Tackling Depression

Lets talk about depression today-

The normal ups and downs of life mean that everyone feels sad or has "the blues" from time to time. But if emptiness and despair have taken hold of your life and won't go away, you may have depression.

Sadness or down swings in mood are normal reactions to life’s struggles, setbacks, and disappointments. Many people use the word “depression” to explain these kinds of feelings, but depression is much more than just sadness.

Depression can hit you at any stage of life and age and can effect your mental as well as physical health very, very badly.

There will be a time where you will feel hopeless, helpless, loss of interest in your daily life activities, appetite / weight changes, sleeping disorders, confidence problem, irritation, anger, mood swings, rages, body aches, and other physical pains which can't be explained at all... these all are signs of depression...

I know people out there are depressed with their personal life, love life, job/ career life, married life, parents, family, partners, bosses, friends, etc.

If even the thought of tackling your depression seems overwhelming, don’t panic, feeling helpless and hopeless is a symptom of depression - not the reality of your situation. It does not mean that you’re weak or you can’t change! The key to depression recovery is to start small and ask for help. The simple act of talking to someone face to face about how you feel can be an enormous help.

The person you talk to doesn’t have to be able to fix you; he or she just needs to be a good listener..

Having a strong support system will speed your recovery. Isolation fuels depression, so reach out to others, even if you feel like being alone or don’t want to feel like a burden to others. The truth is that most people will be happy that you chose to confide in them; they’ll be flattered that you trust them enough to open up. So, let your family and friends know what you’re going through and how they can support you...

Remember if you want to come out of depression or any problems in your life, its ONLY you who needs to help yourself... Its OK to be sad and feel low sometimes, I won't end this by telling you to have a GOOD day. Instead I will tell you to have a DAY. Stay Alive, feed your self, wear good comfortable clothes, and DON'T give up on your self. TRUST me, it will get better, it has to... Until then, have a DAY:)

I Survived

A few days ago, I dreamt about my ex-fiancé. In my dreams, my ex is always sad. Tearful. Reproachful. Melodramatic. Never mind that it has been well over a decade since we parted. Or that much water has flown under the bridge. Many years and much grey hair later, we are both happily married, even if not to each other as we once imagined.  (Well, we are not in touch, but I am happily married and reports from common friends and the occasional Facebook stalking lead me to believe he is too).

I have much admiration for all those who have an amicable, mature parting of ways with their significant others. Our parting was not amicable by any means. I wanted out. He did not. I wanted my right to move away. He claimed that our years of being together entitled him to something. He threatened to kill himself. I bristled at the idea of being emotionally blackmailed into staying on. I pushed him away. He clung to me harder in response. It was ugly. By the end of it all, I was ugly.

Have you ever kicked a puppy because you couldn’t bear its incessant whining? How did that make you feel afterwards? Ugly, right?

And yet. And yet. I could not have survived it if I had continued in a relationship that was stifling me in the very name of the love it was supposed to be all about. If love is supposed to make us feel good about ourselves, why did this love make me feel like I should run away, or better still, rewind the clock back to a time when it did not exist? Surely love could not mean this need to subsume all of your lover into yourself, this voracious appetite for another’s self, this absolute need to be all things to another all the time?

Surely love could not mean this need to subsume all of your lover into yourself, this voracious appetite for another’s self, this absolute need to be all things to another all the time?

You might wonder why I am calling this a Survivor story when I was the one who walked away. You could be forgiven for wondering if the survivor in this tale was the one left behind.

Yet, I have no qualms about calling myself a survivor. After all, we live in a culture that continues to celebrate first love as the only love and holds that a woman who is out with more than one man must be some kind of slut. As a woman who walked away from a committed relationship for no good reason (or at least, no reason good enough for most other people), how could I not be a survivor?

Here are the things I survived.

I survived condescension from loved ones, who hinted that perhaps, just perhaps, I hadn’t tried hard enough? There are times in your life when objectivity is not what you look for from your friends. This is one of them. I didn’t need my friends to applaud my decision, but I did need them to try to understand how I felt, whether or not they agreed with what I had done.

I learnt who my friends truly were. I am grateful to those who stood firmly by me; they too did not understand what went wrong, but trusted that I would have thought my decision through.

I survived the knowledge that I was being judged by many, for letting go of a relationship that was well on its way to the altar; the knowledge that many thought I was impulsive, hard-hearted, or ‘a girl of bad character’ for leaving a man, especially after having an intimate relationship.

I learnt, over time, that I didn’t care all that much what others thought of me.

I survived the loss of certainty; how many years had I believed that life was rolling along on a smooth, well-oiled course before I found the pebbles under the wheels? Like many girls, I imagined that my first love would be my last; having made a pact to get married at the age of eighteen, I did not imagine that Certainty is not on the list of things life promises you.

I learnt truly what we already know, intellectually: Things Change. It is the hardest thing to accept in reality, even when it is you driving the change.

I survived guilt at the thought of leaving a good man behind.

I survived guilt at the thought of leaving a good man behind. Even if he was not the right man for me. Guilt, because opting out is not an easy choice; not the decision of a stone-cold-foxy-vixen-girl as our movies like to portray, but a hardening of the heart against the possibility of greater misery in the days to come. Guilt is the hardest thing to survive because it comes from within. It comes with years of believing that we owe it to someone who loves us, to love them back, even if that makes us unhappy. It comes with years of learning that girls who walk out on their fiancés let their families down. It comes with years of being told that good girls are ready to sacrifice. A lot.

I learnt and I am still learning, that some guilt will never go away, and must just be lived with. While I refuse to accept the good-girl guilt, the guilt any human being must feel at being responsible for another’s suffering, remains.

And that’s okay, so long as I don’t believe that feeling some guilt makes me a bad person.

Credit - Jane Austen (womensweb.in)

WOMEN “to blame” for being raped…!!!????

It's a story so common, it never even made it into the newspapers. A 20-year-old private tutor who was allegedly gang-raped by her fiance and his associates and set on fire in Etawah last week died in hospital around 12.15am on thursday, July 2013. The young woman was battling for life with 90% burn injuries at the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences at Saifai in Etawah.

The 2012 Delhi gang rape case involves a rape and murder that occurred on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood located in the southern part of New Delhi, when a 23-year-old female physiotherapy intern was beaten and gang raped in a bus in which she was travelling with her male companion. There were only six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman. The woman died from her injuries thirteen days later while undergoing emergency treatment in Singapore

The incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was condemned by various women's groups, both in India and abroad. Subsequently, public protests against the Govt. of India and the Govt. of Delhi for not providing adequate security for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the country.

Most women live in fear of incidents like this. We feel at risk because we are. We know the statistics. By some estimates one out of four women will be the victim of sexual assault in her lifetime. Each year women report almost half a million rapes and sexual assaults, according to the most recent reports.

We live in a culture where we are taught that we have choices about our lives and that we're responsible for what happens to us. As feminist author Gloria Steinem says, "If you are beaten, you're said to have incited it, if you're raped you're said to have invited it. We all know that these things run very deep in the culture."

"From the time a child is very, very small, we're teaching that they're responsible for the things that happen in their life both positive and negative," says C.Y. Roby. "So when a rape situation occurs, usually what I see going through a victim's mind is what did I do that was wrong."

It's not only the victim who blames herself. Society is quick to blame her as well. "Even the innocence of children is questioned," says Maestas. "Often times I have sat with a police officer or a client and have heard that a four-year-old girl was responsible for seducing her perpetrator who was an adult. Now what are we saying? What we're saying is that we don't know how to take responsibility as a society. Therefore, we will continue to blame the victim."

Rape is a devastating crime. Some women are badly injured. Some become pregnant. Some contract HIV. But the emotional trauma can be worse than any physical injury. Women who are raped have nightmares, panic attacks, waves of self-doubt, an overwhelming sense of distrust. The lives of women who are raped are forever changed. Some say they will never be the same, that it’s like dying. "I know that I will never really recover from this," says Maggie. "The impact will always be with me and I will never trust the same way and I know I can't even be tested for HIV for six months. So I have to even keep that in mind. I'll never be able to get away from this."

Who is most likely to be assaulted or raped? Maestas stresses that rapists choose those who are vulnerable, which is why children and even the elderly are at risk. Her staff has worked with victims of all backgrounds and ages, including a 94-year-old woman who was raped and a three-and-a-half-week-old baby who was sexually abused. Half the victims the staff served in emergency rooms were under 14 years of age.

Locking doors and windows is an easy enough thing. A woman alone instinctively bolts the doors and windows even on a sweltering summer night. For most women, such precautions become second nature. Ask a woman what she does to protect herself and she'll tick off a list of specifics: never leaving a building without her keys in hand, looking over her shoulder in the parking lot, scanning faces on an elevator, avoiding parking terraces. Yet, despite all the precautions, women can still be at risk.

They say, women have power over me because they're beautiful and sexual and I want them and they elicit that and I feel powerless," he says. "Just listen for a minute to the way in which we describe women's beauty and sexuality. We describe it as a violence against us. She is a knock-out, a bomb-shell, dressed to kill, a femme fatale, stunning, ravishing. I mean all of these are words of violence against us. It's like, wow, she knocked me out. 

The media, biology and culture may be contributing factors, but the majority of men -- those who are the product of the same biology, the same culture -- don't rape women…!!!

Bend it like Beckham...!!!!

Don’t know why some guys really think that a girl only knows about those cute guys like Messi, kaka or Ronaldo when it comes about football…??? 

While some yearn for Beckham & Ronaldo’s good looks, I give them kudos for their skills and incredible free kick outside the 20-yard box. While the faces of Messi, Kaka and Drogba might become household names due to branding on the side of KFC boxes, for those who love football, they are shining stars year-round for their goal scoring performances at club level. And while there are women who would swig beers and occasionally glance at the TV screen, how many go to a bar, any bar with a TV screen with the game on, solo, because it’s 90 minutes of your life you wouldn’t rather spend anywhere else? I can assure you, not many. 

So am I so eager to impress that I’m going to lie about my love for football? Do they honestly believe I want their validation so badly that I’m going to fake small talk about it? Do they truly imagine that football is the only thing I can come up with to impress them? Or that I want to impress them at all? 

Well the topic started when one of my colleague whose name is similar to one of the international player of a big fame club came up with the sentences like “I am actually/pretty surprised that you know that player..” 

Honestly speaking I have a lot of experience dealing with men who can’t fathom that a girl knows her football. I’m not saying I’m some crazy stat machine who can pump out numbers and facts from decades back (my brain doesn’t work like that), but I know my shit, I watch every game and I’m a huge fan. And since I’m a girl: I’m also helpful! (Women: we LOVE to please!) So when a guy in a sports bar throws out a question to everyone in the vicinity, if I know the answer, I give it. 

There are several reasons that men may not hear the answer they’re seeking until someone of their gender gives it to them. Perhaps they tune me out. Maybe they don’t believe I know the answer. It’s possible that they’d feel more comfortable hearing it from someone “else.” 

Even if it’s a girl holding a candle for a side, or one with a full-on blaze, fellas, there are girls out there who love football just as much as you do, and, if you’re liming in a bar watching the game, you just might bounce up one. 

Whatever the secondary reason is, the primary reason men in sports bars ignore my responses is abundantly clear: 

It’s because I’m a woman. 

I know. It’s so cliché, but ugh: it’s so true.   

The ‘ugly’ truth behind Matrimony sites!

I happened to spend some time with an old friend over the weekend. As we relived our college days and laughed over endless gossip, there was something very serious she had to share with me. She is 26 and like in any other household, the pressure of marriage was at its peak. When I asked her what was happening on wedding front, ‘MATRIMONY’ she said in frustration!

When her parents and nosy relatives failed to set her up with a boy, the only source left was matrimonial sites. So her parents signed her up for an online matchmaking site. ‘I was not irritated, hassled or embarrassed, even when I had to meet a guy to figure out if he was ‘my kind’, but these online portals can do nothing but make you lose faith in marriage’, she added. Wondering why? Here are the reasons.

1. Firstly, huge ads are used to show off how many people use the portal to find a soul mate. The models in the ad try to paint a picture like there can be nothing better in the world than a marriage through their site. But, yes, the only thing these models finally care about is their looks and the money they get for posing. Just not convincing enough!

2. There is a column called ‘our success couples’ which supposedly lists a bunch of couples who enjoy a successful marriage, thanks to the site (couldn’t laugh more). How do they arrive at these conclusions? And who exactly defines a successful marriage? Goof up number 2!

3. Third is the preference of caste. In the so-called process of ‘simplifying’ the groom or bride hunt, there are a zillion castes that these sites portray, enabling you to select your own and find your match in the same circle. Does that mean we will be happier if we marry within the caste or are they trying to convey they are against inter-caste marriages? They rather have professional subsections like IT, CA, Engineer than Brahmins, Punjabis and Bengalis….. Makes the hunt simpler!

4. And now, the icing on the cake! The requirements, sorry, the conditions our grooms have. Sample a few.

A.    Girl must be traditional, but outspoken. What does that mean? Is my grammar poor? Makes me wonder!
B.    Professionally qualified, not too fair, not too dark, medium height and weight, willing to move out of the city, modern and home loving! Wake up to reality men! This is for a life partner hunt, not a model for a Sunrise advertisement.
C.    Girl must be well trained in domestic responsibilities – A servant in short huh?

These are a few major highlights, bound to put off women who have registered on Matrimony sites, but YES, this is how marriage is SOLD! While this might sound like my friend is being judgmental, I’m pretty sure most women out there (at least to an extent) would happily agree to all that’s been said here.

Lastly, I am not advocating ALL marriages from Matrimony sites have similar stories, but YES there are such cases as well..

Ref. MSN She

Female foeticide on the rise....

The barbaric acts that are committed against women are endless and there's no single cause behind these issues. The secondary status of women and the fact that she is considered nothing more than a commodity has a significant role to play behind the imbalance in female to male sex ratio.

In India, female foeticide and infanticide are rampant and the number of cases being reported is increasing by the day. Rural areas without means to determine the sex of their child wait till it is born and when the newborn is a girl child; they go ahead and kill the baby without a second thought. These babies are strangled to death, poisoned, starved or sometimes, even thrown in garbage bins. The male child is considered to be superior and its birth is celebrated by one and all. The continued practice of dowry, even though it is illegal and a fear that the girl child may be abused are believed to be some reasons behind the increasing number of incidences of female foeticide in India.

China is another example where technology seems to have facilitated the slaughter of the girl child even before its birth. Gender identification by ultrasound scanning has only aggravated the situation and helped enhance the menace. It's disturbing to see the indifference in the attitude of government and medical professionals. The government has banned determination of sex of the baby in the womb but several cases of illegal practices and unsafe abortions have been reported. The 'Dying Rooms' report by BBC many years ago had claimed that conscious decisions to let infants die of starvation were made by orphanages in China. On the outskirts of Beijing many have reported that newborn baby girls were being abandoned to starve and die. 

Many have voiced their concern over this sensitive issue and campaigns have been launched to create awareness. The menace will be hard to fight till we all realise that each girl child born is a unique and valuable human being who is entitled to equal opportunities as everyone else. It does not matter whether she is born in an affluent family or in some faraway village, she has the right to live and live it without submitting to anyone's dictates. Society needs to change its notion that a woman should be submissive and obedient towards her husband/father. Gender discrimination only makes the situation worse and people go on living this life of blissful unawareness. Many states in India have witnessed adverse demographic implications and a dip in the number of girls born.

According to a United Nations report, an estimated 2000 unborn girls are illegally aborted in India every day. Parts of Haryana have witnessed a dip in sex ratio - 618 girls for 1,000 boys. On the whole, while the national sex ratio is 933 per 1,000 men, in Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, and Delhi, it is below 900. Such alarming figures are sure to raise doubts in our mind whether enough has been done to curb female foeticide. The deeply entrenched values and beliefs that exist in our society are a hindrance to the all round development of women. Women need to be treated as equals and should be given all the rights that come under the purview of human rights. Equality of status for the girl child has to be ensured and strict laws have to be in place to protect the life of the born and the unborn. 

The Sarvgunna Sampurnaa Indian Bride...

When you reach a certain marriageable age in India, expect a rise in attention and importance wherever you go. Whether it’s a wedding, a house-warming party or New Year’s Eve, people will come to you and engage in a long drawn conversation about your plans to get married, have kids, and settle down. You are not getting any younger (thanks for the reminder; I needed it to boost my self-esteem), are you learning how to cook? You can never keep your man happy if you don’t learn how to cook well – these are some very common statements that one can expect to encounter. When this happens to me, I walk away with a polite smile plastered on my face not knowing what to say. I feel like retorting, well it’s none of your business aunty ji when and with whom I plan to “settle down” but rudeness is not going to help anyone. It may however, make things worse as you get labelled as the nakhrewali tewars in the world.

Things get worse when it’s your lovely parents who are now on the lookout for an eligible groom. Eligible eh? The matrimonial pages in newspapers are full of it. The post of husband is empty; kindly apply if you meet the eligibility criteria. Sounds crazy but that’s exactly how I see it. Why else would one describe body stats, skin colour, educational qualifications, etc. just to get married? The bride has a wheatish complexion, is 5 ft 7 inches and is convent educated – these descriptions are classic matrimonial stuff.

Forget newspaper matrimonial classifieds, this is now the dot com age where matrimonial websites are fiercely competing to outdo each other. You can take your pick. Parents, who had shied away from modern technology, are more than willing to change their ways just to find a homely girl for their laadla son. The pressure to get married goes up a notch when they get requests which are good enough to go ahead with. Mission accomplished, now it’s all about screening and picking the good ones out of the lot.

All the girls you meet are suddenly gunawatis who can barelythink about themselves. Family comes first; cooking is my passion, and my dream is to be an agyakari bahu who knows how to behave. Well done! The girl has impressed everyone. A shy smile in the end seals the deal.

The bride and the groom both behave like sacrificial goats and give in to all the pressure. In some cases, it’s the other way round. Women are now tired of waiting for true love to happen. “True love shove gaya bhaar mein, I am ready to get married to the next man I meet who is good enough to be my husband, says 33-year-old Anita.

It all comes down to personal taste, preferences and outlook in the end. If you are up for an arranged marriage, there’s nothing wrong with it. Many couples who are now married have all met their partners through relatives, or online on matrimonial sites and are now very much in love. Initially, things may be awkward but once you get used to it, who knows you might even enjoy it. 

Ref. MSN "She"...