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Giovanna is obsessed with spidersLuke give dirty. Giuseppe is convinced that aliens run our lives. And then there’s Geneva, with her anxiety to be alone. Emilie, forced to an eternal repetition of a dramatic event. Giovanni and the conviction of always being spied on. The “kingdom of fixations”: the office. And dangerous relationships, for example with a narcissistic person.

Above all, the book is made up of stories «Don’t stare. Free yourself from personal obsessions for a more peaceful life” Of Giancarlo Cerveri (I sleep, «Sciences for life» series conceived and directed by Eliana Liottain bookstore since March 14). For example, the one that inspired the cover of the book: «My patient Marta (fantasy name) was trapped by herself. She was a woman of rare charm and fine intelligence, and was forty-two years old when he came to me. She was going through a period of great difficulty because her job was a disaster and she was no longer able to get along with her husband. Her life as a whole had become hateful to her. She was beginning to suffer from very intense anxiety attacks. She felt inadequate about everything. He had two children, who had become the only relevant issue of his existence. Despite her dedication, she felt like an imperfect mother. One detail struck me and became the starting point for my reflection. Every morning, before taking her children to school, who were in fourth grade and sixth grade, he sharpened the pencils perfectly and arranged them according to the exact shade of color in the cases. There wasn’t a day that the points weren’t smoothed out and made sharp as pins. At the cost of making the kids arrive late for school, at the cost of not putting on make-up before going to work, she who had never made a secret of her vanity. Why that obsession with the pencil sharpener?’

Example then the description of the «perfect worker»: «There are people who live their own experiences, even emotional ones, with a very strong desire to control the surrounding environment. They deal with details maniacally, often causing perplexity (or worse) in colleagues. Generally these are anxious subjects, but at the same time hyper-performing, and therefore almost always destined for success. The fear of making a mistake, of losing control over every single step, pushes them to work obsessively, without ever taking a break. There are no weekends or holidays, there are no partners or children (and if there are they are firmly in second – or third, fourth – place on the scale of priorities). Overperforming workers may be something of a curse to those around them, but in the end they will outperform others. They will have perfect knowledge of the product to be sold, the market conditions and the characteristics of potential customers. Or they will be excellent doctors or prodigious lawyers. Loyal to the cause, one could say, although perhaps without a life outside work. At the base, in the most striking cases, there is not even the desire for competition (or money and power), but a sense of duty taken to the extreme, which ends up creating a very strong dependence on work. In the face of a one-way life and willfully deprived of a whole range of freedoms, there is a constant ascent to the nirvana of the perfect worker.

Cerveri, who is director of the ASST psychiatry complex operating unit of Lodi and among the authors of the Psychiatry forum of Health Courier
, in the book tells of fixations that lead us to success and others that make us lose precious opportunities. He does it through the stories of famous and “obsessed” personalities (Napoleon, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs) and many patients he met and treated. Real people who are transformed into literary characters, with invented names and at least partially “transfigured” events. Despite this it is not difficult, scrolling through the book, to recognize oneself in some of the protagonists, who get excited over an idea to the point of losing the sense of reality, yearn for a love that has no hope, hate the climate in the office but are unable to react , are unable to process the death of a family member. «Fixation and its opposite, flexibility, constitute our structure of thought – explains Cerveri -. Without some fixation we would not achieve our goals, but without flexibility we would be like of trains launched towards an unknown destination, without a track, inevitably destined to lose direction. Remaining in the metaphor of the engines, fixation could represent the accelerator pedal, flexibility that of the brake. The ability to balance the two aspects makes us capable of achieving goals, tolerating failures and finding alternative solutions in the face of difficulties».

Each of us has some “fix”, small or large. “As long as we manage to live with it, everything is fine – says Cerveri -. The problem arises when fixation blocks us, prevents life from moving forward, makes us suffer. When this happens we must ask for help, because there may be a disease at the base which, as such, must be treated”. The Covid pandemic has dealt a serious blow to the mental health of many people. And Cerveri knows it well, given that the Codogno hospital (where the so-called “patient one” showed up in February 2020) is part of the ASST of Lodi. “The pandemic represented an epochal transition phase – he underlines -. We are witnessing a boom in requests for psychiatric help by people who have not been treated or have become ill due to Covid and all related factors (lockdown, economic crisis, crisis in personal relationships). The positive thing is that the number of subjects who agree to ask for help is increasing. The problem, on the other hand, is the serious shortage of psychiatrists and nurses. We are having a hard time responding to people’s needs. In the province of Lodi alone, psychiatric consultations in the emergency room increased by 30% compared to 2019. Requests for first psychiatric visits are also growing. An economic investment in mental health services is absolutely essential and cannot be postponed».

Giancarlo Cerveriis the author of over one hundred national and international scientific publications, speaker at national and international congresses and director of the journal Psychiatry today
. He is a member of the Executive Council of the Italian Society of Psychiatry and other satellite societies and for about ten years has been coordinating regional projects dedicated to the onset of psychiatric pathologies. His clinical activity is aimed at people suffering from depression, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia.

Giancarlo Cerveri, “Don’t stare”

Series: Life sciences, conceived and directed by Eliana Liotta (Sonzogno)
144 pages, €16.00
In bookstores from March 14th