It's said that sleep is the most essential part of being healthy and alive. Seriously! How! For me, it's a state where you are half dead and during most part of sleep you don't know what's happening around in terms of physical safety, and one doesn't know if one will ever get up alive! Hey! aim is not to scare you and cause Insomnia in you, but if you think closely, that's what happens. When early man must have experienced this dangerous situation, he would've searched for safe shelters where he could satisfy this biological need and wake up alive. In Hinduism, 'Ratri Devi' or 'Goddess of Night' has a prominent place in shlokas and shrutis, where she is worshipped for providing sound sleep, praised as a protector and one's physical and spiritual safety during sleep is attributed to her. This was such a huge psychological respite which helped in initiation of sound sleep, and acted as an armament against fear of safety during...
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If Hans Selye, the 'father of Stress' had not experimented with his lab rats by injecting them with various biochemical extracts, and formalin, human race would have not known the word "Stress". The mothers would have still reacted the same way with young kids jumping around, and fathers would have screamed with the same intensity in and around the house. The teenagers would have fretted the same way defying the authority of adults, and still would have got alarmed if their mobile phone went into scanner. But, this much sought after single word brought such a huge difference to our lives and made all our sufferings easy to communicate. These two words - 'Stress' and 'Anxiety' are thrown around so much, and are quintessence of our present day life. But, do we really understand why we feel stressed and anxious? What changes in our body when we are stressed /anxious? How does it affect our life and relationships? Stress is a natura...
When a friend or a relative has a mental health issue, it's a big dilemma for the people around that what to talk and how to deal with the person. Most of the mental health conditions make that person withdraw from people around him. There are mixed feelings of frustration, anger, irritability and loneliness. People around, don't seem to understand what is happening, because of lack of awareness. Symptoms of mental illness are interpreted as laziness, procrastination, lack of discipline and irresponsibility. Everyone around showers words of advice starting from benefits of physical fitness, managing daily routine, and eating right kind of food without realizing that getting up from the bed in the morning is a real struggle in depression and coming out of full blown panic attack by deep breathing is not possible. Let's re-strategize and re-frame our responses and make communication effective rather than a scare tactic for the needy and distressed. Be empathetic n...