Chaos Theory
Using chaos theory as an analogy for chaotic emotions
Why so tired?
I am not a morning person. Well, sometimes neither am I a day nor night person! When I wake up, I never feel happy or have a carpe diem attitude. On some days, it takes a tremendous amount of effort to get out of bed. On most days, a cup of chai gives the push. After reading a number of articles, I came to the conclusion that I probably have morning depression. These articles stated that people with mental illness…
Hear me out
In my first post, I spoke about what triggered my Bipolar II Disorder. I was 13 and a friend spread some rumors about me in school. As a result, everybody stopped talking to me. This triggered an onset of insomnia that would last for, well, looks like a lifetime and an eventual diagnosis of Bipolar II Disorder. Last night, I had a nightmare that I was back in school and my friends refused to talk to me. I woke up…
Living free
I have been ruminating over how to write this post for many days now. I am not sure about how I can put into words everything I experienced over the month of July and the life transforming changes that occurred as a result. In the past, I have spoken about my struggles with Bipolar II and crippling anxieties. I also suffered from almost constant chatter in my head. In July, I chose to experiment and do something completely different that…
The Bird Watch
Happy New Year! Let’s hope 2022 turns out a lot better than 2021. To start things off on a positive note, here’s a fun post for you. If you’ve read my previous post, you will know that my father was seriously ill from post COVID complications and as a result, I stayed in Pune for almost four months after many many years. The positive outcome of all the COVID lockdowns is that the bird population has increased and many different…
COVID, MY TEACHER – PART II
In my previous post I narrated the harrowing experience of my father being in the hospital for 54 days from COVID complications. He came home on November 3. My mother had successfully found two male nurses to make sure sure that Dad had help round the clock. Physically, he had become a baby again, he had to start all over again, for example, he had to relearn to walk and eat by himself because he had almost no muscle mass…
Escape to Another Word
I come from a family of readers. Not just my immediate family but my extended family too. My sister was a voracious reader as a young girl. In fact, there are old photographs with her with a book and me without. So when I wasn’t reading obsessively by the time I was 10 years old, my mother started getting palpitations thinking that she had given birth to a non-reader. Fortunately for us all, it was only a passing phase and…
Animal Instinct
I am a city person. I like the buzz of a city, the activity and people and of course the convenience. But I need to escape to nature every once in a while to centre myself and find peace and quiet. Recently I spent a few days at a mountain retreat. Everything about the place was grounding- the nature, the community living, the simple technology-free life, the extraordinary people, healthy food and lifestyle, birds and animals. There were dogs, horses,…
Love thyself
By Sharwari Tilloo and Manasa Murari I have spent nearly the last three weeks struggling to crawl out of a fairly severe depressive phase. It is painful and slow and improvement everyday is almost imperceptible. This struggle is something that I have come to terms with. The cyclical depression will never go, this is also a fact. However, like I have always said, it does get better. It requires effort though and my life is better for the effort I…
How I manage my world of anxieties
Last week I spoke about anxiety, the different kinds of anxiety and how it affects me mentally and physically. Like mentioned, anxieties tend to manifest bodily in one form or another. Please refer to last week’s post ‘Anxious much?’ to read more about it. Coping versus avoidance We have coping mechanisms to handle any unpleasant feeling or experience. The mechanisms may not always be positive or helpful and may in fact be avoidance tactics rather than coping mechanisms. Let me…