Category: Mental health

Silence Secrets and Shadows

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Who is she, a question I can’t seem to find an answer to. Well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know her. As a matter of fact her and I have been in this silent, very one sided relationship for almost three years now. However, do I truly know her? Her name, home, and birthday remain a mystery to me. Maybe our connection is merely based on the comfort of familiarity and nothing more. There’s pain written all over that little face of hers, but from the looks of it she’s going to take it to the grave with her. All I’ve ever wanted is to take some of her pain and swallow it, just to see her smile. Comfort her I never could, but she stood with me like an anchor when I went through hell and back. She saw me go from a fragile little girl to this thick skinned woman that I am today. All I ask is for her to let me in, just once. As I stand there with my heart aching for her, I feel a drop of tear roll down my cheek. Memories rush through my mind with the speed of light. Then, like a powerful train, it hits me. I finally realize who she is. It is ME. They say mirrors don’t lie, but I am not convinced. These mirrors are deceitful little creatures, and the image that reflects from it is not me, it could never be. Standing in front of these deceitful little creatures I feel all of my hopes dreams and desires gliding down my cheeks. How, when , why ? words that haunt my sleep deprived self. – Resh

Nightmares, insomnia and more..

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Well well well, if it’s not my paranoid conscious mind projecting it’s fears on to my subconscious mind.

For the past one year I’ve been constantly having nightmares. I have difficulty sleeping for long duration, usually I wake up in the middle of the night or sometimes several times a night. I don’t how to explain but I feel a little out of place in my life.

Last year wasn’t one of my best years to be honest, I wasn’t myself, low self-esteem, and my tendency to people please was all time high. As a result I started hating myself more, because since I wasn’t myself and also I was trying so hard, I was attracting the wrong kind of people in my life.

This is my biggest regret, because I compromised my mental health and values by having these people in my life just because I didn’t want to be lonely. So I lost respect for myself, and believe me it’s miserable having to live like that.

All these things haunt me at night, all the things I should have said, all those times I didn’t stand up for what I believe in, all the things I ignored when I shouldn’t have.

Now I can’t completely cut them off immediately but I have learnt that I need to detach my self emotionally from them. I have taken my first step and reduced my interactions with them. I am learning how to set boundaries and reduce my dependence on them.

A video that helped me understand all this was that of Nathaniel Drew, he explained how the overrated advice of “be yourself” has much more deeper meaning and impact on our lives.

All I want to say is that don’t try to be something you are not just to keep certain people in your life, and from my experience I can tell you that, it’s definitely not worth it.

P.S I am planning to post some storytimes on my blog next. So umm… stick around if you love storytimes.

Coping with a Panic attack at 1 am

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Last night I had a bad panic attack and was having a hard time calming myself down. My brain was churning out thoughts at a speed of about 400 km/ph (at least that’s what it felt like)

Laying in bed at 1 a.m. I am hyperventilating and absolutely helpless. I want to stop worrying but I just can’t, it’s like I’ve lost control over my mind. It’s not that I am worrying about one specific thing, instead my brain is attacking me from different directions by throwing countless intrusive thoughts all at once to overwhelm me.

I tried deep breathing which reduced my hyperventilation to some extent but my mind was still spiraling. I haven’t had a panic attack this bad for quite some time so I was kind of unprepared to deal with this.

I literally google my way through life. From checking spellings and meanings to cooking, google has always been a helpful friend. Naturally I decided to turn to it for help

I skimmed through a bunch of websites which showed the same generic techniques that apparently calms mind. These techniques were like, ‘just breathe’ or something like ‘take a warm bath’. The thing is it’s 1 a.m. I am tired and can barely move but even if I did decide to take a warm bath it would wake my family so it didn’t seem practical.

That’s when I discovered these three techniques that helped me calm down and eventually sleep. Let me tell one thing, these things worked for me but it may not work for everyone. You can try them and if it works for you great! I am happy I could help but if it doesn’t then keep looking for the one that helps you (also mention your personal techniques down in the comments so that it helps someone who needs it)

ASMR. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response(ASMR) is a relaxing and tingly sensation that you feel on your scalp or the back of your neck (that’s where I feel) when you listen to certain sounds like tapping, crinkling of paper etc. This technique works like magic. I mean it just triggers all of the right nerves and helps to instantly calm down the mind. There are a lot of asmr videos on YouTube, try different videos and find out what suits you the best.

Aesthetic / A Simple day in my life vlogs. These are not those vlogs where the youtuber wakes up and jumps into action. No no no, instead these are slower paced vlogs where usually the youtuber never talks but casually goes about their normal day. The reason I find these videos so relaxing is because it reflects the simplicity of life. Since the narrator isn’t talking you start focusing on the background sounds, like the chirping of the birds or the sound of vegetables being cut against a cutting pad, it just shows that life doesn’t necessarily have to be complicated to be happy. I have watched Japanese and Korean vlogs they are really calm and aesthetic.

Last but not the least

Spotify. For me listening to music has always been a therapeutic experience. While traveling to and fro from college in a crowded bus, music has always been my savior. So here I am not talking about songs, I am talking about instrumental music. I feel when we listen to songs our brain puts in extra effort to understand and retain the lyrics, but when we are trying to calm our minds our brain which is already overwhelmed with thoughts should have minimal job to do. These instrumental music just flows throughout your body and it really calms down the restless mind.

So these are the three things that helped me sleep peacefully last night. To be honest I thought I’d stay awake the the whole night, because even closing my eyelids felt like a chore at one point, but eventually I did get a good night’s sleep and that’s what matters.

Finding the calm in the chaos

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Credits: Unsplash

If you have watched the sky just minutes before sunset, then we can agree without a doubt that it is the epitome of beauty. Being in the presence of one of nature’s masterpieces, has helped in calming my anxious mind. I can’t stop but admire the beautiful mix of colours lighting up the sky.

I’ve always enjoyed simply sitting back and observing, people going about their lives, animals doing their thing, birds flying ever so high with not a care in the world and the glorious sunset. Ahh! miss those good old days.

Gradually it became difficult to find time for my favorite pastime. Life just got busy, and I didn’t even realize it. Traveling to and fro from university would be the only time I was free, but traveling in crowded bus didn’t really help.

This pandemic struck the world out of the blue and just like that there was so much uncertainty everywhere. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next and let’s just say my anxiety went from bad to worse. Having  dealt with anxiety on a daily basis, I realized that it really helps to have a proper plan about anything and everything.
But now those plans have become impractical. All of a sudden I have too much free time and not much to do.

That’s when I rediscovered my favorite old hobby. Every evening I would go onto the terrace and watch how the sky would explode into beautiful shades of colours just minutes before the sunset, birds flying back to their nests, few people walking their dogs, roads being almost deserted, trees casually swaying with the wind and and above all there was this alluring silence. Something I haven’t felt in ages, silence. We live in a world that is constantly in motion. So naturally I  became accustomed to the constant chaos around me. All this definitely took a toll on my mental health and unkowningly I left it unchecked all this while. Ultimately it lead to a burnout.

One good thing that came out of this quarantine is that I learnt my lesson, it’s very important to take a break from this busy lives that we lead, recharge our mental as well as emotional health, because at the end of the day we are humans and not robots. The irony is that it took a pandemic for me to focus on my mental health.