is building my working capacity back up following last year’s accident. But earlier this year, the whole curriculum was redesigned (it’s a good thing!), and the material on burnout will be incorporated into a longer module which is largely redundant with the courses I’ve already taken. So: now or never.

Following my relapse/brain crash earlier this year, I took the decision in March to pretty much clear out anything that was in my calendar. It was a tough decision, but it was the right one (people who have experience with chronic fatigue will know what I’m talking about). For those few plans I held on to, I « cleared the decks » around them to ensure they would not interfere with getting my work done, and that work would not jeopardise them. This means I took the whole week off for these two days of training, just like I took the whole week off a fortnight ago to go and see Mika live at the Caribana Festival. It worked.

In my pre-accident life, I might have travelled on Monday, attended the training on Tuesday and Wednesday, and travelled home Thursday. The « recovery » version of this is to add at least a day of padding in between training and travel, with nothing planned, so I can rest/stock up on « energy »/recover, and reduce the risk of (for example) travelling on a maxed out brain. I figured I might as well add on a few extra days (particularly as Oscar is not around anymore – something I’m really thankful for to be honest, with the awful heat wave that hit us over the last week), and catch up with a couple of people, if I’m in good enough shape.

This is my fourth « real trip » since my accident. I went to France twice for extended week-ends with family or friends last year. Each time was absolutely exhausting (but nice). Then after Christmas I went to spend some time at the chalet – first time I was going back since my accident – and we know what a disaster that turned out to be. This time, I think I’ve planned and organised things well enough and with a lot of caution.

As I was packing and preparing for departure yesterday, I realised I was really stressed out. More than usual. Packing and preparing to travel has always been stressful for me. It’s not the actual travel or being in a strange place or away from home. Or maybe just a little. What it is mainly is all the executive function acrobatics required in dealing with travel-related logistics:

  • making sure I do the things that need to be done before leaving
  • deciding what to bring with me (this is a huge one)
  • organising cat- and plant-sitting
  • inserting these « unusual activities » into my days at the right time, in the right order, and with enough time to carry them out
  • leaving wherever I’m at to go “somewhere else” – the transition itself.

Putting things in the suitcase is actually a part I like. It’s real-life Tetris: fun. Once I’ve locked the door behind me and am heading out with my luggage, I’m good. But before that, it’s complicated. I have got much better at dealing with it over the years, and with the clearer view on my executive function challenges that my ADHD diagnosis brought me a few years ago (and meds!) it’s even better.

I don’t have a very clear memory of how preparation for my two France trips went last year (only that I overpacked, a sign that making decisions regarding what to take or not was difficult, so in doubt, pack more). But I do know that packing for the chalet in December was a nightmare.

OK, I had already « crashed » during the previous week, but I’d taken rest to recover and felt functional enough to tackle it. And yes, it was also the first time back to the chalet since my accident, but I was really looking forward to heading back. I was aware there was maybe a little (normal) underlying apprehension that I might not be perceiving.

What apprehension I could feel was not about going to the chalet, but about the possibility of an unexpected emotional reaction to being there again. It was the same thing when I went back on the ski slopes: not scared of skiing, just worried I might have misjudged my readiness and have some kind of PTSD-like reaction to being back on my skis or where the accident took place. Nothing like that happened, by the way. Everything was fine.

This illustrates where most of my post-accident anxiety lies. I am normally pretty good, in general, in predicting how I’ll react, what will be challenging, what I can and can’t deal with. I know myself well, including my biases, and of course I know that when you expect something to do this way or that, it does have an influence on the outcome – I do my best to correct for that. Since my accident however, I have been blindsided by my brain more times than I can count. At times I feel like I do not know myself anymore, though of course I’m still me and very much feel me, but when it comes to “what I can take”, whether mentally, physically or emotionally, I’ve had a lot of bad surprises.

I am repeatedly finding myself in the situations where my brain does not deliver in the way I expect it to, and where I misjudge what I’m able to do. In my accident-recovery-life, the consequences of these prediction errors are swift: I crash. I don’t know if it hits everybody this hard, but for me in any case, it’s pretty traumatising to have my brain brutally and unexpectedly go on strike like that. Both the “brain not working” and the “didn’t see that coming” aspects are really scary.

So now, as time goes on and my recovery stretches out way longer than I initially imagined, as the clock of certain administrative deadlines regarding my return to full work capacity start audibly ticking, as I fail again and again to know my fluctuating limits, I can feel my underlying confidence in my abilities and self-awareness slowly erode, leaving place to self-doubt and increased anxiety about dealing with life and the world. It sucks: the anxiety is not crippling, it’s just a nuisance and an energy-drain at this stage, but I can see the process and the slope I’m on, and I do not like it one bit. Breathe. Relax. Deal with today. Be patient. Hang in there. Keep at it. Trust the recovery process. All this works, and I don’t feel in danger, but it’s more and more work to not let myself be dragged down.

Right. So there’s that. My trust in my ability to manage myself and deal with life is weaker than it was. So my baseline anxiety is higher, my executive function is struggling more, and I tire quickly. But as I was walking to my neighbourhood station to catch the local train a few hours ago, I understood that something else was probably coming into play in terms of post-accident travel and packing anxiety.

You see, my accident happened on the very day I travelled to the chalet for my holidays. I hadn’t been there for a while, I’d actually emptied the chalet of all my stuff and Oscar’s when I had last departed, so it was already an “increased stress” packing and travel operation. Nothing disastrous, still quite within the realm of ordinary, but not a walk in the park.

I got to the chalet (later than I had intended), got Oscar settled, dumped my unopened luggage in a corner and headed off immediately to get a couple of hours of skiing in on this first day. When I fell, I was heading back to unpack and enjoy the evening. I didn’t make it back: I spent the night at the hospital, in the haze and stress you can imagine, worried about my shoulder and my old diabetic cat who was alone at the chalet, trying to make decisions and organise logistics (How can I get back to the chalet? Should I go back to Lausanne? Who has a good shoulder specialist? Who can help me with my car as I can’t drive? That’s just the start of them). The next day a friend picked me up at the hospital and drove me back to the chalet, and another one came to help me empty the chalet and drive me back home. It was horribly stressful. I was in pain, I was freaked out, and instead of resting my concussed brain I was in full crisis management mode. It didn’t get better over the next two weeks.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my accident taking place just on the heels of travelling to the chalet didn’t add an extra layer of “negative association” to a transition that was never that easy for me to begin with.

Say you have a pet who always stressed out when heading to the vet’s. You do stuff to make it smoother: stay calm yourself, get your pet used to the carrier or the car, add treats, maybe a mild sedative, maintain usual routines as much as possible… It’s not great, but it’s not a disaster anymore, it’s manageable. And then, one fateful vet visit, something “bad” happens there. Not on purpose, of course. An exam that’s longer or more intrusive. A different vet. A loud noise at the wrong time. The pet freaks out, has a really bad experience.

Well, chances are that the next time you prepare to take your pet to the vet, it’s going to be more complicated.

That’s how I feel it’s playing out for me. I’m not actively scared of travelling or having an accident. But I’m clearly more stressed when preparing to travel, and some part of that could very well be the proximity of my accident to travel which has left a negative association. Not PTSD of course, but maybe on that continuum, probably closer to normal than pathological.

In 2019 I had a bad car accident (which resulted in surgery on my right wrist six months later). I was in a roundabout when a car entering it hit the back of my car right from the side. I didn’t see anything – there was a loud bang and choc and suddenly I was heading off the road right onto a big metal signpost solidly anchored in the ground. The car flattened it, ripped it out of the ground, and in turn it bent the car frame into a right angle. The car was totalled, we were lucky. I drove quickly afterwards with a rental, without issues. I’ve always liked driving and never been afraid at the wheel. But for months afterwards I felt a tiny surge of apprehension when going through roundabouts (it even still happens sometimes now when I’m on the precise spot of the accident). Nothing huge, but a clear signal – and this was on the backdrop of an activity (driving) that was very positive in terms of associations, compared to packing/traveling which was already fraught.

We’ll see how things play out over the next months and years. But I think I’ve put my finger on something that wasn’t on my radar. You know how sometimes you have an insight that just feels like it’s the missing piece? That’s what this feels like. In my experience, it’s often enough for me to just understand this kind of mechanism to defuse it. Like when I understood that a huge amount of my anxiety over Oscar’s impending death was the possible consequences this loss would have on my recovery timeline, given the post-accident uncharted territory I described higher up when it comes to my ability to “deal with life” in these times.

I typed this on my phone, with an external keyboard. Pretty comfortable I have to say, but not quite enough that I feel like adding links (there would be a good handful to add). I’d also like to say more regarding continuums between normal and pathological, and also on the somewhat related question of normality: when it comes to living beings, normal/average is a mathematical abstraction (or a bell curve), which should make us think real hard about how we frame certain realities (e.g. “neurodiversity”).

Anyway, I’m going to leave things there. I’m starting to feel a bit of motion-sickness and I feel just about ready for a nap in my comfy train seat.

Too Much News? [en]

[fr] Il y a bien des années j'ai cessé de regarder les nouvelles à la télé, de lire les journaux, etc. Je m'en suis trouvée bien moins angoissée. Insidieusement, je me suis remise à suivre l'actualité du monde, via Facebook surtout. Suis-je retombée dans le piège de l'angoisse de l'actu? Est-ce que ce qui se passe maintenant est beaucoup plus grave que ce qui se passait il y a dix ans? J'ai toujours été très optimiste quant à l'avenir de l'humanité, mais ces derniers mois ont changé ça. Des fois je me demande si je devrais me lancer en politique ou alors tout débrancher et acheter des chèvres.

On the edge
Many years ago I stopped watching TV news or reading the papers, because seeing all these terrible things happening in the world and that I was powerless about only managed to make me anxious. I became much less anxious after that.
 
Now, slowly, stealthily, “the news” has crept back into my life, through social media. And at some point, I started “following” again. Is what’s happening in the world now worse and more important than what was going on 10 years ago? Or have I just fallen into the same trap?
 
I used to feel pretty optimistic about where the world was going, although in my day-to-day life I am much more of a pessimist. I believe in resilience of social structures and societies and humanity. But these last few months have changed that. I now find myself very worried about where the world is headed.
 
Do I worry more because I consume more news? Or do I worry more because it is more worrisome? Or both?
 
There are days where I feel that maybe the solution is go either “all in” or “all out”. Dive into politics, join a party, get involved beyond “Facebook activism”. Or cut news out of my life again.
Originally published as a Facebook post.

Tips For the Stressed and Anxious [en]

[fr] Une série de conseils (basés sur mon expérience personnelle!) pour les stressés et anxieux. Top de la liste: s'assurer qu'on dort, mange, et bouge assez (c'est la base). Boire des tisanes de fleur d'oranger. Prendre un bain chaud. Méditer.

Twice a month I write up an article chosen by my readers. This is the second. Vote for the next one!

After years of learning to deal with my stressed and anxious self, here are a few ideas and tips I’ve found help me get through those moments. It won’t replace therapy of course, but it can help!

  • Make sure you have your basics covered (this is your top priority): enough sleep, enough food (preferably more or less balanced), and physical exercise (go for a walk!) — regular hours if possible.
  • Drink orange blossom infusions (“fleur d’oranger”). It’s a relaxing infusion — 4-5 cups a day, and one 30 minutes before going to bed if you have trouble sleeping. I’m a fan ever since drinking those saved one of my exam sessions.
  • Take a warm bath.
  • Lie down, close your eyes, and concentrate on your breathing for 10-20 minutes, without falling asleep, and without starting to think about stuff. When thoughts show up, just let them fly by as you concentrate on your breathing. (This is kind of basic meditation.) Once or twice a day.
  • When stressed, identify the main stressor (if it’s procrastination-related stress) and get it done with. Things usually get better after that.
  • If anxious/down, go for stuff that makes you laugh (it helps the brain switch gears): lolcats, comedy movie, fun friends, comics — whatever does it for you.
  • Sometimes (specially if you’re more down than anxious), watching a scary movie / thriller can do the trick. Anxiety is often something we do to ourselves (need that adrenalin-drug!) so getting a shot through artifical means (the movie) can actually help relax about other stuff.
  • Head out to the countryside/lake/mountains. Look at nature around you — it helps regain a sense of proportion.
  • Watch the Eight Irresistable Principles of Fun video (a few minutes).

Of course, these are very general tips. They are not magic recipes, either: sometimes we’re stressed or anxious for very good reasons, and it’s normal to be uncomfortable. But these ideas might help make things a little bit better or bearable when it’s rough.

Got any tips that work for you when you’re stressed or anxious, and that you’d like to share? The comments are yours.

Client Phone Calls: House Rules [en]

I have recently become aware that I am developing a certain number of “house rules” for my phone calls with clients (particularly first-contact phone calls). I thought I’d share them here with you in case they could come in handy to other freelancers:

  1. I don’t give rates on the phone
  2. I don’t agree to new things
  3. I don’t talk about what I’m doing with a contact to a third party within the same company unless my contact introduced me to them.

I’ll detail the whys and the hows of these below, but first of all…

Me and phone calls

I often describe myself as a phonephobic. There are situations where I’m perfectly comfortable on the phone (with friends, for example), but anything that hints of administrivia or relationship tension just makes me go ballistic if it needs to be dealt with by phone.

There was a time when I would walk into town to the offices so I could deal with admin stuff face-to-face, rather than pick up the call and get it done in five minues.

To be fair, I’ve had my share of traumatizing phone experiences (when I was a scout leader as a teenager, and all through my adult years). I also worked as a phone interviewer (surveys) for a couple of years when I was a student — so I’m not completely incompetent either. I’m not exactly sure why I am so scared of phone calls, but I am.

If you’ve had me on the phone you probably have no idea of this, because I cover it up, but it translates in me procrastinating a lot when I need to call people back, and agonizing for days — weeks — when I decide I need to cold-call somebody.

Still. I don’t like it, but I’m functional — however, I need to take into account that I feel under pressure on the phone and take steps to make things easier for me. (Less blunders = happier clients, in the end.)

Not giving rates on the phone

First of all, let me say that as a freelancer in a pioneering industry, determining how much to ask for the services I offer has always been a bit of a headache. From undercharging (way too often) to overcharging (a few times), I’ve done it all. Convincing people they need me is not too much of an issue, but actually asking for money is where I more often than not start sliding down into the pit of self-deprecation.

I’ve been doing this for four years now, and I’m much better at it than I was. I’m actually even starting to consider myself pretty competent, to say the truth. But even with the worst of the pricing-angst behind me, offering services for which there is no real fixed market-price to a wide variety of clients means that pricing is not simple. (Think Oracle and Intel on one end of the spectrum, and struggling artists and newbie freelancers on the other.)

Recently, I realized that I was much less likely to undercharge (or overcharge) if I had a little time to calmly think about my pricing, without the client breathing down my neck on the other end of the line. (Well, my clients aren’t actually that bad, quite the contrary, but given my phone anxiety, that’s quickly what it feels like.) I asked around a bit, and discovered that quite a few of my colleagues had a “no money on the phone” policy. By e-mail is fine, face-to-face is fine, but not on the phone. If your client is going to go green (or speechless) when he hears your price, chances are you’d rather it not happen on the phone. And if your prices are right, then that’s what’s going to happen.

So, unless you’re going to systematically undercharge, keep the money talk off the phone.

I make exceptions when the service is very well-defined and there is no hesitation about the price. For example, if a freelancer calls me up because he wants to spend half a day with me to make his website, I’ll give the price on the phone.

But even that is not without danger: I have given freelancer prices to small companies in this kind of situation, because I didn’t have enough information at that moment to realize what kind of client I was dealing with. And it’s always very unpleasant to have to send a follow-up e-mail saying “actually, it’s more expensive than I told you”. And it’s even more unpleasant to be stuck with work you’re undercharging for.

Not agreeing to new things on the phone

I’m easily enthusiastic about new projects, and that does give me a tendency to bite off more than I can chew. Again, as there are few things more unpleasant than saying “Oh yes, great, let’s do that!” and having to follow up with an e-mail the next day (or worse the next week or the next month) explaining that you overcommited and have to back out.

This can also help manage scope creep for existing projects.

When I was a teenager, my dad showed me these cards they were distributing students at his school. They were guidelines to help them decide when to say “no” to something. One of the guidelines was something like “If you feel under pressure to say yes, then that alone is a reason for saying no.” Taking a little bit of time to think about something on your own or by talking to a trusted friend cannot hurt. Don’t fall for the “now or never” ploy.

Third-party calls from the same company

I am not a fan of triangulation. I know from first-hand experience that it does not make for happy relationships, and do my best to not fall into that kind of trap with my clients.

If my client is a company, I usually have a single point of contact. If my contact puts me in touch with other people from the company so that I can do my job, that is fine. But if I receive a cold call from a third party from inside the same company, asking for information about an ongoing project, I will not discuss it without checking first with my contact.

In practice

These three guidelines I have are actually there to allow me to make decisions or deal with situations without being under the pressure of having to give an immediate response to something. I think the phone is particularly pressure-inducing because silence is less acceptable than if you’re face-to-face.

I think if you’re somebody who tends to be anxious in this kind of situation or agree too quickly to things, it helps to have these predefined guidelines for what to do in certain set situations — particularly with first-time calls with clients (and, I would tend to argue, for subsequent calls as well; can you tell I don’t like the phone?)

If you have other guidelines for your phone calls with clients, do share them in the comments.

Here are a few useful lines I try to keep handy. Do you have others?

  • That sounds really interesting! I’d like to sleep on it a bit and get back to you in a few days.
  • I’m afraid I don’t give my rates on the phone. I’ll send you an e-mail with my rates by tomorrow.
  • That sounds reasonable. Let me think about it and give you an answer by the end of the week.

And as a final note, yes, I know that my clients are reading this too. I don’t mind being comfortable about my shortcomings. And I’m not interested in entering professional relationships (or any, for that matter) based on power-play. Which is, let’s face it, the only kind of situation where talking about this kind of stuff in the open could be harmful for me.

Qwitted Qwitter After Less Than 24 Hours [en]

[fr] Qwitter, un service qui vous dit quand on cesse de vous suivre sur Twitter. Très peu pour moi -- je viens de le désactiver après moins de 24 heures de service. Non pas que je ne "supporte" pas l'idée qu'on puisse cesser de me suivre (bon dieu non, c'est plutôt que je ne saisis pas ce que 1500 personnes y trouvent à recevoir quotidiennement mes mises à jour) -- mais simplement parce que j'évite d'ajouter à ma vie déjà suffisamment angoissée des sources de "négativité", comme la consommation d'indices de marchés boursiers ou de nouvelles télévisées ou non. (Il y a les gens qui ont des "problèmes d'angoisse", comme on dit, et il y a les autres. Ces derniers ont bien de la chance, et qu'ils s'abstiennent de commentaires simplistes, de grâce.)

I thought I’d try out Qwitter. Not that I’m that obsessed with who stops following me, but I thought it could be interesting to see when my Twitter behaviour made followers drop me.

Well, less than 24 hours later (and after only 2 people qwitting on me), I have decided to turn it off.

Of course, I know people unfollow me. But getting this kind of news in my inbox generates just about the same kind of “downs” as checking the stock market every 10 minutes (instead of once in a blue moon or even once a day) and watching the news on TV (instead of avoiding unnecessary focus on all the wrongs in this world).

So, no thank you, Qwitter. There are enough sources of anxiety in my life without me adding them just for fun.

“Anxiety” is a big word here of course — I mean, who cares about people unfollowing them on Twitter — but still, who has never felt the tiniest pang at losing something they had (or thought they had)? It’s quite clear from research out there (check out Predictably Irrational for example) that being given $1 and then having to hand it back leaves one slightly more unhappy than if one never had that dollar in hand in first place.

Of course, I could filter all the Qwitter e-mails into a folder and check on them only when I want to know when such-and-such stopped following me. But is it really worth the trouble?