Diary Entry 24 August 2020
The zoom call with the Psychologist, Daniel, felt good. It was very nice to explain to someone what my problems are, someone who doesn’t know me. We talked about school for an hour, about my fears towards school and how the fear gets produced in my brain and how the adrenaline gets spread around my body.
He explained to me that we have two brain-halves. One half (the older one) is there, to give you a signal, for example: I am hungry, I have to eat something – even though you might be sitting in an important meeting. The other half (the younger one) is there to give you the signal: no, I am at an important meeting, I can eat afterwards. When both brain-halves ‘separate’, so one of them ‘takes over’, in my case the older one, then you can’t think clearly anymore.
Which means, when I get scared, then I can’t concentrate on anything else except the fear, because the younger brain half can’t calm down/balance out the other one. In my last diary entry I wrote about how I don’t really feel fully alive anymore, as if I were only half-ways here and awake, and he explained the exact reason for that to me and now I finally understand.
I don’t feel like I am properly alive, have difficulties remembering various things, forget a lot and find it exhausting to look into the distance, – since January, as that’s when I started getting panic attacks. Since January, my older brain half took over. I also found out the older brain half is there to be creative and sensitive. The younger one is there to be good in things like maths and isn’t as sensitive.
Being sensitive is, to notice how others feel, being able to step into other’s shoes, perceive things more strongly. When people say curse words, behave badly, are mean, bully, take drugs, drink alcohol, when it is loud, then I – in my case – cannot bear it. I feel the energy of the school and the people inside it very strongly and it makes me feel broken and drained. I am bad in maths since January (I was usually one of the best in my class), and I am very forgetful. This is all related to my fear being so powerful, that my brain-halves ‘separated’ and my older one has taken over.
At the start of Covid, I didn’t know anything about it. I watched YouTube one night and the YouTuber mentioned that the illness spreads really quickly and that no-one had the cure for it yet. In school my science teacher brought to our attention that the first case of Covid also hit Ireland. This extremely scared me. It came out of nowhere, I didn’t know about it, I just heard how so many people were dying and that there was no medicine for it. The fear grew and grew. I talked to mom about it, she didn’t know much more than me, no-one knew more. I panicked, and so, that was my first experience of a panic-attack.
It was a normal evening after school. We played ‘Mensch Ärger Dich Nicht’, a German board game. I had no energy left, couldn’t really feel that I was alive, I just thought about the next day, about school and the disease. It hit me. Right in my heart. I stiffened. Couldn’t talk. Had the feeling of crying, but the tears didn’t come. I shivered. My thoughts got worse and worse. It felt like the life was being sucked out of my body. I had a panic-attack. I didn’t know this was a panic-attack and when I told mom, she didn’t tell me it was one either. Every day I got panic-attacks and every day my older brain-half took over. I was done. I had no energy left. I couldn’t take it anymore. Even today there is no medicine for it. The panic-attacks decreased when people found out that only elderly, or people with certain illnesses – which me and my loved one’s didn’t have – can die from it. But my panic still didn’t disappear fully, because every day in school Covid was mentioned, every day more and more people died and every day more and more information got hammered into my sensitive brain. The panic-attacks only disappeared fully when we did online-schooling – which was mandatory due to Covid –, and when I didn’t hear more information about it. My parents told me the most important things, for example, that the whole of Ireland needs to be quarantined or that no-one is allowed in or out of Germany. Sometimes I overheard my parents talk about things I didn’t want to hear, but I didn’t get so panicked anymore and usually talked to mom about it if I did.
I am so happy to have found out why I don’t feel fully alive. I didn’t know what it was, and sometimes was so worried that it would last forever. Apart from that, it was so exhausting to concentrate in maths class and the next day I had already forgotten what we did the day before. Thankfully it can all change again and it’s possible to work on your brain-halves, so they stay in balance. Sometimes I thought I had some kind of illness (like dementia) and would never be able to feel alive again, I was so scared of it, but thankfully it’s not true.
I am currently working a lot on myself, so I can get through school easier and better and so I am fully protected by my angels and God. What I do so I can achieve this outcome, is: listen to Byron Katie CD’s – she talks about how you can change negative thoughts into positive ones and how the thoughts can totally trick you, whether it’s: ‘I need more money’, ‘my boss doesn’t appreciate me and my work’, ‘this and that person doesn’t love me’, and so on. There are worksheets that come with that, which you fill out, with four important questions and a ‘turnaround’ sentence. So when you think: ‘My sister never listens to me’, then you turn it around: ‘I never listen to my sister’ or ‘I never listen to myself’ or ‘my sister listens to me’. I find it very helpful and I listen to those CD’s every evening for 10 to 20 minutes.
What I also do is say a mantra. The mantra is about trust. Trusting in God and myself, my soul. I also do it for courage, love and peace within myself and towards the world. You have to do this mantra certain amount of times, that’s why I use a mala-bead necklace, because it contains the exact amount of mala-beads that you need to repeat the mantra.
I stuck notes onto my bed, which I read through every day when I pass by them. Like affirmations. On one note it reads: ‘I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you’, these words can change the world and when I use them I change MY world, and then peace exists. ‘Courage, Love, Peace’, are written on the next note so that these three things exist in me and the world. Then I have two more notes that read: ‘I am ok with God having the control over me’ and ‘I am ok with my soul leading my path’, because I have to learn to let go of control, and learn to trust. I can’t control everything, which is what I always try to do, so I need to learn to trust that my soul will lead me my way, and that in the end, everything is fine.
For my younger brain-half to be switched on again and for both my brain-halves to come into balance, I am reading a book. Apparently when you read upside down, it’s even more helpful to switch on the younger brain-half again. Which means, I read the first page of every chapter upside down and I read the rest normally. Mom and dad printed a picture for me that looks like a brain, like a labyrinth and I trace it with my finger every day, – which is supposedly also an aid in balancing out the brain again.
Mom looked up a few other methods that you can use anytime the fear arises. The first method is: Say ‘STOP’ clearly in your mind and to maybe even imagine a stop-sign, and then call out any numbers in any order that you can think of. I tried that before, and it worked, let’s see if it works when I get really scared and my body is like an earthquake. The second method is: Tighten all muscles and relax them again, tighten them and relax them. I already tried it in between, even though I wasn’t afraid, – just to practice.
I will continue doing those things, until I am strong enough to simply shake it off of me. Thank you to the existence of these methods, which can change one’s life.
Thank you for having read this far. Until the next diary entry! 🙂
