A Mini-Series on Depression (low Phase of Mind)- GROW THROUGH WHAT YOU GO THROUGH

Ananta koti dandavat at your lotus feet of Oh! revered Swamiji and the lovable ever fit and superhit Shri Hari ji who does not add even 1 gram of cholesterol even if such delicacies being offered by Swamiji!! Jokes apart, I seek the blessing of oh savior as I am setting out to write a mini series on my fight with depression (low phase of mind), my experiences, my struggle, the sufferings of my family including my wife Sanghamitra, son Sahil, my father and mother and my near and dear ones. By the way, belated happy birthday to the most handsome and lovable Honk (Shri Hari ji).

The main intention of writing this mini-series is to put light on the dark phase of life (more precisely of mind) and to pay back whatever little I could to the society through this wonderful os.me family who has supported me like anything, added me in the prayers, showering blessings un-conditionally. People of all age groups came up with their suggestions, including the Chess legend Vidit Gujrathi. I bow to all you divine souls for helping this troubled soul out of the difficult situation. As we are going to discuss a very intense topic, some humor in between will keep the pressure off, right? Love ya!

It is like a black cloud which covers up the entire mental sky. It feels like as if you have become a zombie, you are no more yourself. Something else gobbles you up. You keep on thinking and thinking and thinking. There is sequence of thought chains one after the other, all negative. You are not aware of what is happening to you. Gradually everything loses its color. The things which you once used to enjoy, becomes pointless.

You remain in your own world inside the shackle of your own thoughts. These cascading thoughts completely drain out your mental and physical energy. You become more and more destabilized as you are losing your energy. You desperately run to the worship place may be a Temple, Mosque, Church or whatever is the worship place as per your religion. But you find no solace. It is a trick your own mind starts playing with you even before you understand. For those, who have not experienced it first-hand or with a first-hand relative, what I am explaining will be like Einstein’s Theory of relativity. (I have also failed to understand the theory of relativity 😉).

You try to read some spiritual books or self help guides, but your mind keeps you distracting and plunges you back in those thoughts of negativity. You try desperately to break the chain of the thoughts, but the more you try, the more you drown. You try to watch a movie and somewhere in the movie you eject yourself from watching the movie and go back to the thought. Frustrated, you switch the channel to watch the news and if you happen to watch bad news, your heart begins pounding. It beats faster than Ussain bolt’s heart after a hundred-meter sprint race!

You try to supress your about to burst heart. You fear that you are going to have a heart attack. A gush of panic attack hits you. You are in a vicious cycle. Your ears feel like burning. At the same time your feet become cold. These are the physical symptoms you experience with pinching sensation in your palm and feet. You become restless, cannot sit at one place, cannot stand, cannot lay down. You are very much tired, but the irony is you cannot go to sleep! (So next time when your office colleague is found sleeping at workplace, don’t complain. Just think how blessed he or she is to be able to fall asleep so easily 😉).

The moment you close your eyes, your thoughts hound you like wild beasts attacking your soul. You feel like a movie reel is running in the background with all worst consequences amplified by a minimum factor of hundred or at extreme cases factorial of hundred (if not aware, please Google ‘factorial of hundred’ to see the value, a super computing grid will be required to calculate the value). But one amazing thing which you don’t know is your mind in the gloom state will be working at a much higher speed of some tera hertz, but unfortunately in a negative direction. 

You start to ponder what is wrong with me? You will have no answer. You are tired, desperately needing to sleep, but not able to sleep. You want to break free, but your mind will not let you free. It will see to it that you experience the hell or even worse. You spin, scratch your head, kick here and there beat yourself, slap yourself. You don’t love yourself anymore let alone others. You start hating yourself, burst into crying for nothing. The life force feels like fading out.

Your basic instinct kicks in for survival, but you vehemently try to resist it. You think why you are alive in the first place. You are worthless. The whole world around you will be telling you your worth, but your mind is so adamant that it sticks to the basic principle of good for nothing. Every positive logic turns into a negative one as if a not gate (sorry for the technical jargon again, please do google) is active in your mind. It is one of the gates that has been explained by Swamiji, the gate of sorrow or grief. You think that you have hit a dead end, a roadblock. Your tunnel vision is not allowing you to look beyond.

For all those Engineers or Science students, please keep in mind clearing GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) is not clearing one of the four gates explained by Swamiji in his discourse 😉

Now let me pause here to continue further in the next post. Till then, have patience and if you don’t have, try to cultivate as it is such a huge human quality you will always reap the benefit of the same.

Jai Shri Hari. To be continued….