Suicidality and Suicide

Value of life
Everyone must have uttered these words at some low phase in their life: 'Oh God, I’m fed up this life is just not worth living.' These are momentary and transient thoughts that change as soon as the situation changes, and then suddenly life seems livable all over again. However, for some, this thought may constitute a suicidal ideation, which can easily progress to a suicide plan, suicide attempt, and sometimes-completed suicide. Suicide is a dangerous act, which is consciously undertaken with the attempt to harm oneself with full and complete awareness and consciousness.

Pregnancy and its related problems

Moments of pure of joy

Pregnancy and childbirth are moments of joy and fulfillment. Untarnished instants where there should be no room for trouble or worry. However, with this joy comes the added responsibility of motherhood, multiple lifestyle changes, increased workload and a severely disrupted sleep-wake schedule; at least for the initial few months. These clubbed with the hormonal changes in the mother, can lead to tremendous exhaustion that may exhibit as post partum disorders of pregnancy blues, depression or psychoses.

Personality disorders

Persona

Personality is the make-up of an individual in totality. What we are, how we think, behave, walk, talk, act, react to situations; everything is specific to our own constitution. That is why every individual is different from the other, yet most people usually manage to adjust to, and accept the personality traits of most others. However some behavior characteristics are difficult to adjust to and seem outside of the normal acceptable range. Although all ‘abnormal’ traits do seem to be exaggeration of the mannerisms we see in normal people; they evidently stand out of the range of regularity. These deviations constitute personality disorders.

Chronic pain and its impact

Pain is everywhere

Majority of clinic visits in to a general physician are for longstanding headache, backaches, joint pains, chest discomfort; pain anywhere in the body. Pain is a neurological symptom, that has a medical cause and it demands specific medical treatment. Many varieties of arthritis, degenerative illnesses, migraine and muscle spasms; all are associated with longstanding pain. However, any pain that lasts for more than 3 months certainly has some psychological contributions to it. Such pain is medically well understood as chronic pain.

Aggression and Impulsiveness

Anorexia and Eating Disorders

Women and size 

Thousands of women and an astonishing number of men too, look at the mirror everyday, and dislike what they see. Thinness has become a trend and women consider size zero as the cut off for being anything close to average. Media hype has contributed significantly to propagating thinness. Some professions like modeling or acting demand it; but when the obsession begins to take drastic proportions, it may become life threatening and corrective measures are essential for survival. These then point to eating disorders that are not a ‘fad’ anymore.

Stress and related problems

Stress response
If you went out camping in a jungle and saw a lion standing before you, you would exhibit a myriad of thoughts (what do I do now?), emotions (fear, anxiety), and behaviors (run for your life or find your gun and take target). All these constitute the stress reaction, which is also termed as the fright, fight, and flight response. A similar state may be experienced when a driver suddenly slams the brakes of a speeding car to prevent an accident, or a batsman needs a 4 or a 6 in his last shot to win the match. Everything seems smooth in the world as long as the wheels are rolling at a pre-determined pace in every aspect of life. The moment there is a change; there is a fluster of thought, emotion, and behavior to resist that change. This is what constitutes stress: A complete and wholehearted resistance to change.

Sexuality and its problems

Importance of sexuality

Everyone has sexual feelings, attitudes, and beliefs; at the same time, everyone's self-experience of sexuality is unique because of the intense personal perspective involved. Having accurate awareness about healthy sexuality is very important for the nourishment of intimacy between couples. It is also instrumental in promoting sexual satisfaction and enhancing the sensitivity of interpersonal relationships. Sexuality has significant impact on the overall wellness of all people. One needs to get beyond the taboo and accept one's own as well as sexuality of the partner. This mindfulness helps deal with sexual problems in case they ever arise.

Sleep and related problems

Life and sleep

Human beings sleep for quarter to a third of their lives; hence sleep forms a pretty large expense of time of one's existence. Sleep and dreams have attracted interest since history but the importance of sleep is only becoming evident today, with the emergence of negative consequences of lack of good sleep.

Adjustment: It's not so easy

Life and change

Change is the only constant in life. And change generates resistance. Every passing day brings a change in some or the other dimension for every individual. Facing it is stressful enough, defying it is hardly a comfortable option. It is imperative to adjust to new situations and new people in today's fast moving world. If one is unable to make amends with one’s situation, it affects the psychological well being and can cause distress in the form of adjustment problems. 

When relationships get sour

The connect
A relationship is a connection between two individuals. All relationships thrive on inter-dependence. Some are sturdier than others. These are the long-term bonds, and they often involve emotions. Now, that is where the catch is. Emotions, trust, commitment, attachment, and dependence all form the building blocks of relationships. But sentiments if tampered with, can act as weak links of the interpersonal dyad, which may break the connection if the stress and the associated emotive trauma become agonizing. Connects are precious and yet so hard to sustain.

Mania and Bipolar Disorder

Happiness: who wants that?

Everyone yearns to be happy and energetic, to steal the attention in a gathering, speak aloud and be heard; and have positive thoughts and emotions. Elation, exaltation, euphoria, and ecstasy are all positive emotional states that hallmark happiness. However, when these positive emotions become unreasonable, disruptive, and uncontrollable, they interfere with functioning and constitute the psychological disorder: Mania. The mon waxes and wanes. So do moods at times. At times at regular intervals. At times at random. One must understand the swings and processes to know what is real and what a facade...

Sadness and Depression

Mood 
Mood is the persistent state of emotion. It is something personally felt by the ‘feeler’ and usually is observable to others too. Some are positive mood states: happiness, excitement, exhilaration, exaltation, while others are characteristically negative ones like sadness, disappointment, gloom, frustration, despondency or depression; to name a few. Everyone goes through different emotions through their lifetime, over the years, months, weeks, sometimes even several times a day. A low mood is a problem and if there was an option, one rather not have to deal with it; yet it is a slice of life that one must devour. Life cannot be positive all the time. However, when a negative emotional state is persistent, and it causes longstanding trouble to the person feeling it, it qualifies as a disorder. 

Psychosis: What you must know

Psychosis is a term used to broadly describe conditions in which an individual has lost touch with reality. Schizophrenia forms the prototype of all psychotic problems. The picture of schizophrenia embraces a very diverse range of disturbance in perception, thought, motivation, emotion and movement. Schizophrenia is considered as an illness in which there are frank periods of disturbed behavior in the individual's life; set upon a background of continued emotional disturbance and disability which gets expressed in almost every walk of life. 

Who's obsessed?

Worry and apprehension are normal. At some point in time while we have been on vacation, each one of us has felt a surging anxiety about whether we turned the water tap off or disconnected the gas or locked the door appropriately. Praying or performing ritualistic offerings to ease off worry before a presentation or examination or important life event is a norm in several cultures. Getting negative thoughts amidst positive life events is also a typical reaction because one needs to be prepared for the worst in every situation. Keeping track of adverse outcomes midst confident efforts is the way to go. That's called positive pessimism and it works in all situations. However excessive and unwanted worry that does not lead to betterment in performance, rather acts as an obstruction to it, warrants attention. 

Fears and phobias

Each one of us has a set of dreaded objects, real or imaginary. Someone may fear dogs or cats or rats or snakes or spiders; others may be consciously troubled by the thought of a natural calamity earthquake or flood or volcano; and yet others may quiver and faint at the sight or even the mention of blood. Some people are afraid of closed spaces while others may fear going to open marketplaces alone. All these apprehensions are irrational and uncalled for. They interfere with the way one normally thinks, feels behaves. They hinder one from living a so-called ‘normal’ life.

How are you, socially?

Being the center of attention is exciting. Limelight, propaganda, publicity are good when they get you positive attention. Human nature circumvents all potential uncomfortable situations and evaluations that may have negative consequences on one’s performance, ability or character. An examination or presentation for which one is unprepared is not exhilarating. Some have the ability to fight the situation; others react with nervousness. Social phobia is relatively common today.

Worry: The norm today

Typically nervousness and worry form a part of everyday small matters like work, finances, relationships, health and safety of loved ones; school or college assignments, job presentations and other routine tasks. The focus of worry usually keeps shifting from one task to another. Normally everyone is able to keep control over bothersome thoughts; and life's uncertainties ordinarily don't seem to be getting out of hand. But sometimes, defenses don't match up the stressors; demand overruns the supply of personal energies, and troubles do get out of subjective control.

Time to add color to life

Life is neither black nor white. It has a multitude of shades of gray. Yet there’s a possibility of splitting white into beautiful components and getting the apposite colors to make our own rainbow. Moods, mindsets, temperaments, characters and dispositions are usual excuses for accepting and living with inertia. Life deserves more than gray. It’s time to add some color to life!

Challenge…yourself

Arguments come easy to humankind. And it seems that man enjoys it (women too). It’s common to dispute the opinions of others (that is bound to happen when one has to stand for oneself and safeguard self worth). But apart from arguing with others, there’s a good deal of quarrel put forth by the alter ego within one’s own self in all doings. The difference exists for sure because the self will lose (so what if it’s against ones own self) and no one likes losing. Consequentially, the commonality is that the alter ego stays dormant and the argument fails to occur at all.

Quantifying irrationality

Life isn’t perfect. Things don't go the way they were ‘supposed’ to or ‘destined’ to or the way you ‘expected’ or ‘wanted’ them to. Not even the way they ‘should’ have been. Life is full of expectations and desires and wants that occasionally stay unfulfilled and unconsummated. And truly, it’s not unjust to want to relish the pleasures this world has to offer us. After all we work so hard for them. Everyone works and toils for peace and joy. Asceticism or self-denial is not the route to nirvana. But rationality is a must. Living within rational limits of expectations allows one to have them fulfilled more frequently. And that fetches contentment without doubt. 

The RIGHT defenses

Often those who do wrong, know that it’s inappropriate. In fact people continually know what’s erroneous and still do it. Children recognize this too. Kids know that lying, stealing; hurting someone, screaming when they’re upset and throwing a tantrum is not good. Likewise adults know that worrying, getting angry, hiding emotions, shying from reality, losing hope… are all wrong defenses they use in conflicting situations when they cannot handle it.. The justification to any assault is self-protection; when one is attacked, he will use any defense at hand. But the means used can be hurtful to the self. It’s time to use the correct tools that help us to solve problems and safeguard relationships and self-respect. It is time to use the RIGHT defenses.

The WRONG defenses

It happens often that life’s troubles seem to be getting out of hand. And that commonly adopted façade of ‘I am fine’ doesn't hold up. Human beings have marvelous tolerance and their limits can be pretty cavernous. And yet, one fine day it seems like nothing can get better and the end is near. There seem to be deadbolts everywhere with no keys to unlock the path to freedom. Work, home, children, health, accounts, maids, taxes; there is an endless sea filled with ravenous sharks getting to you and you are still fighting, you haven’t let go and you’re still not happy with the way it’s going. If only someone could come in and set things right for you. Solve all the problems and offer you your well-deserved peace…

It's time to get calculative

Math may not be the only field that makes one excel in life, but the summation of occurrences that add meaning to existence does count. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the inevitable addition to life is the number of years lived. Birthdays come every year and we have no means to stop them. Until one day the count ends. But till then, the clock ticks. It’s strange that we keep counts of birthdays (a mere addition of years of ‘breathing’) and lose track of things that made this subsistence worthwhile. Or was it ever worthwhile? We dont even know. Its essential for each one to know. Everyone needs some good training in math. To get calculative about life…

Do you have an inner critic?

How often do we look into the mirror; not to see how good we’re looking once well dressed and groomed; but to gaze deeper into the soul, to see who we really are, what our true strength is and which are the values we strongly live by? We have reason to look up to ourselves, believe in ourselves, pat ourselves, and feel content with who we are and what we have triumphed in our existence. Yes, we all need to feel proud of ourselves for survival. It's quintessential for us to know that we have worth. We need it to believe that life is worthwhile. Appropriate appraisals and reappraisals from time to time help people better themselves. And who is a better surveyor of yourself than you?