So few folk even want to acknowledge depression in their life but we got some to be brave and talk or put it down...
Pankajbala R Patel:
“I was born in Viramgam, Kathiawad, Gujarat, but grew up on the lovely little island of Penang in Malaysia. I schooled and grew up in Penang through 16 years and then one fine day I turned all of 20 years and my father, a male chauvinist father, packed me off to India to live with my foi (paternal aunt) in Mumbai which was Bombay then in 1970. His instructions to her were to find me a Gujarati boy to marry! My father’s thing was daughters were of no use to him, a little later he packed off his remaining three younger daughters to India (to Mt Abu in Rajasthan)…of course in Bombay which became Mumbai I had to grow up in a hurry, even as angry rebellious streak and depression took over my life. I would not get married to any man who reminded me of my father! I kept looking and the years flew by. I got married at the threshold of menopause at 48 years of age…but the depression of being a daughter is central to my psyche, and I know I will never forgive my father for uprooting me from a country I loved. Sadness and depression dogged me for many years, affecting my decisions. Overtly and covertly I felt rejected, not good enough as a daughter, even in my 60s when so much water has flown below the bridge as we say, the feeling still burns like a thorn embedded in my psyche…making anxiety, stress, sadness and depression a heavy stony burden of past, present and future! It’s like a kind of traps within one large trap which I find more and more unable to cope with and difficult to get out of….”
Elizabeth Rodrigues:
“I have not suffered depression really because when I did I was able to recognize it, if you are intelligent you can tell you are going into depression for whatever reason and so you talk it over with someone who is an expert and the depression clear up with understanding it in a new perspective which is positive. I was able to recognize it. Others don’t know what is happening to them for a long time! Depression for me was because of family reasons and circumstances, relationships with family members, we are not able to talk to each other because of barriers of ego! It was something to do with family property matters and I could not break down the block or wall…still can’t, so I just began to accept the fact that the situation is what it is. Accept it, the moment you accept it, the fact teaches you only one thing – to take charge of yourself because you cannot change others. And I strongly believe in accepting the situation as it is. I was depressed, I recognized it, I accepted the situation because there no other way one can continue to live. If you go see the mind doctor you end up with brain elevating drugs which gives you the high of illusions, it’s neuroscience. When you come out of your depression you can feel much worse. I try to always see some positive side to depression to come out of it!”
Munmun Ghosh:
“Thankfully, I have never suffered from depression but I have friends who do. I feel that there is always a specific reason for depression and this is not chemical or hormonal or whatever else they say…that may come later. A friend of mine was exposed to some bullying at his work place and it affected him enough to make him quit and stay at home, he refused to go out. It took three to four years to get him out of his depression. Like I said depression always has a specific reason when you suffer from a sense of no hope, hopelessness. Another friend was even ashamed of talking about it, she suffered from a deeps sense of shame because of sexual abuse and even thought of killing herself…so you see I think something always triggers depression. Personally, I find praying and chanting helps me get out of moments of anxieties and depression.”
Blaise Dias:
“I don’t know if it was depression but there was definitely a period of six months in my life when apart from forcing myself to go work I had no interest in anything. I’d get home from work and crawl into bed, hardly communicating with friends and family. This was some years ago and I don’t even remember why I went through that phase now. I also don’t remember what got me out of it.
“From everything I’ve read about depression it seems clear that biological factors play a role. Nothing else seems to explain why a crisis sends one person into depression that lasts for months or years while another person feels sad for a few days and then moves on. But then what about social support networks? People say that those with loving friends and family are less likely to be depressed. I take this with a pinch of salt. I’ve seen people with loving family go through periods of terrible depression and I’ve seen others with terrible family shrug it off. That family doesn’t play a major role necessarily can be seen when analysing siblings brought up in the same environment where one undergoes depression or other mental issues while others with the exact same upbringing don’t. So does this mean that I’m saying medicine is the only way out? Not exactly. I do believe that medicine has a role to play in chronic cases, specially if there are some hormonal deficiencies, etc. But for the majority of us dealing with the bitter pills life gives us from time to time there’s much we can do without the aid of medicine.
“Here are three rules I follow that help me shrug off the vicissitudes of life:
- Don’t brood or wallow in your sadness.
Easier said than done you may think. But trust me, as a person who used to spend hours and days brooding over everything that upset me, it may take time, but you also can move away from this bad habit if you only keep trying. So someone you love said something cruel? Feel sad in that moment. Figure out if there’s any action you need to take. Yell back if you must. But then step back from the pain. Just go do something else. Take a nap, pet your dog, watch a funny show. Shove that person and his/her unkind words out of your head. Physically imagine yourself pushing the words away. Pushing the person away. And every time they try to get back in, push them away again. So you had a bad start in life? You were abused, beaten etc. That’s truly terrible. And yes, you are starting your life’s journey with the deck stacked against you. And yes, others may be lucky to not have faced what you did. But that’s then and this is now. And no matter who did what to you in the past you owe it to yourself to LET IT GO! If someone burnt or abused you as a child, you gain nothing by relieving the pain again and again. You owe it to yourself to move on otherwise you are hurting yourself quite as much as your abuser did. And that is such a waste. Get therapy if you must, but don’t brood! - Allow/Accept others as they are:
Everyone is here on their own life path to make their own choices and their own mistakes. No one owes you anything. What you owe yourself and the world is to do your best. What does this mean? Someone cheated you? So what. You are not here to control their life. You are here to take responsibility and control your own. If someone stole your money your responsibility is to take the best action you can — denounce the thief, or go to the police, or shrug and walk away — there’s no one route that’s right or wrong. You have to find what’s right for you and do that. But what is most definitely not right is spending hours brooding over how he could have cheated or stolen from you. That’s not your concern. Does this mean you allow a friend to take drugs? That depends — your purpose here is to be true to yourself. If you believe that drugs are bad and you don’t attempt to help your friend you will have to deal with an unhappy conscience. So if you believe it’s right to help your friend quit drugs, do that. But if he chooses to ignore you and continues, don’t take your failure personally. Do your best and move on. - Find things that make you feel grateful:
This may not come easy, specially to people who are very far down the path of depression. But almost anyone can find some things to be grateful for. Even a prisoner in a cell may be grateful for the sun on his face twice a day or a letter from a loved one. Even a man without a full belly can find some joy in the fact that the weather is good. Searching for things to be grateful for can spark life long joy. Any student of the law of attraction would tell you that feelings multiply. Feeling grateful? You’ll find more reasons to be grateful. Feeling criticised? More criticism is on the way. Feeling lonely? You get the drift. Any good feeling would help, but gratitude and appreciation are often the easiest to feel as you can list down things that make you feel them.”
K V Goes:
I first understood depression in 1998, I was a teen then and before this episode, I was known as a happy-go-lucky kid and nothing in the world could bring me down. But, then one catches his own father sleeping around with multiple women and even molesting kids and even one’s own cousin! I figured that the person I loved the most in the world was a two timing, paedophile who did not care for the feelings of my mother! So here was the Man I respected the most in life and always stood up for me, spoiled me as a child and who now had become the object of all my hate and bitterness. I was slapped silly if I did not wake up in time for Sunday Mass. I was kicked to make it in time for Catechism class to learn the Ten Commandments, prayers and ethics. Almost 20 years of being a proper Catholic boy, with “Thou shall not steal” “Thou shall not covet my neighbours wife” “Thou shall not bear false witness“ and many more came crashing down in a few seconds and I was angry. I was not able to sleep, nor eat and never understood what happened to my happy-go-lucky nature. Was I a man now? Is this how a man learns to survive with hypocritical parents and an even more hypocritical religion!