Saanams Mind

“There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow…. Aren’t we always on an emotional roller coaster ride most of the times of our lives Being a woman I relate better to emotions or my heart more than my head or reasoning.Emotions, that hold us together in our short span in this world…sometimes bruised by the relationships we have in life.

Emotional abuse…a less talked about aspect or form of abuse in a relationship but one that does exist. Sad part is that this is a condition that can leave permanent damage and is not detected until its too late. How does one know they are involved in an emotional abusive relationship?

The abuser is always angry with you and you dont always know why they are . Its as if you are permanantly walking on egg shells not knowing when an outburst will happen. Suddenly they are angry for something you never did, or something that was ok in the past n suddenly not now. Or they may just be very vague about it not letting you know why they are mad at you.

They block all communication with you.This may happen in many ways. They may deflect the topic and take off on another track.They may not respond and keep silence. They may just get up and walk out of the room .They make you feel you are totally invisible and do not exist.

They tell you one thing today and deny and say completely different things the next day. They change their stories so often that you wonder if you are wrong and imagining whatever you heard the previous day or if you misunderstood it all , when in reality they are messing your mind up and this is a nasty form of abuse called gaslighting.

They forget you are an entity in yourself. They are so narcissist that they think of you as an extension of themselves and refuse to acknowledge your individuality.At best you are an object to be utilized. they do not expect you to have your own feelings and thinking. They expect you to read their mind and understand all that they are not saying as well. They dont give you space but expect you to understand their need for space.

They promise to change but rarely live up to those promises. They may stop for a while,but when you are totally fed up of their behaviour but slide back to the old pattern of behaviour once you again relax a bit. this is actually called Hoovering.

The scars left by such a relationship is not just deep but lifelong. Its worse as these scars are not actually visible and take sometimes a long time to be detected . They corrode into your self esteem , making you feel inferior and low . You are left with a low self image as you begin to think you are good for nothing as nothing seems to please them. It takes out the spirit of life from you and leaves you in complete devastation.

The abuser rarely ever agrees to take counseling or work on the issue. The ones who have two sides …one sweet n the other nasty, leave you feeling even more confused as you are not sure if its normal or if you are being abused.”Emotions are priceless. Emotions become a still life picture. A picture of sheer happiness or complete devastation that can be a constant rerun when the mind is restless.”

If stuck in such a relationship do try and recognize it for what it is…I cant offer you solutions for such a situation but definitely knowing what it is can help you deal with it better … I can just pray n send love your way and say…God help you…because its not easy dealing or living with such relationships.

Watch this video linked here ‘Your inner girl‘

I watched this amazing video which talks about The girl within each one of us. The part that cares, nurtures, feels, loves, is sensitive and is in all the emotional part of every human. Sadly that is the part that is the most suppressed , kept under control because it shows the vulnerable part of you. Yet it is the part that helps you overcome every tough time , every sad part, every tragedy and every hiccup you come across in life.

This video came at a time when I was thinking about this incident…a 9 year old little girl , raped and left to die in Goa. I wondered how a human being can be so insensitive so as to not to think of the little innocent child and can be so brutal and in human towards a helpless little victim. Yes probably we are to blame for bringing up kids to be insensitive by suppressing the part of us that feels. A part of us that cares and cries. It always is seen as a weakness. The” girl cell”Its that emotional part of us , that cries , that feels, that loves …We always are hard on people who show emotions, specially men by telling them its not manly to feel that way.Don’t we stop them from crying as kids by telling them boys don’t cry? Don’t we stop them from watching mushy love stories by telling them its too girly?? What makes us stop them from touching that part of them that is sensitive?

It is the same emotional part that gives us the strength to get over everything and start afresh with new hopes, with more love and with a new enthusiasm . It is that emotional part that teaches us to feel and be sensitive to another human beings pain, feelings and teaches us to care n love , to nurture and help others. It is that emotional part that makes us go a little bit beyond ourselves to make people feel loved, feel safe and that part which helps us bring a few smiles on faces.

Should we kill that ‘girl cell’ in each human and suppress the emotional part in each one to create inhumane , disgusting examples of human beings like the rapist in Goa ? I think Not. Am proud to be a emotional caring creature and Yes am Proud to be a Woman and will continue nurturing that emotional me.

“Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways….”

Yet another year gone by and hmm maybe I have lost out on a lot of time , precious time, lost in the time spent in depleting my life’s energies with my moping , with my tears n pain .The new year is here and as always I hear so many resolutions, decisions made for the new year. I wonder why each day cannot be a new one and more than a resolution I made a decision. A decision made 2 days into the new year and one made as I read through an article on emotional makeover .

Emotions generally take each one on a roller coaster ride, sometimes they go easy on you and sometimes make life so, so difficult. Striking a good balance between the ups and downs seems to be of utmost importance to me right now. To move away from the emotional patterns of last year and to build a more happier me. That is not to say I wont be sad ever. That would be seeking the impossible as am human and as aforementioned, one does have cycles of ups n downs.But I am determined this year to make myself emotionally strong enough to change my life by changing my emotions.

That would probably involve a few steps . First of all to learn to rearrange the negative energy from the negative emotions and understand my emotions.To manifest these negative emotions positively .Instead of allowing them to work against me to make them work for me .As emotions create an imbalance in our mind , to free myself from these disturbances in order to experience a greater happiness.

To learn to express the emotions instead of holding them within. When one keeps the hurt inside ,that is the surest way to be unhappy. Tell those who hurt you that you hurt and why you hurt. Other wise the hurt manifests itself in you as anger that can be directed against yourself with time.So to express your feelings even though it means putting yourself and your relationships at risk.But its worth it as it is the right thing to do. Its the only way to build any relationship instead of allowing the negative emotions to fester within and decay the relationship.

Be open and taste freedom. This involves a lot of self acceptance and a willingness to grow .One embraces positive emotions readily when open. This makes it easier to change shame into will power, guilt into healing past actions, anger into determination ,sorrow into compassion,jealousy into self love. When you hide feelings or emotions within they hold you a prisoner and take over your life.Instead of that be open and that redeems you and makes you free.

Negative emotions are energy depleting and a sure way to ruin yourself . I have realized this and am looking forward to an emotional makeover. When I need a cleansing of my emotional baggage I guess there is always room for venting here in my blog So here’s to an emotional high in 2010.

Are you going choose a emotional makeover or planning to wallow in a negative emotion hangover? Do share.

Sometimes in life there comes times when things so much beyond your control, you have no say in anything, the whys, whats dont just add up.Nothing makes any sense. You are taken on a ride where you have no control on what is happening and as you hope this is it, cant get worse, the next day brings in more Who or what then makes someone hang in there and hope all will be back to as it was before Normal.

I sometimes wonder, when we say we are the ones who decide how our life should go, how can we lose control of all the circumstances surrounding us. Why is it when bad circumstances come ,they come in batches. Like they kind of suddenly swamp you one after another. How then do we stay afloat without drowning under them?

Isn’t it so easy to just give up, lose faith, find reasons as to why life is going downhill, why it goes against your way and just give into the dark abyss sucking you into it. I just wonder why that tiny flicker of faith  that keeps us holding on to the the ray of sunshine called hope , exists.

A tough phase in life and am glad that my faith and belief in God , in me, in what I feel, think and  believe in is keeping me sane enough to face it. As it is said every tough phase teaches one  something new and this one has helped me discover myself, my strengths, my friends, their beliefs, their strengths,  to recognise ones who I know are truly there for me , ones that I have cherished , it teaches me something new each day to hold on to, to know, to understand, to develop. It teaches me patience, to believe in what you truly want, what you truly feel in , to believe that God  does whatever he does in your best interests, to believe in prayers and to have faith and believe in myself too.

Now on to the book ‘Conversations with God’ I havent been able to progress much as I am trying to assimilate as much as I can  before moving forward… People are motivated to do all actions in their lives by two predominant  emotions. Fear and Love. These are the only two languages of the soul. People either act or think out of either love or fear.All other emotions are just derivatives of these two emotions. Love sometimes sponsors fear and fear sometimes sponsors love  so every action of human beings are prompted by these two emotions.Fear is energy which shuts down, closes things, runs  or hides , harms, hoardes ,rankles, clings attacks and destroys, Love is just the opposite, it opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares,gives away, lets go,soothes , amends and heals.

We all are driven by these two emotions and ultimately it depends on what we choose to take …. Fear or Love….

All of us acknowledge that there are domestic scenes where physical abuse of a spouse is seen . But how many of us acknowledge the presence of emotional abuse in a relationship. Maybe less has been spoken about it, or maybe its not as evident with the damages as physical abuse, but it is a reality.

When one cannot pinpoint why the relationship is going wrong and its difficult to express it, one partner controls the other completely, one partner does not value the thoughts or feelings of the other, intimidates and threatens the other, accuses the other of affairs, feels jealous of the partner talking to anybody,nothing one does seems good enough, one gets mixed signals, as if all that behaviour is just becoz he/she loves you,  one has to account for every moment, account for every penny spent, children are used to make one feel guilty and  the blame is all on the person if any thing goes wrong. Even the choice of friends is constantly ridiculed and commented on. These are a few things one sees in an emotional abusive relationship.

The affected person is always on egg shells, careful of annoying the partner, makes excuses for the partners behaviour,  feels that they cannot make decisions on their own, is constantly on the edge, anxious and depressed too, is unable to keep in touch with friends and in the long run loses self confidence as the partner’ s behaviour is constantly eating into their self image.

This kind of an abuse is as bad if not worse than physical abuse as its damaging as well and eats more into ones psyche. The people involved in such relations would do themselves good if they recognised what they are involved in and took appropriate steps to protect themselves and stop themselves from being victims by seeking support & help and taking charge of their lives.

Would appreciate it if you have anything more to add on this situation.

Emotions- a bodily reaction that one feels when exposed to certain aspects in our lives. They are also known to motivate charecteristic behaviour.So do they guide us to behave in any particular way? I kept thinking of this because as far as I see it … Emotions do play a big part in each one of our lives.

If I look at my life and some things that happened the way it did, I wonder if my emotions clouded me into behaving the way I did, or if emotions were responsible for me accepting a lot of things even when it hurt. So in a way emotions do make us behave in a certain way.For emotions  do make us feel and what we feel we act on.

Look at anger… When angry most lose track of thoughts. They become irrational and even say things that they do not mean because the only thing they want to do would be to hurt the other person.So anger kind of blinds them to reason. So it does affect the way one behaves.Lets look at Love… a powerful emotion, one many claim to have felt , but an emotion few truly understand. Love brings about such beautiful aspects in a humanbeing. It makes you a better human because it gets the softer side of you forward. It makes you forgiving, makes you more accepting , tolerant, loving, indulgent and sensitive to another human being. So in a way, love makes things different. If you truly love someone and specially when love is unconditional , you even through your hurts manage to smile and accept everything as a package, the emotion love rules over how you behave.Look at depression… when one feels low, one has no interest in anything , no interest in eating, no interest in clothes, Tv, nothing. The way we walk, the way we talk everything changes and  wwe cry easily. Again emotion rules over the way we behave.Look at Infatuation…. One does so many things to impress the person one is infatuated with. Even to the extent of being someone they are not. They try to get the persons attention no matter what and do not care about anything else or anyone.

So looking at all this I feel emotions  control the way you behave to such a large extent.So is an emotional person erratically behaved? Probably yes.Because they are  influenced by their emotions to a large extent and that reflects on how they behave. I guess so we have to keep our emotions underr a tight reign to have a balanced behaviour.

Such is our life…… so fragile. A death in the family and a lot of things came to a standstill. A call one lazy Saturday morning and then began the spiral of changes that came with the loss of a close family member. A vaccum created for the family members that probably can never can be filled again by anything or anyone .

For me it was a realization of many things… how people react in times of crisis, the value of bringing up children and teaching them how to be affectionate, how when push comes to shove many disappear and then the sheer futility of just focusing so much on the negatives of your life that you forget to enjoy your life or the happy moments that it brings along. Along with it I also realized how difficult life is when one is repressed emotionally for many years that even grieving for a loved one is not done .

As I went about my work , as many did disappear along their regular lives, I stopped to think why I had volunteered to do it when I was the least popular there. I realized that I always went with my heart and my heart said do it, stop thinking of yourself and this is the time someone really needs your help now. So I went on ahead and did it and I guess I realized what my strengths were, I realized when really pushed I could be as firm as the rest of them and more so every problem is as big as you want it to be .In spite of not being big on following rituals , I was the one nominated to do all the rituals. For someone who does not do much without knowing the significance I learnt a few things why they are done and began doing them.

With lots of time on hand, I got into the think mode, I kept thinking of the life of the person who had passed on, the little things she had done for people around her neighborhood, for the members of the family for her friends were all recounted by the people who came to mourn her loss. But among those who came were the ones who were negative, they remembered only the cribs this person would make on the fellow members and cry , all they saw was she cried all her life and went away.

Well each one of us leave behind imprints and I guess I learnt that life is so short, one day we are there , next we may not be , but the trick is to focus on what we count as blessings and get on with it instead of wasting life by focusing on what we don’t have.

Apart from that I learnt two things, the strength of people is seen when in crisis. Some who appear timid and quiet rise to the occasion, become the strength , where as the most those who are loud & appear to be leaders  making a noise always turn out to be cowards , shirking their duties. Well funny how most true natures appear in times of crisis as this.

I saw ones on pedestals fall, some quiet & appearing as rug mats rise in my eyes.

To me this has been a good learning experience. I know I am headed for an another change in my life. May be more responsibility. I am learning to talk less, expect less and to just accept things how they are. The changes in relationships with family , with my friends, in general with everything in life. Nothing seems permanent. Everything an illusion and yes more people are just into themselves and self centered. Not bothered about threading on peoples feelings, peoples thoughts , if one is grieving, if one Is sad. Ultimately the individual deals with it all on his own

The person who passed on left behind a legacy of relationships, some which may strengthen because of their absence and some that may break as they had held them together, for now the void created so big that it cannot be comprehended until its experienced. But Time stops for none and life goes on .

So another milestone in my growth as a human?? May be.Afterall isn’t that what life is? A jorney of lessons from life to death.

Sometimes I sit and wonder if many people feel about things like I do. I am ,as I see it a sensitive person and a lot of times highly sensitive to what happens around, I get affected by the moods of my family, friends, so much so that I get bothered by what they feel. I feel others problems and emotions. If a friend is moody or upset, I sit an think what I could have done to them to make them feel this way.

According to some books highly sensitive people are those who are cautious about what they do and think a lot before they say or do something. So we do need these feeling people in the society to temper the risk takers or the insensitive folks.

Sensitive people are those who pick all the subtle nuances or subtle signs in an environment and this can work to their advantage as they normally get a sign that trouble is brewing when it is brewing up .But at the same time sensitive people are prone to hurt because little things affect them. For example if a friend is moody and is too quiet, a sensitive person is bound to think why and how they are responsible for the friend being in a bad mood. In the bargain they go through some harrowing moments. Little issues keep working on their minds, keeping them up at nights.

A lot of times they are so empathetic, they get involved in peoples problems and emotions. They are unable to shake of emotions easily. If they see someone suffering it affects deep. If hurt, it takes time for them to get back to normal. They are tuned in to the emotions of those around them and generally avoid conflicts and confrontations.

Since there are more insensitive people around ,most often sensitive people wish they were more thick skinned and less affected by all that’s around them. They look at sensitivity as a weakness and wish things did not bother them as much and that their emotions were less obvious to others.

What do you feel? Is it wrong to be a sensitive person in the present day world, or do we need more sensitive , feeling people in this world to change how we look at things?