My Fragile Heart —2

Jai Sri Hari everyone. Warm hugs to all of you. I hope you all had a blast this Holi.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the meds I took, specifically the psychiatric medicines fogged my brain and had a lot of side effects. To add to that, such medicines if withdrawn abruptly can cause withdrawal symptoms. In the past, I had to use these meds because of my uncontrolled behavioural patterns and acute misery. And my encounter with them has caused me much trouble.

Once my mother, by mistake, gave me a multi-fold dose of a med than required and that early morning I woke up in extreme misery. I cannot describe in words the agony that I felt that day. It was something like a seizure. My whole body was partially jammed, I was not able to move properly and there was an immense feeling of restlessness. I had to be admitted for 3 days.

These meds unlike normal medicines cannot be skipped or forgotten to be consumed. They must be taken on time, on routine because the body gets used to them and needs them on time lest there are complexities. I moved from doctor to doctor, from medicine to medicine, viz. trial and error, took thousands of pills over a period of a few years. And then, slowly I stopped taking them.

I stopped consuming pills by my own conscious decision. I was adamant to know whether I really was bipolar or not which then my doctor told me that I am not. I showed more signs of borderline. I knew I was not bipolar. But I have to convey one important thing. Once you start believing in something it starts working for or against you. When my doctors misdiagnosed me as bipolar, I really used to think that ‘now’ I am ‘manic’, ‘now’ I am ‘low’.

So, for the last couple of years I was not on meds. I cannot say that since leaving medication I have been doing good or even fair. I was miserable. Very. I cannot describe what types of confusions and crisis my thought process led me to. But I was not good either at the time period I was on meds.

All this time my internal and external factors were not supporting me. In fact, the river was flowing against me. At least, that is how I looked and lived through it. I was not in talking terms or for that matter, any terms with my father. But slowly and through several hardships, things are different today for which I am grateful.

Regarding meds, somewhere in his book ‘When all is not well’, Swamiji has written that if you have not started taking meds for depression, half of the job is already done. And I was already sticking to that for a long time. But mine was a little complex case and not just (or exactly) depression so I have started taking meds again after a long time to help me in my process of healing. Earlier I used to freak out of meds, and it lowered my self-esteem, but an attitude of acceptance has helped me. And this time they are really helping me to become more stable because I understand myself better.

I do not label myself under any specific disorder and neither I have any new and added information of which specific disorder I will (or will not) now fall on by the books. I find that irrelevant and not useful. Google baba has labels for anything and everything. I like to go by what Swamiji says – that depression is not a disease; it is a state of mind.

I have accepted I am depressively conditioned, but it does not mean I have to be depressed. I can lead a normal and happy life. Several factors have helped/helping me heal and I wish to share my understanding of how any person who has gone through my situation can come out of it which I will share in one of my upcoming posts.

I am a case of colliding psychic imprints, hypersensitivity, over ambition and an over imaginative brain. But that is all part of being human. If at all something is wrong with me, it is my over imagination which even Swamiji says is a spiritual disorder. But I know the stark difference between how I feel versus how I used to feel. I am healing.