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Anxiety

Anxiety is a very generous word, so generous that it makes a lot more sense in the plural, anxieties. This is because, like a large umbrella, a load of elements can fit under it. However, despite its multitude of disturbances and manifestations, anxiety can be traced back to quite simple and predictable stress triggers. In its origins, it is much more visceral and organic than people imagine. A common trigger, for example, is hunger. You can lose hunger, overeat, stick to a crash diet, all as a neurovegetative expression of stress. Irritability is another trivial trigger. You are more easily irritated, frustrated, and angry over nothing, cultivating an inner anger, sometimes silent, sometimes explosive. Loneliness is also an important trigger. It is a complex feeling that includes inadequacy, weakened belonging, nostalgia for everything that has already happened and for everything that cannot happen. It is a mood that can be thoughtful, rueful, self-defeating, filled with needi...
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Heart and Soul

( Image by  Dimitris Vetsikas  from  Pixabay ) I have recently moved my blog to a new domain. I realised I should move it to a proper .page, something not so strange anyway considering I always wanted to create “en.hyggelig.page”, which is roughly translated from Danish as "a pleasant page".  Hyggelig means a lot more than just pleasant, though. It is expressed to share a feeling of security, comfort, and familiarity. It is also an expression of appreciation for anything that brings people closer, gathered in a familiar environment, where intimacy is an embraced key value. If you can imagine yourself feeling cosy, alongside familiar people in a comfortable room, then you are close to grasp the concept. There is also a deep sense, an almost impossible truth to pass unnoticed, a sense of gratitude and grace towards enjoying life's little pleasures, with kindness and simplicity.  Which brings me back to this small “en hyggelig page”, a plac...

Live well

Not so long ago, a close friend of mine started his career with enthusiasm and carism. Knowing him since forever, I was at the same time happy for his focus onto a brilliant start and worried for noticing he was distancing himself from everyone. It's emblematic when you see yourself in others, especially when you too have struggled to find an equilibrium between work and family. So there was I, following his start and wondering to myself, should I warn him on measuring his enthusiasm? Is that even something someone wants to hear? Should I let him learn his compass alone? Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong about enjoying your work and feeling pushed towards doing a good job. My concern was, essentially, on the wide range of intensity I was noticing. He was all in, although everything seemed perfect. I waited for a chance to approach him, without questioning too directly his otherwise unbreakable determination. Few months later, on his 20th birthday, I saw an o...

Delusions

I've attempted to discover a quick way to deal with confrontational scenarios by interpolating empathy with courteous demeanour. While it didn’t interrupt confrontations, nor made them avoidable, it seems that begging to disagree can work, so long as you’ve have first learnt to mirror what is being talked in a different point of view. I like to call those exercises tools for mutual understanding. It took me a while to understand that it is natural for some people to showcase colourful disagreement only to capture a topic by exhaustion. Funnily enough, no words can interpret with precision what a subject matter can bring to a vulnerable person. I say vulnerable not to explicate people who eventually become vulnerable, oh no. We are all vulnerable to small stressors, too many of them, too many times. Triggers, say, of how much sentiment you will drill in a matter of seconds. More than that, it is a delusion to ignore them. That’s righteous okay, I need to add. Subjectivity is always ...

Remaining attitudes

Sometimes one cannot just let it go. While I can understand why a patient would like to give up, if he is willing to put himself walking inside the hospital, I must comprehend he wants to keep fighting. Tons of medicines, exhaustive hours later and nothing has changed but a frightened soul. Walking in, walking out of his room, the pace seems unfair and unreliable; but then again, the patient remains fighting. Never truly could understand how it happens, whether that is due to faith, love, or some sort of primal instinct, but people fight for their survival more frequently than we can bare to imagine in their shoes. It is too easier and human to surrender, I guess, but it is so surprisingly godly to battle one cell’s battle. Maybe that is what makes us more human: our will, I am not sure. I watch this all, so erratic and alone in my own thoughts, slightly resilient than the day before on my attempts at understanding this effort. I wish I could say for sure to all of them “it will be alr...

Back in the day

I do not get lachrymose so often. Med school taught me to be as gentle as possible, whilst cold enough to not fall apart when someone dies. Still, what people see is not what happens inside my mind. I fight the good fight, the one against bad habits and instincts. Sometimes, I fail miserably. Sometimes, I win myself for another day. Recently I started to improve my acupuncturist skills at a fast pace, learning new methods once I thought nontangible; trying is part of the good fight that keeps me onward. I even bought a book in Italian that, like a collegian often does, I need to read with the aid of a dictionary. It is hard, it is challenging, but it is uplifting. That is how I cope with my own insanity. I study, I pray, I cry… but nobody else will notice, not because I am shy, which I am, but because I’ve been learning to cry from the inside. I am not a sad person. I am not exactly happy either. I am a student; that is how I see my journey on this planet. I do hate when I cannot help ...

Small Reminder

People often misunderstand happiness, even though we all seem to seek for it actively. The thing is, happiness isn't something you can seek entirely by yourself, alone. No, it is rather a goal only achieved when shared, fulfilled and portioned by those with whom you live. Granted, we all are subjects to fragments of joy every once in a while, and as subtle as those moments of prosperity and caring can be, they are deeply imprinted in your mind. We may not even realise immediately, but we, in many instances, revisit those moments for strength, enlightenment, endurance. The misunderstanding happens when your joy relies exclusively on your wealth, status, and possessions. Thereby, you may be giving into what your instincts want, instead of what your heart seeks. Spurts of opportunities to achieve happiness are repeatedly lost when our pocket overrules our most intimate sense of gratitude, and when greed makes us forget those who have carried us along the path. Whether, whilst you smil...