Dear Anita

Thank you for your encouragement. I have been working on building a schedule to keep track of my assignments. My meditation class professor extended the research summary that was originally due February 6th to February 8th and I managed to find a study on how heartfulness meditation (focusing on the heart’s space and cultivating loving-kindness for each situation that arises) helps healthcare workers reduce their stress levels and I found the clinical study interesting and inspirational. I finished the research summary for my meditation class on that clinical study for heartfulness meditation for healthcare workers and I decided to look into heartfulness/loving-kindness meditation techniques for my own practices. I liked the heartfulness meditation techniques that I found because most of them are about focusing on your heartbeat and feeling the warmth of your heart’s light radiating compassion and loving-kindness with each heartbeat. Since my chest gives me dysphoria, I find that focusing my attention on my heart’s space and just embracing the feelings that I have and being aware of my heartbeat helps me de-stress. Whenever the thoughts wander, I say “Thinking” and return my awareness to my heart. When I feel my heart race with anxiety, I allow myself to feel the emotions in my heart and not judge them. The heartfulness meditations say to focus on the emotions and embrace them rather than fighting them because fighting them often stresses us more, but embracing them, the emotions seem to weaken because we start to acknowledge them and see them for what they are. By allowing the emotions to flow and not judge or fight them but just remain focused on the heart’s space and spreading loving-kindness helps me feel better and realize that things are okay. I am currently working on the heartfulness meditation and am thinking of using it as the meditation presentation that I will be presenting for my meditation class on February 27th. People can be their own worst critics and sometimes I feel like I’m consistently fighting myself because I want to look masculine but it’s quite straining trying so hard. So heartfulness meditation practice is helping me realize that who I am is much more than the dysphoria but that I am the love in my heart and by focusing on the love in my heart with each heartbeat, I say to myself “I am every bit masculine enough and my heart is filled with loving-kindness for myself because I am okay. Who I  am is enough and with each heartbeat I am letting go of things that don’t resonate with my heart. I am expressing myself with love and things will be okay.” I took a day off from Organic Chemistry lab on February 4th because I was feeling quite stressed and I had to take my car to the car repair shop. So the car repair shop said my car likely has a catalytic converter problem but it’s safe to drive, but since my car is getting older I am working on getting a new one just in case the older one isn’t easy to fix or ages out. My genetics lab class goes quite fast with the professor explaining things quite quickly and the classmates only help a little. Sometimes we do three experimental exercises in one lab session and the teacher goes through the instructions quite quickly. I do wish that he would go slower and that the classmates would explain things more when I ask them questions but both the teacher and classmates only explain things briefly and I often have to figure things out on my own. The Organic Chemistry lab professor is very thorough with explaining lab experiments and I went to his office after missing a lab class on February 4th and he was very helpful in helping me get more caught up. I am working on the Prelab for experiment 3 due this Tuesday February 11th. Since I missed lab experiment 2 class, I wrote an excuse note and I uploaded it online to where lab 2 assignments would be posted. Since I was struggling with gender dysphoria and car, I didn’t have time to complete lab report one for February 4th. So I am missing one assignment for Organic Chemistry lab, but that’s okay. I am hoping that since there are still more days in the semester that my grade will improve. In addition, missing only two lab assignments puts me at a B+ because my quiz grades for lab have been good. I am going to work out a schedule where I organize time to dedicate to each of my class assignments so that I can keep track of them and also work on managing time in case of stressful situations that come up I will still be able to get things done without missing more assignments. My genetics lab class has a lab report due march 5th and I am working on the draft of it. My lab partner and I counted fruit flies and did a mating with them to see what offspring would result. I do wish that my lab professor in my genetics lab class explained things better and slower. I have asked for a note-taker to help take notes for me in genetics lecture so that I have more complete notes to study from since I have the same professor for lecture and lab and he goes fast. The note-taker will take notes in genetics and send them to me via email so I have them as reference. it would be helpful if the note-taker could help take notes in genetics lab as well but since lab experiments are individually done there usually aren’t note-takers to take notes in lab so students have to take notes about lab experiments themselves. I hope that my genetics class goes okay this semester because lab is a bit stressful but there is only one lab report that has a relatively simple format but working on understanding the data from genetics lab experiments to writing the fruit fly lab report is a bit stressful because I am not sure if I fully understand the data I collected and since I worked with a lab partner I am not sure if each of our notes seems to fit together because both of us will be submitting individual reports but the reports will have both our names on them. For Organic Chemistry lab, there is a lab report due after each experiment and the format for the lab reports are more complex but they aren’t too difficult to follow, Organic Chemistry labs usually have more steps compared to genetics labs. the professor and the classmates are very helpful for Organic Chemistry lab experiments and I find that I can work on them quite well. My Organic Chemistry lecture professor is good at explaining things as well but sometimes I feel like she explains certain topics in a less clearer way like she will take time to explain something that isn’t too complex in more detail and it helps give the students more perspective on how the Organic Chemistry problem may be applied in the real world but when it comes to the shapes of molecular orbitals and electron densities that help determine how atoms bond that is more complex she doesn’t give much detail about that and sometimes I feel confused. But the good thing is that she tells us where to find practice in the Organic Chemistry textbook to build our knowledge and she takes problems from the book to help explain the more challenging concepts which is helpful. Since she knows that some people may be Strugling in Organic Chemistry she offers extra credit which helps boost grades. So far in the week ahead, I have a genetics exam monday February 17th, a meditation class exam February 14th,  genetics lab introduction and methods write up for the fruit fly experiment describing what we did in the lab, and Organic Chemistry prelab due February 11th. I just finished my genetics ch. 3-5 homework today. I finished my meditation research summary yesterday (it was due today) and I wrote the outline for my meditation presentation yesterday (due February 27th). I also posted a response to the research summary that the other students wrote saying which meditation research study was the most interesting ( had to do two one response today, first response was yesterday and it’s due Monday February 10th)

Wishing you well in the week ahead!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Janus.

Dear Anita
The counselors at Stockton have been helping me cope with my stresses and I have appointments with them every two weeks, my next appointment is February 25th. I have decided to go part-time by dropping the meditation class so that I can focus on my two science classes- Genetics and Organic Chemistry. The meditation class was on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30am-10:20am and since I have to drive an hour and a half to get to Stockton campus I had to wake at 5:45am to prepare and left at 6:30am and would arrive on campus at 7:45am where it would take a few minutes to go to class and prepare. Since I had to get up early I found myself quite tired throughout the week so I decided to withdraw from the meditation class. Since I had three classes on Wednesdays and got home late, I found it tiring to have a class so early the next morning. So withdrawing from the meditation class made me be able to sleep more and I could rest on Thursdays after having the most of my classes on Wednesdays. I also could spend time on Tuesdays before my Organic Chemistry lab class started at 2:25pm to study and prepare for lab and just focus on that rather than having to go to a meditation class early in the morning. I am thinking of establishing a meditation routine of my own to help deal with the anxiety I’ve been feeling lately and the class helped set a background and even though I withdrew from it, I still learned some useful tips. I am also part of Student Success Services and have a mentor who helps me plan ways to dedicate my time and study effectively and it’s helpful. My gender dysphoria has been getting more intense lately and it’s difficult to focus on things and I find myself always feeling anxious about myself. I feel shaky, my throat hurts and my heart races most of the time and I am always wondering if I look masculine enough and whether people will say anything to me that might make me feel dysphoric and it’s been quite straining lately that sometimes I feel like I want to just fall asleep and not wake up since I’m anxious a lot. Since my parents are paying for my college tuition, they will yell at me when I feel stressed because they are disappointed at me and think I’m not regulating my emotions well enough or that I have nothing to be stressed about and they say that maybe I’m just not smart enough to pursue science and that gives me more stress. Sometimes when I cry, my parents will yell at me and say that I don’t need to cry and that crying is a waste of time even though I find that after crying I feel better because not crying and hiding the feelings inside sometimes makes me feel detached from myself and I can feel the emotions pricking me like thorns and then I become detached and feel like I’m not living. I have found myself crying a lot lately because the anxiety is quite intense and I always feel like I’m unsafe like there is someone who will hurt or criticize me because I try to be myself. Sometimes I worry that I am not good enough when I get lost in gender dysphoria because others seem to be able to focus on their studies. I do tend to understand some things that the professor says in Genetics and Organic Chemistry but sometimes  I find myself fighting to keep my anxiety from bubbling up because little things like not understanding a problem fully will trigger it. I wish my professor went slower in class for genetics because I find that I have just started to work out the problem for fifteen minutes and he will go over it quite quickly and then move on. My Organic Chemistry professor explains things quite thoroughly and saves time to help students understand things, she also gives students time to think about the problems and will take time to explain in more detail if students don’t understand. My genetics professor if you ask him a question he answers it briefly and then moves on and sometimes I feel like I haven’t fully grasped the concepts yet and when I ask him again in a different way, he will re-explain it more briefly than before and will crack a joke saying why the student didn’t fully understand before and ask if they were fully paying attention which is why I sometimes feel intimidated to ask questions to my genetics professor because it makes me feel more anxious when he explains it briefly and expects students to understand it after a while. I am grateful that my Organic Chemistry professor goes slower and gives students problems to try and explains how things relate to each other much better. The genetics lab fruit fly lab report is due on March 6th and I am still working on understanding the fruit fly data because the professor didn’t really explain much about data interpretation, he just gave example problems of fruit flies and said that students could include relevant data and only gave a rubric for the lab report without really explaining much. My organic Chemistry lab professor explains the lab experiments quite clearly and also helps students understand what tools they need to use. He helps students understand how to analyze the data and gives them good advice on how to work on the lab report and since he explains things quite well I find that I understand Organic Chemistry lab much better. Currently though because of intense gender dysphoria, I have been missing some Organic Chemistry lab assignments (four lab reports because I have been struggling with focusing). Likewise my parents have been having loud discussions when I try to study and work at home about financial things or the car that I have which needs a few repairs and I find it distracting. I find that I set a time to work on my lab report for Organic Chemistry because there is a lab report due for each lab experiment and my parents will move things around (sometimes they are my stuff that I placed there because I decided that would be a good place to put it so I can find it when I need it but they move it around and it causes me stress) or my parents will be talking with their family members on the phone and the conversations are a bit loud and distracting or I have to use the computer and I planned my schedule to work on the assignments at this time and my parents are fixing something and the noise distteacts me or they are trying to rearrange things that I specifically placed in a way that works for me in another way and I find it irritating. This is why I tend to do most of my studying on campus in the library where it is quiet and I won’t be disturbed but there are some assignments I need to bring home as well. I find that when I am preparing for a presentation and will read the material aloud to prepare for it, that it helps me work on it but there aren’t many places where I can work on practicing a presentation where I won’t be disturbed. I was thinking of perhaps printing out the presentation slides and going to my bedroom and doing it that way. If you have any advice on places to prepare for a presentation without getting distracted or ways to work on presenting I am looking forward to hearing them. Lately I feel like the gender dysphoria is quite intense and I sometimes feel like it would be better to withdraw from my classes and retake them in the fall 2020 semester but I like learning about science and being on campus gives me access to resources like the counselors. I do feel like I am strained but I think that if I withdraw from my classes, then I won’t have counseling because counseling is only available to enrolled lstudents. Although I withdrew from meditation class and am part-time taking Genetics and Organic Chemistry still takes lots of work. I enjoy science because I like to analyze and understand the world around me and the nature around the campus is relaxing. Part of me wants to withdraw from all my classes and take a break, part of me wants to enjoy learning and having access to the mental health resources provided to students so I’m hoping for advice. So far, I have taken two quizzes in Organic Chemistry and received a 71 and a 76 on them. I received a 67.75 on my Genetics exam which isn’t great. The semester has been a rough start and the car that I drive to campus with often needs tune-ups and repairs so that takes some time. I have a Organic Chemistry lab 5 Prelab due Tuesday, Ch. 7 questions for Genetics due Sunday, Organic Chemistry exam February 27th and a fruit fly lab report due March 4th. I hope that I can make it through the semester if I decide to stay since I will have access to mental health resources even though part of me wants to withdraw. I’m not sure how my Organic Chemistry lab will turn out because I’ve already missed four lab assignments but there are still five to go. Thank you for being here and listening, blessings to you Anita.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Janus.

Dear Anita

The Genetics class often has quizzes and exams on similar days of the Organic Chemistry class. I am mostly struggling with the genetics lab class because I wish the professor explained things slower and that the classmates could help but they seem to be working independently and don’t really take time to explain things fully. My anxiety doesn’t really help things as well because even though I will be able to understand some parts of the experiments, sometimes I will shake during lab and then ask for help because I am having trouble. Most of the time I will try to work things out by myself and only ask when I really feel like I need to. However when I ask my lab classmates they sometimes get irritated with me because they don’t understand why I don’t understand the material when they do at times or why I’ll shake at times and that makes me more anxious. I did tell my professor that I was struggling and he did work on helping me with questions, but he explained them really briefly and quickly and I still felt confused. I decided to withdraw from genetics  because I was struggling a lot. Withdrawing from that class means that I only have Organic Chemistry now which is Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays along with a lab class on Tuesdays. The professor for Organic Chemistry is better at explaining things and gives students time to think and copy down the notes, and she will go over the material at a slower pace spreading out the topics evenly over a week which I find helpful. The Organic Chemistry lab class takes a lot of time to understand the experiments and also keep the lab notebook and I feel like I’m not doing well in lab because I’ve been missing lab reports and three lab classes because of my anxieties. I’m at the point where I want to drop out of Organic Chemistry as well because I’m really stressed about the lab grade that I have even though the lecture grade is good. The good thing about Organic Chemistry is that the students in both lab and lecture are helpful and the classmates help each other out and the professor is good at helping me work on catching up. I want to continue using the counseling services at Stockton and their mental health workshops, but I think that I have to be currently enrolled in classes in order to have access to counseling so I am trying to stay in Organic Chemistry. After withdrawing from my genetics class, I now have my classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays start from 12:45pm-2pm. I don’t have three back to back classes on Wednesdays like I used to when I was taking genetics because before I had three classes on Wednesdays and I got home late from school because my genetics lab ended at 5pm and I would drive two hours and be home at 7pm. Now that I have withdrawn from genetics I have a looser schedule with the only late class on Tuesday which is Organic Chemistry lab 2:25pm-5:05pm. I just feel really strained and not sure what to do lately.

Dear Anita

I have been seeing the counselors at Stockton and there are psychiatrists on campus who may provide medications for anxiety. There is also a nutritionist who helps students plan healthy meals so that they have balanced energy levels throughout the day. Organic Chemistry lecture class is okay, it’s the labs that take time and since my anxiety makes me shake and makes it hard to focus sometimes I will have to miss lab classes. The anxiety has caused my heart to race, shortness of breath, feeling brain haze and sometimes zoning out, feeling extremely self-conscious, feeling warm all of a sudden and after a while feeling cold because I expended lots of energy. I also feel shaky when walking, will cry easily, feel like I don’t want to get out of bed sometimes or that it would be better to just fall asleep and not wake up, have a stomach that tends to churn and rumble because of the anxiety (sometimes after eating I feel uncomfortably full even though I only ate a little or I just don’t feel hungry at times and then after a long time my body feels really hungry because I haven’t eaten and after I eat I feel bloated and stomach pain). Also I have been breaking out in more acne because of the anxiety. Recently I just healed from an ear infection because of anxiety. I just feel like I’m losing myself and don’t know how to live anymore because I just feel exhausted and wish I could just fade away and let go of the pain because it’s taking over my life. My parents will yell at me saying that it’s just me thinking this way and if I could change my thoughts I would be okay and they think that I have nothing to be anxious about. I just feel like I’m afraid of myself currently and starting to feel detached and lately I’ve been having trouble falling asleep and tossing and turning. I’m still slightly afraid of the dark, because my mind sees patterns of shadows and ghosts but I know that they aren’t real and it’s just my mind being more alert because it is dark outside. I think there’s a term called hypnagogic hallucinations where a person will see shadows or ghosts in the darkness or before they wake because their minds tend to try to make patterns to try to understand how they are feeling or what they think they will see and in the dark or moments before waking up the brain is not fully aware so there is a peripheral sense that causes people to be aware of certain patterns and shapes and then when they fully wake they know that what they saw isn’t real because it fades away. It is often due to stress that causes people to have hypnagogic hallucinations because stress can strain the mind but people after being initially startled become aware and they know it isn’t real. It is a common part of sleep paralysis and often it is caused by lots of mental stress because the body is stressed and wants to sleep but the mind is still anxious so you have an in-between state where you are semi-aware and that is where the person starts experiencing things. Hope this makes sense. Thank you for being here and listening. Hoping to hear from you.