A week's silence...for what its worth

The past one week has been a wisp short of tumultuous. Emotions teetering at the brink of clinical depression made a heady brew with confusing, disarrayed thoughts. Puzli and I have been left to salvage our sanities yet again in the battle of illness over health. Its tough to face the uncertainties sprinkled in the course of mental disorders, and it gets tougher to regain control to stop the spiral southwards. During such overwhelming times, we live hoping that the rays of the sun the next dawn will shine a tad brighter over our horizon.

Smoke-free

2 weeks!!! gawd! thats a really long time. I should write more often. But these college assignments, as Soaring Heights said, have really been keeping me busy. Finished submitting three more assignments today and have to start preparing for exams for next week. I have quit smoking since I last wrote. (Once again, yes. But hopefully forever.) I've been noticing how the urge to smoke keeps on going up and down. Whenever I start getting tense, start losing hope, feel a bit low that is, my breathing pattern changes. One of the main reasons I smoke is to get my breathing pattern back in shape, which, I feel would lift me off the depression. Effective to some extent, as in yoga, but ultimately a killer. I keep on telling myself as to how long will I depend on cigarettes, how long can I be dependent when I want to be free. How many more excuses, how many more reasons to slip back into that cycle where there is no permanent relief. How far can I go from there? So, in the past few days, when I've been stressed, I've been talking to myself, battling myself, breathing, trying to understand the reason for the stress rather than seeking an escape, and with success. This is the same reason why psychotherapy is administered. It is given to make the person realize the reason for what is happening within and around herself or himself from an altogether unknown perspective, to bring insight and hence, ultimately, relief through gradual acceptance. Interestingly, I was never administered psychotherapy even when I pleaded once, for the simple reason that I was in no state to believe anything besides my viewpoint, such is the state in schizophrenia.

Anyways, here's to a happy and healthy start to a smoke-free future. And here's the end to this short post. (I may again write late next week once I'm over with my exams. So the keyboard is all yours Soaring Heights :)

On why I am bad with phone calls

I have always known that my voice tends to carry a heaviness with it, and I am not great with intonation and modulation. Life has been dragging uphill lately, and alongwith it, my facial expressions have also been gradually acquiring a whiff of the latent discord that seems to be steaming rather strongly within. So while I had to consciously enthuse my voice or expressions, I never really had a problem interacting with patients of psychiatry. Until now. It seems that when I interact with patients who primarily have a neurological disorder, I really, really have to go that extra mile to modulate my voice or expressions to strike a rapport with them. Of course, my primary interest for psychiatry over neurology even today might account for the struggle with emoting when it comes to neurology patients.

But while I was discussing this 'deficit' of mine with Puzli today, he told me that the flatness in my voice and subdued emotions it conveys are some of the main reasons why he feels calm when he speaks with me. Puzli (and other people with schizophrenia) finds it difficult to be receptive to heightened emotions in another person. So, prolonged and continuous excited chatter adds on to the 'noise' through which he has to wade through to process his perceptions. Add an agitated state of mind trying to think through incoming 'noise', and processing anything decently enough becomes very difficult, even seemingly impossible. 'Regular' people do not generally know how to express, how much to express, and at what time, to people with mental disorders. However, my inherent personality trait (as well as my professional training dictate) of speaking with a toned-down and neutral voice , both restricts the emotional content that is available to Puzli, as well as gives him time to calm himself, and then respond to me. So, my 'deficit' here has also in effect, helped me interact with other patients of psychiatry. Not so much of a deficit any longer, I think :-) Never mind the dry voice over the phone now!

P.S.: Puzli will write when he gets a breather from his super-busy college assignments.

Drearily drab day

OK, so I'll try not to use more of alliteration now.

My post yesterday was dribbling with dreariness...sigh! Is it possible for the drab weather to reflect on one's moods? Read up on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), folks. I just love the sense of humour of these DSM IV guys that a mood disorder has the acronym of SAD. SAD usually occurs in regions with extreme coldness. So, me with the sun glaring over my head would not qualify to be stricken by SAD. Sigh, sigh, sighhhh! I feel as though the whole writing ink has been sucked out of me by this dry dry dry weather..it is scorchingly sunny and not a whiff of wind to soothe the skin.

OK, so the post has become pretty laden with alliteration, so I think I shall just wait for Puzli to please put in his prose while I try getting this brain of mine to crash out from this irritating buzzing of nothingness.

Alternative healing

Traditional and alternative healing methods have existed alongside allopathy in India for a long time. Some of these techniques like yoga offer an attractive alternative from the many varied, and sometimes harmful side-effects of allopathic medicines. A study comparing the effect of Sudarshan Kriya (SKY), Imipramine (Tofranil), and Electroconvulsive therapy on dysthymia showed that SKY was at least as effective as imipramine in alleviating the symptoms of dysthymia. However, the authors of the study have been extremely cautious in interpreting the results, and for valid reasons. The sample size has been quite small, so it is difficult to generalize the findings. Also, they concede that with a bigger sample, they might get significant differences between the medication used and the yoga technique. Another drawback of the study was due to the inherent nature of the interventions used (SKY, ECT, imipramine), the patients knew which treatment group they had been assigned to. This could have facilitated the formation of beliefs about the results they could expect. Thus, it could have been possible that the SKY group expected that the technique would work for them, and their strong beliefs led to that outcome.

Nonetheless, 68% efficacy of SKY shows that the technique may be considered as a moderately efficacious treatment option. There have been anecdotal reports that yoga as an adjunct to psychotropic medication can lead to better treatment outcomes for psychiatric disorders. The goal of treatment today is not only symptom reduction, but also improvement of overall quality of life. So while I remain guarded in considering all that subsumes under 'alternative healing' in the absence of scientific evidence, this study provides a much-needed critical view of the debate between traditional healing practices and allopathy.

...and love makes me think

The neurochemistry of love would be an enormously expansive subject to delve into....I think. But why would anyone in love want to know that they are with their significant other due to an upsurge/downsurge or a weird intermingling of certain neurochemicals! And what makes it even more weird is that these neurochemicals decide to act up only in the presence of a particular significant other!! Methinks the 'bio' in biopsychosocial is being overemphasized here. I want to believe that I am with my significant other due to well thought-out reasons best known to both of us. And none of those reasons have anything to do with our (unknown) neurochemistries. Sure, you could always stretch our cognitions and correlate them with neurotransmitter activity. But the I would rather give credit to the 'psychosocial' shaping the 'bio' than taper down everything of me to be a product of biology.

A year of love

A year of fond memories and beautiful moments together. It never seemed to me that life would show me all this ever, again. Love can play so wonderfully with your heart and mind. Neurochemistry is definitely not a simple game to delve into, and after all a game that words don't suffice to explain. Birds never seemed so enchanting flying off to a new day, trees never seemed so fresh after just being cut down in preparation for winter.

I'd never known what hate or jealousy was as I grew up, for I simply never felt it. I have grasped these concepts now with a lot of observation. Anger, yes, was a different ball game for me. But I had seen what it did to the mind, or rather what kind of a mind produced that anger, and I took measures against it, for I didn't want to tread that path. How much, I keep on asking, can you control that uncontrollable feeling, that fails to precipitate into a recognizable emotion that you might prevent from occuring. How would you even stop that intense anger if you recognized and tagged it as being 'it'. "...to stop that unfailing failure that never he failed to undo...". How much can you undo? Life just gives you second chances. The only problem is that it can't give you the same solvable outcome. It will present you with opportunities. You have to recognize them. You have to act on them. And songs of long ago sing, "Life will never be the same, life is changing..." It always made me uneasy, but the choice was mine to take. I tread the path that would lead me where I wanted to be. I'm here now. I'm happy. Not always, but that cannot be prevented. You see, I never really wanted to, even though I heard it, was taught to, think in terms of what is correct and what is not, what is right and what is wrong. And I was having the same conversation with Soaring Heights about this the day before. Relativity is present in all situations. One can easily justify the acts based on the circumstances. The choice, however, is yours to make of the right or wrong. "Truth", as Krishnamurti says, "is a pathless land". Your truth is not my truth. Ethics, is after all, a sociological study. Hmmm...fail to write anymore...