OK, not quite weekly posts :)
I'm still missing my mojo, but I've at least got to the point where I am not on pills every day to take the edge off of life. I view that as progress.
There is already somthing that has come out of therapy that has helped though. Something that I have tried to put into action daily, and so far has had a somewhat positive impact. A long, long way to go yet, but any progress is good.
One of the biggest issues that I have is assuming that everyone things I am stupid. Before they speak to me, whilst they are speaking to me, anytime they look at my code and most certainly after our communication has ended.
Having a 5 minute conversation can lead to weeks or months (or years) of stress for me. Or writing a blog post - the amount of posts that I have discarded over the years before saving is not insignificant!
Yes it's wrong to think that way, yes it is irrational. No, knowing those things doesn't help.
So... For the last few weeks what I have tried to stop is calling myself stupid. I used to do it probably 10 times a day or more.
Make a mistake: 'Sorry guys, I've been stupid'
Knocked something over: 'Yeah, that was stupid of me'
Forgotten something: 'Yeah, I was stupid and it slipped my mind.'
No more.
'Sorry guys, I pushed the branch without the last change as I forgot I was using code and that doesn't save on committing changes like Visual Studio does. Give me a minute and I'll push the last change as well.'
This was such a simple change, not easy, but simple, and yet the impact has been huge already. Because I am not stupid. And I need to stop telling others that I am. And I need to stop telling myself that I am. I make mistakes, sometimes too often, sometimes caused by stress, sometimes caused by haste. Sometimes caused by severe tiredness :) But, that is all that they are. Mistakes. Which can be made by everyone.
I can learn from them.
I can analyse the ones that you don't want to repeat.
I can't stop worrying that everyone else in the world thinks I'm stupid overnight. That is what the therapy is supposed to help.
I can stop calling myself stupid and making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
