Dear Julie,

A lot of the depression I have had over the years coupled with anxiety, especially social one has been due to events and lot due to genetic reasons.

Given this background, I had a great deal of problems with unhelpful, instusive, negative and paranoid thoughts. My poor choices and actions followed accordingly.

What helped me often break the cycles were two things – awareness and coping means.

Awareness meant knowing that I was in the middle of a phase or about to enter one. In case, I started getting worse, I had a set of coping strategies to manage atleast.

Coping strategies were things like taking a bath, lying in bed after that without any cell phones, gadgets to distract me – maybe a thin, interesting book at best. This might not seem like much but it helped moods immensely.

Then there was cleaning the room. Sometimes it was making the effort to go outside for only 5 minutes, get some air. This was really hard because….I dunno, I think you understand why.

But it was all linked to taking a bath and combing my hair – things people take for granted but got really hard for me.

Next was drinking enough water which meant keeping 3 water bottles next to me and finishing those during the day. This meant I didn’t binge so much when I was down and had to get up out of bed to pee. Again quite a task because all I wanted to do was sleep all day.

During this entire time, your sleep cycle will probably be a damn mess in one way or another. It will take time to fix.

So for now, take one day at a time. Seriously that’s the only way I know.

Take a bath few times a week

Leave the house for 5 mins or sip hot tea by the window on a sunny day

Drink 3 litres of water a day.

Write down whenever you feel sad and never read it again later.

Sounds trite I know but doing just this much will set a process in motion over time.

In case you are ready, I recommend practising something called surya namaskar 3-4 times. It’s basically a yoga practise.

Regards
Nina

Dear Prasanth,

I have read through the entire post. Some thoughts come to my mind :-

You are very dependant on others and the occurance of certain situations to validate your quality as a person.

You don’t see or understand yourself. Accepting who you are is even farther from it.

You are not taking responsibility for your role in the circumstances too. The people who went overseas took courses that you were not interested in. Your real interest was money. The purpose of this money is to have less difficulties and more peace of mind, right?

But what if you are also responsible for ruining your own peace of mind? With your habit of comparing to others, do you think you would have been happy even if say you became rich, went overseas and found a girl? The emptiness would still be there – you would think that you should have studied literature instead! What will you do with so much money! The comparision habit won’t stop.

99.99% of population has experienced what you havent – a very generalised statement again. A huge section of this world is living in utter poverty, persecution, in far worse state. The fact that you have the freedom to annonymously post your concerns here mean you have had some education, an access to internet – things we take for granted but many don’t even have those. Open the world bank figures and you will see what I mean.

Now let’s consider the sports thing – what bothered you then was having less talented people get appreciation while you don’t get it.

Again as you can see, your focus is extremely outside. Did you participate for your own enjoyment or simply to get praise?

You don’t feel good about yourself and that’s why you need others to praise you, you constantly look at others life to think how much is missing in your life.

But do you see that even you are responsible for how well you manage your own thoughts and emotions?

Love is something that isn’t happening. Your criteria is not being satisfied and you again start the compare game.

Stop comparing your life with others. Stop thinking so much about the past.

Please start finding out who you really are, what you actually want and how can you have a good relationship with yourself first. Your focus is way too much on outside.

Regards
Nina

Samira, I am sorry things are so hard now. It’s truly unfortunate that he is in such a state too.

Take your time to process whatever has happened. See, both of you have had a role to play in this entire thing not working out. But reality is this only that he is married now. He is committed to another. Whatever he says or you say, this is fact.

You need to now see things outside of his plans and ideas. Earlier you were so focused in your life. Now if you are shattered, even your family will suffer. Being angry and blaming him is pointless. Blaming anyone now won’t help either. He could have done things for whatever reasons. Even you had said not to wait for you, then you changed your mind.

Whatever the case, try to see the situation for what it is and move forward. Please consider why you were refusing marriage in the first place. Your priorities were different. You wanted an independent and strong man, not just a good person.

Don’t forget who you are and what you want. Start picking up the pieces. Cut ties with him. Let his own family deal with whatever has recently happened.

You calling and worrying won’t do anything for the situation.

Dear Samira

He is married now. Nikah isnt a joke. He has a wife now and he is being unfaithful to her this way. You are continuing an affair with a married man by encouraging all this talk when you know the feelings are still there. He has helped you before in life and has a good heart despite his faults. Please have the good sense to let this go now. When his life is in order and he indeed obtains the divorce, associate with him again, start over. Don’t encourage this otherwise or you are destroying another girl’s life in the process too.

Regards
Nina

Dear Tannhäuser,

Sorry to hear about your health issues. I do know and understand very little. I am learning too about things and have my own set of limitations. I won’t post on your thread anymore. Before I sign off, there are two points to add –

1) Regarding engaging with the world, I meant in terms of productive engagement. Being of service to others, showing small considerations etc. This was said because one often gets caught up in great deal of negativity while coming across these abstract concepts and doesn’t look at them objectively.

2) Now you mentioned the materialistic nature of the world. Indeed the world is materialistic and has a lot of bad points even. I don’t see how there is a full complementarity in higher vibration and exclusion. The Buddha did meditate and leave home in the process of gaining enlightenment. However, he came back and shared his teachings with this materialistic world. His vibrations didn’t get lowered by that. His hheightend understanding of life helped him see it’s very reality without his own biases. One can say the same for many popular examples of awakenings.

On interacting with several teachers of spirituality, particularly of vedanta who took Sanyas, they told me that their experience is different from the general populace in the sense that they realize how “same” they really are in terms of pure energy. They are in sync with their inner world but see that basic oneness.They see things more clearly now without distractions and their biases. That was the purpose of disengaging from their previous identity with their belongings, families etc. Now they are very much involved with the outside world and continue to mediate, teach and help people in their journey.

However, I do realize again that I have very little understanding still and your above post has made me aware of that further. Indeed it is not so simple. I wish you well.

Regards
Nina

Hello,

I doubt he will come back..Sorry if this is too painful to hear but since you are too emotionally invested to see this, I will point it out.

Basically it’s been 6 months since you broke up. He has already told you he is unsure and has mentioned recently that he doesn’t want to be with you.

Clearly this relationship is over. He moved on long ago. It’s time you start accepting the reality of things and evaluate the situation, your own behaviours during your time with him.

Regards
Nina