{"id":66460,"date":"2019-06-30T19:24:14","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T03:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/?p=66460"},"modified":"2019-07-07T18:58:08","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T02:58:08","slug":"at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/","title":{"rendered":"At the Brink of Losing, I Found Myself"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>\n<p><strong>&#8220;I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you&#8217;re not alone.&#8221; ~Dwayne Johnson<\/strong><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Did you ever bow down to your mind demons? I have&#8230; but that experience taught me the best lifetime-lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My life was not a fairytale. But fortunately, my fight was never for bread and butter.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had every means to suffice my materialistic desires. I had beautiful people around in the form of friends and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the ironical truth is I was alarmingly sad with no one knowing it. I had droll people around to laugh with but no one to share my gloomy secrets. My outer world was full of light but my inner world was pitch dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unable to recognize the cause, I couldn\u2019t express.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A brute force struck my head hard now and then. The occasional was turning into chronic breathlessness. I was deserted in the crowd continuously losing my feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Life was asking some tough answers, but my restless mind could answer none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not that I didn\u2019t think of doc-visit. But <em>which doctor<\/em> \u2014 was always in question as I was unable to classify the category under which my problem falls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea to share with someone would soon raise questions \u2014 <em>Which person? What would I explain?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were many apprehensive dilemmas consuming my head elevating my problem&#8217;s intensity. I ignored them all for some time but each elapsing moment was not curbing but exasperating my disorientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Did I seem so normal to my loved ones or they dumb? Am I over-expecting? Have I become a useless attention seeker?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes&#8230; all of this was bruising my mind \u2014 the bruises no one saw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes&#8230; I finally consulted a <em>psychiatrist<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It felt like a hapless victim when the doc diagnosed me with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/diseases-conditions\/persistent-depressive-disorder\/symptoms-causes\/syc-20350929\">persistent depressive disorder<\/a> \u2014 a&nbsp; type of depression<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mental health awareness \u2014 far away from the educated&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My suffering could have been diagnosed earlier and averted. But for the lack of mental health awareness in many including me, what I only knew was a mentally ill person is mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Discussing mental health problems is still a social stigma in most parts of the planet. Moreover, ignorant people use the word <em>depression <\/em>so often that the ones who are suffering from it cannot address it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It lays the foundation for a quandary for the one facing it. <\/em>People are unable to open up about their mental wounds.&nbsp; Even if they try to express, their words are trespassers to people\u2019s ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a result, mind demons never allow the covered wounds to heal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Even the anti-depressants couldn\u2019t revive my feelings&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The prescribed pills were more of <em>sedatives<\/em> and the only positive I could extract \u2014 there were no more sleepless nights. But again, I dozed off irregularly for an unusually long period, sometimes twelve hours at a stretch.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was all bleak with no sense of recovery. And in case you don\u2019t know:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happiness is a feeling. So literally I was losing the feeling of happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was reduced to mere existence. Whenever I&nbsp; knocked on the sweet-memory door, it never opened. My condition worsened!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>A boon in disguise \u2014 the road to recovery&#8230;<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In my days of depression, Jaundice attacked my liver. Thank God it was not a mental problem; it had apparent symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what turned out to a big blessing was\u2014 A liver infected with jaundice does not allow to take antidepressants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nowhere to run, the effects of discontinuing the antidepressants were <em>unbearable <\/em>in one word. My room was my abandoned world till the time the short-term side effects subsided.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But after then:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many things changed; but this time for good, for a change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>How did I beat the blues?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When jaundice got cured, one fine morning (without the sedative effects of anti-depressants) led the foundation for my beautiful beginning. The euphoric freshness I had not felt for a long time, stated enough reasons to make me quit those pills forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I became curious to find natural ways to unlock the doors of happiness and to revive my lost feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Meditation was my miraculous cure!<\/strong> I started with the traditional approach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mindful.org\/mindfulness-how-to-do-it\/\">Mindful Meditation<\/a>; didn\u2019t know there are other techniques as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not as simple as it sounds, I felt nothing&nbsp;but drowsy, in the initial days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was taking a toll on my patience but I knew it\u2019s my last resort. I continued for a week to reach a mind-state I never experienced before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That positive feeling is difficult to express in words. It was profoundly magical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there on&#8230; I started reviving as a bigger and better individual. The biggest lesson which meditation taught me is <em>Happiness is nowhere but in the awareness of the present moment.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Having said, it&#8217;s not my mind is all over from depression but one thing is for sure:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Depression is not all over my mind either. And that&#8217;s only because my soul is not a captive to my mind anymore. I am a free, blissful being now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t fight with my negative thoughts anymore to provoke remorsefulness. I have realized positivity and negativity are just the two sides of a coin. And we need to accept every feeling gracefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>Strong advice to people facing mental problems&#8230;<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>People who never faced a mental problem cannot initiate the discussion about your mental health, for a simple reason: They don\u2019t know how it feels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So let us stop expecting and act by ourselves. Mental health is not a taboo, let us talk about it as normally as viral fever. Let&#8217;s initiate to create awareness!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Amanpreet Singh is the founder of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/happyrealization.com\/\">Happy Realization<\/a>. From the negatives of depression to the positives of meditation, he loves expressing his experiences and the practical life lessons which he calls his Happy Realizations. He&nbsp;feels&nbsp;privileged sharing space with the writers in esteemed publications&nbsp;like&nbsp;Lifehack,&nbsp;&nbsp;Pick the Brain&nbsp;and&nbsp;Dumb Little Man.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you&#8217;re not alone.&#8221; ~Dwayne Johnson Did you ever bow down to your mind demons? I have&#8230; but that experience taught me the best lifetime-lesson. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13036,"featured_media":66462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[24,21,6],"tags":[4642,51,594],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>At the Brink of Losing, I Found Myself<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Did you ever bow down to your mind demons? I have... but that experience taught me the best lifetime-lesson.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At the Brink of Losing, I Found Myself\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Did you ever bow down to your mind demons? I have... but that experience taught me the best lifetime-lesson.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pickthebrain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/happyrealiza10\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-07-01T03:24:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-07-08T02:58:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/depression.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/happyrealiza10\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@pickthebrain\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amanpreet Singh\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/depression.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/depression.jpg\",\"width\":1920,\"height\":1280,\"caption\":\"depression\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/\",\"name\":\"At the Brink of Losing, I Found Myself\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/at-the-brink-of-losing-i-found-myself\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-07-01T03:24:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-07-08T02:58:08+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f382a89e034c672f1162ffd4ee053a38\"},\"description\":\"Did you ever bow down to your mind demons? 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