You think you are well prepared. Kiiiind of. Actually, I am quite sure I am not. You go there anyway because you don’t really have a choice. I mean, technically, you can skip anything. You click the button, and it connects.

You turn the camera on and unmute yourself. If you're the first one in there, you wait. And you wait some more. Okay, all of this waiting doesn’t really help.

Here we come. A face. The face of a person you have never seen. Great, now they’re asking me how I am doing. I think I need to be careful about judging what to answer. No, I wouldn't tell the truth. “I am doing well. How about you?” barely comes out of my mouth. You liar, I thought to myself. Wouldn’t it have been a nice way to start? An icebreaker, as we call it. In the end, I think I judged well. And here we go, breathe in, breathe out.

“I have been given some questions for you.” Yikes. I forgot what the question was already. Oh wait, they didn’t ask. A panic attack needs to wait at least for another 30 seconds. Yeah, actually, what’s up with this. I feel almost like I am being programmed to stress out. There must be a way to go back and calm yourself down. I can’t do a down dog in front of them. It would be a weird first impression.

You play their game, they are trying to be nice. You blab. They ask you to blab some more, you can’t get to the point. What did they ask again? Hm. I am supposed to be thinking about the answer. What was the question? Shoot, I’ve been quiet for some time, they need an example of how I behaved in the past. How am I supposed to remember? My memory is excellent at being selective. I see some couscous… with turkey, noo no, that’s another place. Look for another drawer. Great, now they are trying to help out…

We just finished, and I am not feeling well. As part of the therapy session, I decided to draw out of my stress, and this is what the drawing ended up like:

When I thought about this later, I was only looking at it from one perspective. I felt frustrated and stressed out. I complained. But there’s the perspective of the other person, too. Who knows what it was.