Blog – Page 3 – Tahmid Chowdhury

Overcoming the fear of letting people down

I’ve always prided myself on the ability to be consistent. Generally, when I say I will do things, I tend to do them.

Whilst this is a rather positive trait to have, I’m also starting to see where it can fall into unhelpful behaviours too.

This recent period of fatigue has been a moment where I really needed to go into cocoon mode. I’m not the biggest fan of the cliché of prioritising oneself, but here I really needed to make sure I took the time to rest, in particular reducing external contact.

That’s been tricky for me. I’m someone who wants to make space for people in my life and be available for them. It’s only become evident recently how difficult I find it to say no if someone wants to see or do something with me. I quickly feel guilty if I turn people down, and the feeling of guilt can hit me pretty hard.

I’m currently in my recovery period, so my energy levels are at a higher point than they were a few months ago. My internal social bee wants to spend more time with people, so I’ve been scheduling more socialising time. Yet this has been a challenge since it can be unclear as to how much energy I’ll really have on the day. My tendency is to overestimate, and overschedule.

I’ve found it a real challenge to live up to my (probably unrealistic) challenges of not letting people down. I get very stressed at the idea of being late to a social appointment (say by 5-10 minutes). It’s a bit of a recipe for disaster in my current state. My executive dysfunction makes simple tasks of getting up and taking a shower can feel heavy and confusing, meaning I can take a long time just to get out of bed. This doesn’t help for meeting up with people at a pre-agreed time.

It’s probably an ‘autism thing’, but I find it difficult to cope with sudden shifts in plans if they were quite big. Whilst I’m fine with someone no longer being able to make a coffee date, if it’s something bigger (e.g. an event I’m revolving my day around) I can feel lost when such plans fall through last minute.

It’s probably why I’m also so keen to avoid cancelling things for other people. After all, I’d rather be the solution, rather than the problem. And for the most part, I think the people around me appreciate this part about me.

Yet it also means that I can end up forcing myself to go to things, even when it might not have been a good idea. Whilst I love the idea of ‘being my word’, I also can recognise that I do not need to be an infallible human.

I never quite saw myself as a people pleaser a few years ago, but my recent experiences on the social side have opened my eyes to how needy I can get for people’s approval. In these situations, my motivating driver is a sense of guilt, rather than an actual will to be with someone. Guilt doesn’t tend to be a particularly helpful driver in the long run.

I think the solution is to be light with ourselves. I’m not a failure of a human being for having this challenge. I can also let myself have a margin of error – I don’t need to always aim for 100% consistency, and I can allow myself to cancel on things if I need to.

Even if I cancelled a little bit more I’d probably still be one of the most reliable people I know.

Letting go of our mind’s self control mechanism

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You’ve probably heard about the importance of letting go of the things that we can’t control. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it several times myself.

But what about letting go of the things that actually, we can control?

As I’ve been progressing further into my therapy, I’ve had the chance to explore how much time and effort I spend managing myself. In other words, how I think about how I come across, what I should say and how I should present myself in a situation.

This is beyond some level of general reflection. I’m talking about my brain being a constant computer calculating a situation in the background. Putting this into words, it becomes pretty obvious that its a very exhausting process, yet it’s also something I’ve been doing it subconsciously pretty much my whole life.

This fits in with my hypothesis that I am autistic: my normal modus operandi being a bit too weird to fit in, so I learnt to get very good at analysing what I’m meant to say in situations. (Sidenote that I am due to get my diagnosis done in the next month or so hopefully – fingers crossed). Like many adult autistic people, I thought this was normal and what everybody did. Turns out that this is not the case.

Whilst it is good for us to have some level of filter, turned up to the extreme this can make us seem robotic and inauthentic. We can quickly get to a place where we are constantly second guessing ourselves. For much of my life, I’ve felt like a chameleon and found it hard to know what I really thought.

For me, the idea of relaxing my mind is somewhat terrifying. I’ve had real bouts of fear. I feel like a child whose had my favourite teddy bear taken away from me.

The fear is legitimate – I’ve used this mechanism of internal filtering to get through life. With the weird and wonderful way I work, I imagine that without it, I would have found myself ostracised, and potentially at the edges of society. But I also recognise that there is a downside to filtering everything I say. If nothing else, it’s exhausting, and I’m not sure my energy levels will return to a point where I can do it anymore at such a constant level.

Whilst my case might be on the more extreme end, I think we all get caught up in trying to control things. I see this happen more often as people get stressed, and it feels like there’s plenty of stress to go around right now.

Just because we can control things, doesn’t mean we should. I think it’s why so many people have a hard time delegating control or being open to different management styles. In more relaxed settings, I don’t think that we see such levels of squabbling around minor issues than we see in the workplace.

Acting without analysing is what brings us closer to our animalistic instincts. These instincts are what made us survive and thrive for millions of years.

Keeping grounded in a changing world

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Change is a constant, whether we like it or not.

If you’re into your politics, then you’ll probably notice that there’s a lot of change this year.

The European elections took place last week. For those unfamiliar, it’s the voting across the EU Member States for the representatives in the European Parliament. Broadly, it sets the precedent of what direction EU politics will go in for the next five years.

But one election was not enough. There were also federal elections in Belgium on the same day. The results of the EU elections led French President Emmanuel Macron to call for elections in the coming weeks.

Oh, and did anyone also notice there were elections coming up in the UK? Those will take place on 4th July.

Outside of European countries, there were elections in some of the most populated countries – the subcontinent had elections in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (all with differing levels of drama) as well as in Indonesia.

Oh, and later this year there’s the small matter of the Presidential elections in the United States too.

Outside of the elections, we’re also seeing the devastating killing of Palestinians in the Middle East, whilst the war in Ukraine also rumbles on.

In the midst of all these political shifts, it can be pretty easy to get overwhelmed. I certainly have felt it. And yet, it’s important to keep on going with our lives rather than falling into despair.

It may not surprise you to hear that I am generally more on the left of the political spectrum. So the general shift towards the right in the European and Belgian politics has felt pretty disheartening. The shift away from climate policy is quite terrifying for the sake of tackling climate change within time.

But the most personal part has been the growing rhetoric railing against diversity, in particular trans and LGBT+ rights. It hits deeper when I personally know trans people just trying to live their lives. Considering less than 1% of people are transgender, the focus on the topic has felt really disproportionate to me, not to mention rather different to the image portrayed in the media.

Election results meant additional bouts of anxiety at the beginning of this week for me. I had to deliberately distance myself from politics so as not to get further stressed by it all. That was easier said than done, considering how (overly?) connected on social media I am.

What helped me this week was trying to keep all this news in balance. As humans, we can fall into a tendency to overreact to negative news. In the case of politics, we can quite quickly fall into doom and gloom because things didn’t go the way we wanted them to. I see this more in younger people who have less experience of going through the highs and lows of election cycles..

I try to see these things philosophically – politics has a tendency of oscillating between left and right. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. As is the wheel of life. In certain spaces there are losses, whilst in other areas there are progress. It’s never so black and white.

For my politico friends – it’s also important to remember that there is a world outside of politics. So many people I know get so absorbed into the politics bubble that they forget that the rest of the world carries on existing. Indeed, for most people, elections don’t actually carry that much importance.

If we want positive change, we have to get comfortable with change that we don’t necessarily agree with.

So take each day as it comes. Change is part of politics – indeed it’s part of human nature.

The importance of trusting our own senses

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Earlier this week, I woke up at 4am with the distinct smell of burning coming through my nose.

The last time I smelt something like this, I ignored it. I thought that my sense of smell was playing tricks on me. Turns out that there was actually something on the stove downstairs burning to a smoke.

So this time, I got up to investigate.

It turned out the smell was coming from outside. It was actually pretty nauseating just standing out on the street. My window had been open so I could smell it pretty distinctly from my room.

When I looked online for information, I read about a burning recycling plant on the other side of Brussels. The fire was seemingly large enough that the smoke had covered its way across to my neighbourhood.

One thing I’ve learnt about myself is my heightened sensitivity. My ability to pick up sounds, smells, movement and emotional shifts is higher than normal (sidenote: these are probably signs of Autism).

For a long time I had often ignored these heightened senses. Since my heightened sensitivity picked up things other people didn’t, I would be told that I was imagining things. Noises in the background didn’t exist, and my disgust at strong smelling foods was me being a fussy eater.

It’s hard to compare when the only reference point for perception is myself. Many things I just assumed was the case for everyone, so I never stopped to question it.

I now realise that my sensitivity is one of the reasons that I pick up on subtle things earlier than other people. For example, my attunement to the vibe of the room has helped me immensely in positioning myself during work meetings.

Yet such sensitivity comes at a cost. After smelling the burning smell, I did not get back to sleep for another hour, and I felt fatigued afterwards. If I had just slept through it all, there wouldn’t have been any negative repercussions either.

It means I have to be more careful with how I manage myself. I now wear an eye mask every night because of how perturbing I find the morning light which can wake me up at 6am.

It’s also pretty easy for me to get overstimulated. Too much noise or intensity can be so overwhelming that I can shut down pretty quickly. I find it particularly hard to listen to a conversation in a noisy space. When I’m overstimulated, my ability to sense things gets distorted. This can turn into worry and fear pretty quickly.

Yet despite all of this, my senses are my gifts. When I use them right, I can sense things that most people would not otherwise notice. And in a world lurking with uncertainty and danger, that’s as important as ever.

I personally believe that a lot of us are far more sensitive than we think. The idea of being ‘sensitive’ is seen as negative – it is often used as an insult. We don’t want to be seen as sensitive (particularly men) as this makes us sound weak, but we also don’t want to be seen as insensitive either. So we go with a balance of middling emotional expression. For some reason, we seem to think this is the gold standard.

It’s almost like we are taught to be hyper-rationalist, logic-based people, because that is what the world expects of us. I should know, I used to see myself as a calm, ‘rational’ person. This is in stark contrast to the hypersensitive person I now see myself as!

If we were not sensitive, we would not be able to react to anything. Our inability to sense would mean we were walking through life blind (quite literally).

Our senses are what gives us joy. They are a real gift, so it is worth treasuring our own sensitivities.

Feelings of happiness, familiarity, love, touch – these are the things that give our lives meaning.

Taking time to appreciate our physical bodies

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I’ve generally been pretty fortunate when it’s come to injuries. I’ve generally not had anything particularly inhibiting or life threatening.

The one exception was when I needed surgery for a finger on my dominant hand. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it essentially meant that I could not use one of my hands properly for months. Inconveniently, this was at the same time as me needing to finish typing up my master thesis. It added an extra level of pain in an already painful process.

Otherwise, my injuries have been relatively minor. This has meant that I somewhat forgot how frustrating and painful it can be when we have an injury. Yet getting one also is a reminder of how well our bodies function – most of the time we use them without even thinking much about how much they do.

On Tuesday, I rolled my ankle whilst walking down Brussels’ infamous pavements with a random hole in the middle of it.

Ironically, I was just walking back from doing an exercise class. I was feeling pretty good about it too, my body was holding up well and I didn’t feel particularly sore.

I’ve had quite a few ankle twists before, so I figured this one would be alright. I did some icing and elevation as is recommended, figuring that would do the trick.

What got me particularly worried was when the pain swelled during the night. It got to the point where I couldn’t sleep at all. In my wakened, painful state I ended up looking up how bad the injury might actually be on my phone.

Luckily, the pain was more the inflammation than the twist itself, and within a day I was back to being able to walk around without too much issue.

Yet, I can’t help but think how different things would have been if it was a worse injury. I probably would have needed to stay home and recover, with little outside contact. It made me realise how reliant I am on my physical body to move around with, and do the things I do everyday.

When such incidents happen, we have a choice of how we look at them. The temptation can be to see them as a period of misfortune. I can curse the pavements of Brussels for bringing me unnecessary misery.

Or, I can choose to be grateful that the injury was actually pretty minor. Furthermore, I can also use it as a reminder about how much I need my body, and how easily it is to take it for granted.

In recent times, we’ve heard a lot more about loving our bodies. Whilst this is often talking about it aesthetically, it also holds true mechanically too. The amount our bodies do for us is incredible. In fact, it is so good that we can forget it’s even doing anything.

Appreciating our bodies is important. After all, we only have one of them.

The tale of the misplaced wallet

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Grand philosophical ideas around peace and harmony are great. But they are only useful if they can hold up when coming into contact with our real, messy and unpredictable lives.

This week I had the fortune (or misfortune) to be tested on my worldviews.

On Wednesday, when looking to leave the house I simply could not find my wallet. After a rather long search I came to the conclusion that I must have dropped it when coming off the bus the day before.

Here I had a choice of how I reacted to the situation.

Naturally, losing a wallet is not particularly nice. It meant quite a lot of administrative burden, blocking and reordering various bank cards as well as losing my Belgian ID. For this, I had to go to the police station to file a claim, which took out two hours in total yesterday.

For a second, I fell into a negative frustration of ‘why me’ – I actually had a nice day when I had lost it, so for a moment I had this pessimistic thought that the world was pushing me back down.

But on the whole, I was quite happy with how I reacted to it. Considering my current state of lethargy, I was quite surprised at how functional and direct I was to sort out the situation. Thanks to our world of technology, I could see my bank accounts were untouched. Within moments, I blocked and reordered the cards.

These days you can even add a new card straight onto Google Wallet, meaning I could pay for things with my phone – I was effectively cashless only for about an hour.

I was worried that not having my Belgian ID would mean some complications for a medical appointment next week. But after a quick google of the process, I figured out the system to get a provisional document in the police station. I have a tendency of underplaying how well I can manage these things, particularly considering all the information and interactions I had with the police were in French.

These small bumps in life can be a good moment to check in with our current state of mind. Now when I think about it, the thought of blaming myself for making an error didn’t actually cross my mind at all. In fact, I haven’t lost my wallet in probably around 15 years, so with the benefit of that perspective I figured that I’d actually had a pretty good run of it, all things considered.

For someone who is still in the midst of anxiety and fatigue, it’s nice to see that I’m a lot more effective at dealing with situations than my current predicament suggests.

It has crossed my mind that this could be a sign of ADHD – being prompted to act in a crisis gives me a good level of dopamine to act effectively and efficiently. This is in contrast with things with a longer timeline, often with far less work that I’m struggling to do. But for now, that’s just a hypothesis.

I’m very grateful for the work I’ve done over the last years to re-frame my worldview. Considering how much I’ve invested in that space, there have definitely been points where I’ve questioned whether the time, energy and money was worth it. But it’s moments like these which demonstrate how valuable it is to work on ourselves.

When challenges are but small bumps rather than big mountains, it is far easier to glide through life.

Finding an outlet to express our internalised emotions

This week started more anxiety driven for me than most. I found I woke up with a lot of existential dread without really being able to pin point why.

This week ended up being about finding ways to express the emotions outwardly, without necessarily trying to analyse them. Spending too much time trying to think about ‘why’ usually ends up worse rather than better.

One thing that helped a lot was talking it out in therapy. Having the space to explore and divulge what was going on internally made it apparent how much turbulent internal emotions were swirling around within me.

I’m not exactly shy about expressing what is going on within me with other people. I’m certainly not one of those ‘bottle in all the emotions’ type. Talking to friends is definitely beneficial, but a proper professional session goes to a deeper level of introspection that gives the time and space needed for such conversations.

The funny thing about emotions is that it’s often more about experiencing them rather than trying to solve them. Talking about my fears does a lot to alleviate them, even if it doesn’t necessarily fix the issue. It’s just nice to get it off my chest. Right now my thoughts are frazzled, so I’m in need of time just to piece it all together. It’s a slow process, but it’s progressing.

It is also one of the reasons I like writing these articles. I find it a way to have some space to share my thoughts outwardly, rather than keeping them stuck in my head. The weekly habit also means that I’m prompted to make sure I actually am listening to myself on a regular basis. It’s no wonder why journalling is a recommended activity for mental wellbeing.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that yesterday was Pride in Brussels. This year I actually joined the parade and marched along. Despite my anxiety of the large crowds of people, it was very good for me to go outside, see people and move around. Walking, talking, moving and dancing are other ways just to get the feelings out. It’s funny how the fear of crowds and sensory overstimulation wasn’t too much of an issue when my mind wasn’t so focussed on it (though I will admit to a sense of agoraphobia trying to move through the crowds).

Pride for me was a nice reminder of how much more settled I feel in Brussels. I bumped into a lot of people I knew during the day, without really trying too hard. It felt cosy and familiar, as well as warm and welcoming. Whilst last year’s pride was about chatting and meeting new people, this year felt like it was more reconnecting with those I hadn’t seen in a while.

My emotional expression has certainly been varied this week – introspective withdrawal to extroverted socialising and movement. I personally don’t think one is better than the other – they both have an important place.

Whatever method we choose, it’s worthwhile reflecting on how we are expressing our emotions to make sure we are doing so in a healthy way.

After all, the last thing we want to do is bottle them all up until we burst.

Sometimes it’s just not that deep

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We can get stuck in the endless frame of asking ‘why’.

I’m upset – why do I feel this way?

What do I need to change to make things better?

Is there maybe something I’m missing?

These questions can be genuinely valuable. But it’s also helpful to recognise that not everything needs a deep analysis.

Sometimes we wake up tired or sad without any clearly discernible reason.

In our need to understand why, we can often end up spending more mental energy trying to connect the dots of our life than it’s actually worth. We end up feeling more tired, sad and probably stressed after finding a rational answer which only serves to remind us of our woes.

Maybe the reason we’re tired today is just because the sun woke us up earlier through the blinds this morning. It doesn’t always need to be linked to some deep, dark trauma. Chances are that if it is something deep, this will become evident anyway. I find that these realisations tend to come when I’m not searching for them, but instead when I’m open and listening to my emotions.

The theme of this week was inspired by Yung Pueblo, a writer around healing and mental health. I saw a video of him speaking about this topic on Instagram. He spoke of how his wife and himself used to go through the cycle of finding reasons to blame the other when they felt down or upset about something. The video itself was only a short snippet, but it definitely resonated.

I have a tendency to look deep into the meaning of things. It’s certainly helped me uncover a lot about myself, and I do like my inquisitive and curious nature.

But it’s also important for me to recognise when my ‘need’ to understand can be counterproductive. When I try and understand why, my brain often takes over. Going into rational mode can often come at the behest of listening and feeling to what the emotions are really saying.

Yesterday, I felt incredbily anxious. I was walking around on a sunny day in the neighbourhood I’ve lived in for several years. I found myself quickly retreating home after feeling overwhelmed by the outside stimuli. The fact I had this intense burst of anxiety certainly took me by surprise.

It’s hard to rationally say why this happened. I hadn’t done anything particularly anxiety inducing yesterday. Even if I rack my brains, it’s not totally clear where it came from.

So rather than spend too long agonizing about the why, I just chose to not think about it too deeply. I got into a cosy position at home and simply surrendered myself to the feeling.

I find that listening to my emotions is a far better way of regulating my emotional wellbeing than trying to explain them. But it’s also more painful – experiencing anxiety is not fun, and it’s certainly tempting just to try and distract myself from it to reduce the intensity. But I think these feelings come up one way or another, so it’s better to experience them rather than try and avoid them.

Alas, the feeling passed. I woke up today feeling a lot more relaxed. I cannot explain what changed. But then, I also don’t need to. I can be grateful for feeling better today without needing to analyse why.

Opening up to a deeper vulnerability

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I had a moment this week where I felt deep fear.

There was nothing to be scared of externally, and I knew that. But I felt fear all the same.

I am someone who has generally always kept my composure in situations. I rarely lose control. Even in moments of intense emotion, these are often calculated, deliberate actions.

But here I was in a situation where I opened up more deeply than I am used to. I no longer felt in control. It was like standing in a room where the floor suddenly disappeared. I was at a loss on how to manage it all.

It may seem that I am very open with the way that I write and talk about my emotions. Perhaps that is true – I am more open to talking about my feelings than a lot of people. It’s not any sort of deep bravery, but something that is just natural to me.

But I always feel in control of this. I decide what I really want to share, and why. I think the logical part of understanding that sharing emotions usually helps means I learnt that it was an important thing to do.

But the truly scary part for me is letting go of control of how I act and react. When I drop the ability to analyse, I feel truly naked.

I’ve been more socially reclusive recently. This has meant that when I do go out and spend time with people, I have an increased sense of social anxiety. This has made my analytical way of working even more obvious. Even in calm times, I tend to subliminally assess the situation – the mood, response of people, their eye contact. I make a conscious effort to pay deep attention to what they are saying to show that I am present with them.

But with my currently more frazzled mind, these sensitivities have been on overdrive. Small gestures, such as a glance away when speaking (which was most likely nothing) have felt like I have done something wrong. My internal reaction is to hurry up what I’m saying in case I’m boring the other person.

The challenge for me this week has been to get comfortable with however I come across to other people. Letting go of my fears that I might be too boring, obnoxious or intimidating. It’s the only way I can come to a place of calm and comfort mentally.

The process for this is accepting that the fears are valid. People have indeed told me I can be intimidating, and I certainly can sometimes come across as obnoxious. I don’t doubt either that I can be boring when I talk about something that has no interest to the other person either.

What I am increasingly seeing is that these opinions are not necessarily a reflection on me. My quirky behaviours are just that – quirks. Some people will like them, some people will not. And when I come from good intentions, I can absolve myself of the upset and harm I might cause to others in the process of being me.

There are many things we can be scared of in life. But I find that the deepest fear is during introspection.

Being genuinely honest about ourselves is one of the most frightening experiences we can have in our spiritual existence.

The art of learning nothing

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Every day may be an opportunity to learn something new. But we can afford ourselves a break sometimes.

I’ve been tuning out my brain from needing to learn or do too much. Earlier in the month I spent a lot of time reading about Autism, ADHD and the like. Right now, I’m doing very little.

Sometimes our brains need time to properly digest the information we take in. I don’t doubt that my recent bouts of fatigue come from the amount of information I’m still processing about myself. I think my brain is working subconsciously on overdrive, reviewing past moments through this new lens.

I think the least helpful thing I could do right now is cram my brain with more information. Whilst it can be tempting to want to find out more, it’s probably not healthy. My tendency to go into what I now know as a ‘hyperfixation’ can lead me to obsession. Since learning a bit more about Autism, I ended up reading a 300 page book on it within two to three days.

These hyperfixations can be very helpful to get a lot done in a very short amount of time. But it’s also recognising that it’s not an optimal state to always be in – I need downtime between intense periods else I will eventually break down.

So this means accepting that certain periods will be far less about doing or learning. Yet this is easier said than done – there’s a stigma around slowing down, symbolised through overwork and lack of breaks.

The idea that certain periods I will be far less capable is actually quite a scary one. Yet the reality is that we all face these dips and resurgences, even if we don’t feel like we can be totally honest about it. But being honest about them also means that we can ride the peaks and troughs far more successfully. If we’re always trying to be at top performance we’re doomed to crash and burn.

The constant need to learn more can be a real risk. There is always another course, book or workshop with more information. Whilst learning more is not bad in of itself, it can become a distraction from genuinely digesting the information and finding ways to use it in our lives. I fell into this somewhat last year – whilst I do not regret doing the amount of courses I did, towards the end I I was no longer getting much from them because I was so saturated.

So for now I’m not reading anything, learning anything, or really doing anything to develop myself in particular. The only skills I’m improving is my trick combos on Tony Hawks Pro Skater and my bug killing on Helldivers 2 (for democracy).

In a world where there is constant pressure to learn and improve, it’s important to sometimes have a break.