Tag: mentalhealth

  • Self-pity is never a recommendation

    Self-pity is never a recommendation

    When we go out searching for safe spaces in which to grow, we’re more invested in hiding the shame that we feel about ourselves, than we are in growing.

    Rather than focusing on pushing ourselves into spaces that are uncomfortable, we need to focus on why we feel such shame to begin with.

    Shame doesn’t always feel like shame.

    But, if we pay attention, we’ll note how difficult it is to talk about what we’re struggling with, or what we think we’re failing at.

    That difficulty is because we’re judging ourselves for failing or being inadequate.

    So we protect ourselves from that becoming visible by disguising it as our legitimate struggle against everyone and everything that treated us badly.

    That’s why we polarise towards those who share such weaknesses, because there is less shame in failing together than there is in failing alone.

    That’s how we limit our growth.

    If you want to be successful in business, you don’t seek advice from others who have failed at it.

    Similarly, if you’re not reaching your goals in life, don’t surround yourself with others who are also messing up theirs.

    Choose your role models and your advisors carefully.

    If you choose them out of self-pity, they’ll convince you that nothing is your fault and that everyone else is to blame, including the dead.

    That may make you feel better in the moment, but it will also keep you stuck in that moment for that much longer.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Do you remember you?

    Do you remember you?

    Sometimes, we lose ourselves to the hopelessness of others.

    Sometimes, we lose ourselves to the failed expectations of life.

    And sometimes, we lose ourselves because we thought it was our failings that earned us pain, while oblivious to the fact that it was in fact our success that threatened the ones we loved.

    In these, and so many other scenarios, our perspective is tainted by our belief that what we wish to achieve with others, is what is important to them to achieve with us.

    When this belief proves to be false, we question our self-worth when our best efforts only cause upheaval, and our best intentions are always misconstrued as arrogance or materialism.

    If we don’t stop to see the demons that our significant others are battling, we’ll judge ourselves by how they fail to overcome their demons.

    That’s when our demons strengthen their hold on us.

    Unless we reconnect with who we are, we’ll forever wait for someone else to do right by us before we allow ourselves to find joy in who we are.

    Rediscover who you really are, so that you can shake off the debris that you accumulated through the years with each toxic character that convinced you that you were someone you’re not.

    The risk of coping with failure or betrayal is that our act of coping grows to define who we think we are.

    But that’s when we lose sight of who we were before that moment.

    The only way to move beyond it is to recognise that coping is only needed as long as we’re still holding on to the hurt or the disappointment of what could’ve been, but didn’t happen.

    Let go of it, and the joy that you experienced before that defining moment will return.

    It always starts with you.

  • Where is your humanity?

    Where is your humanity?

    Taking pride in the colour of your skin or ethnicity distracts you from your humanity.

    Our humanness, our gentleness, our inclination towards kindness – these are all part of our natural state.

    We lose it when our need to be associated with significance or superiority distracts us from this, and replaces it with the fear of being inadequate.

    When we lose sight of the fear of inadequacy, responding from a place of fear becomes our new normal.

    Everything that threatens the source of our significance – that is, our skin colour, religion, cultural roots, etc. – then feels like a threat to our sense of self.

    Thus, we feel the anger, resentment, or blind rage that rises when we are judged by the colour of our skin, our religion, our ethnicity, or any other association that makes us feel significant.

    But, we grow convinced that we’re standing up for a good cause by protecting what we value, even though the way in which we protect it undermines the very essence of what we claim to stand for.

    That’s when it becomes clear that we only stand for what we do because it offers us a place in this world through being associated with the cause.

    It offers us significance and protects us from irrelevance.

    That’s when we’ve traded who we are, for who we want to be perceived as, because we’re convinced that we are not enough.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.

  • Are you there for you?

    Are you there for you?

    We’re more inclined to recognise the needs of the weak, than we are of the strong.

    Without meaning to, we diminish the humanness of those who persevere without complaint, because they often make it look so easy.

    When we’re the strong ones persevering without complaint, we risk diminishing our own humanness as well, because we become defined by being strong for others.

    Whether you’re strong or weak, you need to take time to connect with the human behind the strength, or the struggle that you observe in others, and especially within yourself.

    If you don’t, you risk becoming the enabler of weakness and dependence, or the enabler of harshness and insensitivity.

    Because that’s what happens when we lose contact with our humanness.

    We stop expecting, or allowing ourselves and others to be human.

    That’s when everything becomes dutiful and focused on rights and responsibilities.

    And empathy and compassion, let alone love and affection, leave through the window.

    All this because we forgot that we’re human, and that the ones failing us are human too.

    We cannot choose differently for how others show up in our lives, but we can choose how we show up for them, and for ourselves.

    Focus on that, and let the rest take care of itself.

    When you achieve this, you’ll taste the sweetness of life and not just the accomplishment of goals.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.



  • Destroying peace to find peace

    Destroying peace to find peace

    Rage is a destructive demand for significance when we believe that who we are is not enough to be important to those we love.

    The anger that spurs on the rage is a defence mechanism to protect ourselves from becoming invisible.

    We try, in our own little futile ways, to be enough without being able to express ourselves the way others may expect, which leaves us feeling unappreciated when they don’t realise how difficult even that little expression was for us.

    That’s when we feel the rage build up, because we’re reduced to love languages, and token gestures that define how we must express ourselves, when all we want is to just be appreciated for who we are.

    But, that feeling of frustration at not being able to express our emotions in a healthier way was instilled in us long before our adult years.

    Therefore, the rage at our partners or children is simply years of bottled up anger at never being enough, or never feeling heard or seen, by those we relied on most to make us feel safe, and whole.

    It is our invisibility in childhood that creates our demands from the world as adults.

    It is our feelings of inadequacy as children, that fans the rage of abuse and marital rape in our adult years.

    It is our obliviousness to the value of who we are, despite the failings of our parent/s, that keeps us raging at innocent ones who had nothing to do with the nurturing of our insecurities in childhood.

    That’s how we end up repeating the very cycles that destroyed our sense of self.

    When you judge your parents harshly for what they didn’t give you, you fail to see their humanness.

    The very same humanness that you fail to see in yourself, that causes you to rage at the world, instead of appreciating the beauty and peace that it offers.

    You cannot give what you don’t have.

    And you cannot grow if you’re waiting for others to treat you right before you let go of the rage.

    It always starts with you.

  • Honourable destruction

    Honourable destruction

    When honour is confused with social standing, abuse becomes an acceptable form of saving face.

    Beyond considerations of family honour, this toxic cultural practice convinces the individual that infidelity becomes excusable because divorce is deplorable.

    It convinces the brute of the justification of their rage when their partner rejects dehumanising practices by their in-laws.

    It replaces ideals of honour and virtue with ideals of being celebrated by the community for the facade that we create of an empty shell of a life.

    It teaches our children that what others think of you is always more important than what you think of yourself.

    Because we’ve convinced ourselves that it is the village that gives us relevance, we’ve lost sight of how toxic that village has become.

    Izzat is the excuse for marital rape, because our rights are infinitely more important than our responsibilities.

    Izzat is the excuse for honour killings, because appearing weak is assumed to be caving in to justice, while upholding injustice.

    Izzat has eroded the foundation of society, in all societies and not just the Indian culture, because women are seen as symbols of the grandeur of men, and men have grown to be defined by how much his woman raises his stature.

    And in the war for self-worth, the physically weak suffer most, while the physically strong destroy the people around them because they don’t know how to deal with their weakness.

    Break the cycle.

    Own Your Life.

  • Do you matter to you?

    Do you matter to you?

    To be of consequence, or to feel significant, lies at the heart of our inspiration to accomplish anything.

    When we connect with conviction to the significance of who we are, and what value we add to the lives of others, we achieve a sense of peace and contentment.

    But, when we doubt this, we set out in search of validation through observing how others respond to our efforts to improve their lives. To make them happy.

    If we’re fortunate, we’ll find ourselves surrounded by those who willingly and sincerely acknowledge our contribution and our place in their lives.

    If we aren’t fortunate enough to have such people around us, we’ll lose ourselves in our efforts to be enough for them, without realising that they’re also not enough for themselves.

    It’s an empty cup trying to fill a broken one, where the one who is giving is depleted, and the one receiving is distracted by their own demons.

    Chronic illnesses set in, accompanied by rage that is often directed at the self, because we didn’t realise the value of who we are, while hoping to be validated by those who were distracted by their own self-loathing.

    Thus, the joys of life are traded for servitude and a living martyrdom, hanging onto faith by a feeble thread, praying that our sacrifices and self-deprecation will be rewarded with everlasting peace when this harsh reality finally ends.

    That’s how we harm ourselves long before we allow anyone else to harm us.

    Worse still, we forget that through self-loathing, we withhold the best of who we are for the innocents around us, and end up giving them reason to believe that they were never good enough to bring out the best in us either.

    That’s how generational trauma is passed down.

    It’s not because of what was done to us, but rather because of how we see ourselves through the eyes
    of those for whom we were never enough.

  • Emotional wellbeing, not mental health

    Emotional wellbeing, not mental health

    It is only through our internal wars that we lose sight of reality.

    The culture of labeling people dehumanises the very human that is struggling with their humanness.

    We focus on our demons so intently, that we become defined by them, bearing them patiently in quiet shame, protecting ourselves from being exposed for what we hold within.

    When we judge ourselves with such shame and harshness, we see the world through angry eyes.

    But, protocol and decorum prevents us from raging and venting without restraint, so we choose safe spaces in which to release the venom from within, on those who are incapable of opposing or resisting us.

    In the public space, we create carefully constructed apologies for our inadequacies, latching onto unhealthy concepts like ‘suffering from…’ whatever emotional torment we’re experiencing.

    That’s when we feed the belief that human emotion is an illness, or a disorder, because it’s the only hope we have of making sense of the war within.

    All this because we convinced ourselves that being any less than happy must be weak, or dysfunctional.

    The sway of human emotions, regardless of how crazy that sway may appear or be experienced, is a legitimate response to very real life experiences.

    Labeling the response does nothing to create understanding and healing around that traumatic or overwhelming experience.

    Stop labelling people because of their behaviour, and reconnect with your own empathy and compassion so that you may once more see the human behind the human condition.

    Own Your Life.