Category: Health

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After All, Anxiety Just Needs A Dummy

Feed me! Feed me! Now! I mean N.O.W. now! Do you want me to spell it out?

Anxiety is throwing a tantrum at you like an unruly child. Oh No, not again! You become rather restless. You don’t know what to do. Meanwhile, anxiety is whispering in your ear: You are the worst parent in the world!

As the day progresses, that voice gets louder and louder, not to mention, those words that come out of its mouth also get nastier and nastier. Your heart is racing like a race car at Formula One or whatever the Grand Prix, your palms and armpits are sweating like Niagara Falls. Soon, you start to believe what anxiety has to say about you: You are a bad parent, a bad father, a bad mother, a bad boss, a bad colleague, a bad lover, a bad friend, even a bad loser. Everything except a badass! Way before the night sets in, you already feel as if it was the end of the world. Feeling helpless, you hide yourself in a little corner wondering: Could it get any worse than this?

Welcome to the prison cell of anxiety! Hello you, a jail bird, you’ve been hijacked and you’ve been sentenced to life. You start to act like a lost soul behind bar. Life sentence? It feels more like a death sentence in there. You can barely talk let alone walk, you’re dying inside, who gives a shit about writing a will. Your freedom is at anxiety’s mercy. You tell yourself you can’t function anymore. You look around thinking: Where is anxiety? Smile, you are on camera! It’s looking at you with a grin on the face: Sucker! Got you!

Your current situation is spiraling out of control. You feel stuck. Part of you is feeling sorry for yourself, another part of you is trying to find a way to distracting yourself from the side effects of anxiety. You start to perform those ridiculous OCD rituals just to get through the day and the night. Those so called bad habits also start to resurface wanting a piece of you – your health mostly. Come on! smoke, drink, get numb, it won’t hurt! You’re weak. You go ahead and do it like there’s no tomorrow.

Crazy! Crazy! What do you do? You do what you normally do. You get what you normally get out of. You call your best friends hoping to get some sympathetic/empathetic response. Haha, little do you know, when they see its your number on their phone screen, they decide not to answer it. Even if they do, they tell you they’re busy, not right now. For some silly reason, you begin to take things very personally. Feeling defected, you call your shrink or any health professionals you can find on your phone book. Surprise! Surprise! All you get is being put on a waiting list. At best, the next available appointment is some 2 months away. Before you have a chance to say goodbye, the receptionist has already hung up. Now you worry you’ll relapse into same old misery again. Perhaps you already have!

After all is said and done. You surrender. You give up fighting. You accept anxiety for what it is – nothing more, nothing less. Suck it up! You pluck up the courage, walk up to anxiety to see what it’s been up to. Suddenly…

You realise the reason why anxiety has been crying out loud. It’s dropped the damn dummy/pacifier on the floor! You pick it up, give it a rinse, then put it back into its mouth. Next, you realise anxiety has wet itself in bed. It’s time to change a diaper/nappy. It stinks like hell but you do it anyway. What’s to be afraid of? You’ve been to hell and back. It’s nothing compared to that. Before you know it, the tide is turning. Time is now on your side for a change. Anxiety is in its best behaviour – sleeping like a baby.

Finally, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Relief is on the way. You have a quiet moment to yourself. You come to a realisation that all these years what you haven’t really done is – toilet train anxiety!

No doubt anxiety is powerful, overwhelming, nagging and desperate! It can minimise your rationality, belittle your every effort to get better, throw your plans into disarray. Despite it all, one thing that anxiety can’t do in any means is to take away your playful side – your ability to make fun of yourself, make fun of anxiety. When you laugh at yourself, laugh at anxiety, seriously, no one gets offended. If they do, you know it’s their problem.

Lastly, before I close this post, here’s a quick quote of mine to share with you:

When anxiety sucks, just give it a dummy…

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Mental Health Is An Issue That Won’t Go Out Of Print

We all know what number to call for emergencies. It’s 000 in Australia. In US it’s 911. In this day and age even when personal data security is everything, our mobile/cell phones are still designed to let us make emergency calls without needing a password. It goes to show how important it is to have quick access to assistance during a crisis. On that front, where can you go to if yourself or someone you care about is battling with mental health problems? Can you name at least three places on top of your head? Do you know their phone numbers by heart?

In Australia, there’re charities like Lifeline, Reach Out and Beyond Blue. They all have done a wonderful job on educating the public about the mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression which affect 20% of the population. To that effect, we can never say we’ve done enough as long as the stigma of mental illness is alive and well in all corners of our society. It’s true we’ve come a long way to raise public awareness and put the mental health topic on the table for discussion. The opportunities are all there, the challenge is to encourage more people to step up and speak freely about it.

Right now it’s December, a festive season, the happiness is in the air everywhere you go. What on earth am I bringing up the issue of mental health again? I don’t mean to drag you down. But here’s how it came about: Over a month ago, I bumped into a friend while taking a bus to work. He looked like he’d lost a big chunk of weight, just not the same person I used to know. I couldn’t help but ask him what had happened and if things were OK. In brief, he told me he’d gone through a tough time in his personal life. He was made redundant late last year as a result of the workforce restructuring. Thereafter, a series of unfortunate events such as not being able to find another job caused a whirlwind of emotions. It was hard to take. By his own admission, he suffered from depression – a condition he only kept to himself. Why so? He didn’t feel like bothering anyone especially his family in overseas. It was understandable but what stunned me most was when he talked about his suicidal thoughts. That was a real shock. On the surface and on paper, he was someone of a high calibre, who seemed to have his life figured out. As a young millennial, he already had amazing credentials under his belt – a certified chartered accountant, a master degree, have worked for one of the big four accounting firms in the world and other prominent employers alike. However, none of these achievements guaranteed a success he desperately needed. When people are out of job not by choice, life can be a brutal place and that’s exactly what happened to him. Being unemployed for too long is like being an outsider sitting on the sidelines, not participating in the game and just watching the days go by. His confidence was eroded, his mind played a dirty trick on him. He began to wonder: Is that it? Is that all what life is about? They say: All good things come to an end. Sure, so do bad things. At last, it took him a total of ten months to land a current job – even though it was only a fixed term six month contract with no possibility for extension. For now, life is back on track as he said but the uncertainty over what would happen after six months worried him. He feared that he’d relapse into old depression again. I took a deep breath, paused for a few seconds before asking him this question: When you were coping with those stresses, were you all alone by yourself? He replied with a straight yes. I wasn’t surprised by his answer. That’s the thing, behind a closed door, there can be a depressed person we never know existed.

I came up with this catchy headline “Mental Health Is An Issue That Won’t Go Out Of Print“, while drafting this post in my head. I’m a firm believer that you and I have the ability to write or re-write the next chapter and the next etc.. We can do so in a way that sees mental health as normal part of our lives and treats it with ultimate openness. It’s important to note that the stigma of mental illness wasn’t born out of nowhere. It was something we created right under our noses and passed it down year after year. So, what are we going to do about it? It’s all in the attitude – how do we act towards people (including ourselves) with the mental health conditions. In my friend’s case, what he said to me that day hasn’t changed a thing about how I see him as a person. If anything, it’s only more of him, not less of him…

Take care!

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Have The Guts To Know The Gut

What comes to your mind when you hear the word colonoscopy or gastroscopy? Are you familiar with the procedure? For me, it’s important to have an honest discussion about it because I believe in prevention is always better than cure. So, the reason for this post is to bring awareness to what sometimes can be over-looked – our gut health.

Let me be open and straight about it. I had the first colonoscopy and gastroscopy done back in 2013. It went well. As expected, the report showed no sign of abnormality. I was relived. It wasn’t over though. The gastroenterologist told me to come back in 5 years to have another procedure. As it drew closer and closer to the 5 years mark this year, I became more and more nervous and anxious. My brother on the other hand, facing the same scenario, was rational, laid-back and cool about it. He perceived it as a way of detoxing for the body and a necessary process to fully understanding the gut health.

I decided to conquer my fear by facing it. Only last month my brother and I were again sitting in the gastroenterologist’s office for our appointment. I knew why I was there for but chose not to say too much. My brother by my side did the most talking. A top specialist in his field, the same gastroenterologist that I saw 5 years ago, met and greeted us, then started it off by asking us a range of standard questions. It sounded like all in a day’s work to me. Finally, he popped the question I had dreaded: When would you like to have the procedure done? Right there, without thinking too deep, I took the boldest step in a long while and said it in a firm tone of voice: As soon as possible. He flipped through pages of his calendar that already looked very full and put me down in an instant and said he can do it in two weeks. Yes, book me in – I answered in a rapid-fire manner. Within minutes, forms were done, we left his office. My brother was surprised by my snap decision to want it so quickly and to be treated as a private patient at a private hospital instead of a public one.

Once the date was set, the reality began to sink in. I wasn’t scared of the procedure itself but more so the fasting and bowel cleansing process. The second time didn’t mean it was easier. I was willing to going through this short-term pain because I understood the long-term benefits of doing it. The rest was all a matter of just grin and bear it and stop complaining about it.

On the day I was admitted to the hospital, I was incredibly calm and settled thanks to my brother for keeping my company and being my driver of the day. I was so well taken care of by the nurses and doctors that it didn’t feel like I was having a procedure at a hospital but more like a pampering treatment at a day spa. Once I was wheeled into the operating theater, it was getting so real. My eyes were focusing on the operating theatre lights above while one thought running through my mind: I’m going to put my faith in these health professionals. The general anaesthetic quickly took effect and then it was a case of my life was in their hands.

The next thing I knew was a male nurse waking me up and I remember my first question to him was: Is it all done? Yes, all done – he said. Wow, that was quick. They continued to monitor my body for a little while before sending me to the recovery room where I was waiting to hear the results from the gastroenterologist. Shortly after I was given a bit light refreshment, the gastroenterologist came back to explain the report to me: It went well. I found two polyps and removed them. I was a bit taken aback at the news but was grateful for what he’d done. Later on, my brother returned to pick me up. We had a brotherly heartfelt talk while he was taking me home. I thought that was nice.

So, what can I say? I’m glad I did it. I might’ve acted like a drama queen in all these but hey I’m older and wiser enough not to justify my behaviors to anyone. This experience has taught me so many lessons that I can’t simply articulate them all in one go or put them into words. That night, I had a bath at home trying to relax a bit after a long day. It may sound strange, but I literally gave myself a pat on the back and said “Well done Ted”…