Destination Happiness

Acknowledging and expressing all the emotions are equally important. Ever wondered why we all attempt to hide our anger and display happiness?

Everyone seems to nurture each other with positivity. You’ll often hear people in the family say, “don’t be angry, it is not nice”. This is a strange reaction because it is an emotion that anyone can experience. Anger is the outcome of other feelings. A commonly used phrase “feeling low” can result in anger. People who feel hurt, frustrated, annoyed, pain, or disappointment display anger to deal with such feelings. Imagine suffering from an autoimmune illness. It restricts your diet, outings, and reduces immunity. This chronic suffering creates pain and disappointment within an individual. It leaves a person feeling helpless.

Helplessness is a state of mind when we feel there is no control. Human beings prefer to be in a position where they can take charge. There is a sense of security in taking control. Similarly, hurt and disappointment build a sense of powerlessness especially, concerning other individuals. When disappointment occurs from self, it involuntarily makes one feel angry with oneself. Anger has numerous layers to it before it shows up. Hiding anger is to suppress pain, hurt, disappointment, frustration, and helplessness. In the process of ignoring our angry state of mind, we end up piling our emotions.

Look at it this way – you have a to-do list for the day. Among all the work, one of them is to clean the dishes. You decide to leave them until the afternoon. You’ve finished work from home, spent time with family, played with your pet. While you were occupied in work, it kept coming back to your mind to return to clean the dishes. Now, you’ve come to wash the dishes. Suddenly, you remember to call a friend to check on them. You try to hang-up many times between the conversation knowing you have to clean the dishes for dinner. Soon it is time for supper and your family waits for you at the dining table but you are cleaning the utensils so you can serve the food.

Emotions like anger are similar to the dirty dishes you have to clean!

You can’t leave such feelings to deal with them later. These emotions keep popping up every then and now. To eat food, it was imperative to clean the utensils. To spread love, share happiness, and laugh freely, it is crucial to acknowledge our emotions. It is easier said than done to reach the end goal which, is to be positive. It is like choosing a destination without knowing the route to take. While positivity seems to be the destination, the ways to reach this state of mind remains unknown. To reach a destination is an achievement but one learns by taking the journey.

The journey to spread love and share happiness begins by expressing emotions. We have to step ahead and look beyond the expression of happiness. Recognizing anger, shame, or guilt is equally important. Further, expressing such emotions are essential to make way for joy. When a mind is storing unattended emotions, it is creating a to-do list that needs checking. A human being has both strengths and limitations. They exist together to create a strong, independent individual. So are the emotions.

Feeling positive or negative, emotions make one more humane!

Foremost, it is important to acknowledge these emotions exist. Acceptance only comes when there is acknowledgment. To heal, communicating about hurt, disappointment, guilt, or anger is one method to attend to such emotions. Writing, dancing, painting, or poetry are artistic forms to let-out these emotions. Sometimes there is frustration when we are angry or carry guilt for a long time. It is okay to step aside from others to scream, shout out, or cry. At last, one can seek psychotherapy to experience every emotion.

The next time you see someone angry, tell them it is okay to be angry….

It is only when we take the journey does healing begin!

#destination #happiness #anger #emotions #mentalhealth #feelings #themadnessforreal #positivity

Man Enough – Cry it out!

We call it a man’s land and all we do is talk about women's disputes.

Men are at the receiving end of stereotypes, prejudice, and biases too. Have you heard the phrase, “men don’t cry,” it starts early in life for them too? Boys are asked to like the color blue because pink makes them look uncool. Did anyone ever wonder if colors are gender-specific too?

While growing up he said, “I want to learn cooking,” but he landed up with guns and video games on his shelf. He didn’t want to be an engineer, he wanted to be called an interior decorator or a chef. It is so strange that restaurants recruit maximum male chefs and we propagate at home that the kitchen isn’t a boy's best friend.

Boys love to chatter – put their feelings into words. It is just they prefer hidden corners in the fear of being called a girl. Sexism is all around us, either a man becomes woman alike or is called-out as gay. At 15, he was wondering if “my bicycle isn’t manly enough, I will swing between homosexuality and femininity.”

The transition between adolescence and manhood was to learn to toughen up. If women are treated as sex objects, don’t miss out that men are evaluated as the success objects. Their chivalry is demanded but mistaken as a weakness. Nice boys are not masculine enough and their narcissism is toxic enough. Is there a middle ground?

The price tag attached to them isn’t of a beauty standard, it is their monetary savings. He didn’t want to be a breadwinner, he wanted to be a sit-at-home dad. He was told, “be man enough to take responsibility” and now he is known as “The man with the four-bedroom flat.”

This wasn’t the end of his journey, it’s just a start. Wait till he struggles as a son and a husband and falls apart. He couldn’t be the man of her dreams because society always told him, “your mother has sacrificed all her life for your needs.” He was conditioned to be a momma's boy – a different notion to man-up.

Now that you know that men struggle too, let’s find out about their encounters of abuse too. He wrote in his journal, “other men touch me too, I am just not allowed to be loud as you.” When the society tells you, it is a man’s land, let’s come together to realize – men are afraid of it too!

Take a minute and tell your father, brother, husband, and friend – you’re allowed to talk, vent, and cry without being judged by the unsaid rules.

#menandconditioning #menandmentalhealth #menandpatriarchy #mentalhealth #mentalwellbeing #mendontcry #themadnessforreal

Woman, Who?

“My mother folded hands to you on our wedding & my father asked you to forgive my mistakes, that’s when I failed.”

The more you allow yourself to be abused, the parts of the brain are conditioned to it. It is similar to tolerance to alcohol. Once addicted, any amount is less. The suffering behind trauma is inexpressible. I feel lost, isolated, and numb. It’s like a rollercoaster – sad one minute, blank the next minute. It’s like I ‘m always on the go. I feel like it’s a curse to be born a woman. If you’re unmarried, there seems to be an invisible chain around you. This chain is a woman’s keep-in-check-boundary.

If I have to go out, I have to ask. If I wear a dress, I have to explain. If I speak up, I have to mellow down my words. I am educated yet I feel tamed. It all comes down to a family and their happiness. My journey holds no truth. Education has no barrier but no one taught me, education does not affect diplomacy.

It is like I have an unsaid rule set by my parents and this society, I can only talk about what is suitable to the men of this country. It is after you’re married, you realize women too belong to patriarchy. I gave up my name, I changed my house, I changed my bed-sheets. It took me years to accept the changed taste of my food, and the new colors of my room. If this wasn’t enough, I changed my best friend from my mother to an empty wall.

I’ m not happy because I’m so confused. We’re propagating for an equal world, we’re still thinking women will adjust to this too!

I am confident in myself but I lack trust in this society. Mostly, anything I say or do is unacceptable. I mean, it is understandable, the society I grew up in accepts rape threats to women, there is room for domestic violence, women are considered responsibilities, one of them has to still look after - either a father or a husband.

I never imagined that womanhood is about being submissive. I want to scream & shout, cry & curse. I haven’t been a version of myself – unable to manage my emotions in the process of pleasing you!

We are born to be abused in every domain. I am trained to cook, clean, and care. But, I am not ready to be cared. Maybe if you look beyond, sex objects don’t have feelings. Unfortunately, I do.

From the word woman comes man, the world still questions, Who?

Every visit that I leave my parents home, I tell myself, one day I’ll walk free, neither a daughter nor a wife, just a woman!

#feminism #mentalhealthmatters #themadnessforreal #womenandmentalhealth #patriarchy #women #men #genderequality #mentalhealthawareness