Confessions

Who is it more difficult to speak to? Your family or friends / others? When you’ve done something wrong or want to make a confession, who’s your first choice and why?

A lot of us would rather tell a friend at first, thinking our confession will hurt our family’s hopes and expectations. And hope like hell that with time you’ll get a magic mantra to tell your family in a way that won’t hurt them. Hurt them you will, yes. But also much more if they find out from someone else about what you’ve been hiding. They aren’t so pissed because you did something wrong, but because you didn’t trust them enough to tell them your story. We usually skip this when thinking of telling them, because we’re in a different frame of mind altogether. You think you’re entire family will hate you and then there will be fights and blaming among the elders as to who’s responsibility it was to have taken measures to avoid your mistakes, and for you that’s the worst outcome.

You wish that after you have confided in them, they would comfort you, love you the same way like before and move on with life even though you have told them something that could break hearts. Believe it or not, it still is the right thing to do. Sharing your problems with your loved ones ultimately tells them how much you trust them and respect their intervention. It gives them the idea that you regret your mistake and need their help and support to make everything alright and make a new beginning. There will be people who might not see this side, but surely they’d see it with time and for you it’s an important time to find out who’ll stick with you in tough times and who won’t. You shouldn’t expect everything to happen all of a sudden, if you’ve taken so long to approach your loved ones, give them sometime to digest the news and decide what they want to do about it. If you feel they’re instant reaction has hurt you, just swallow it and wait till sometime has passed and they’ve had time to think over it. They too have a way of thinking and operating, so allow them to express themselves and keep an open mind.

A MOTHER: There’s no other place like mother’s arms to confide in. And no comfort like her words that help us understand life and make us stronger individuals.

It wasn’t your fault!

ou’ve gone over it a million times already… in your head, wondering how you could’ve been different, how you could’ve done something better. We often forget what’s gone is GONE, OVER. What lies ahead is important. Think of the amazing things life has to offer and try to move on.

Right now, you’re probably an adult capable of making responsible decisions for yourself and also assuming you had the choice even then. No you didn’t. You were a child, if you want to understand how a child thinks, spend sometime with kids, see how they perceive things in general and their opinion on the same things and you’ll realize how naive you were.

If you hate your childhood, for whatever reason, don’t keep sulking over it. Give yourself a second childhood, do all the crazy things you probably would’ve done as a child. Go crazy at an amusement park, if you’ve been scared of the rides so far, take that extra step now and watch yourself scream your heart out with excitement that you’ve been missing out on so far.

Usually people would advice you to keep yourself busy, keep doing something to keep your thoughts occupied. But how? And trust me on this one… You have every right to be happy, no matter how sad situations have left you. I am not saying “see the silver lining” I am saying create one for yourself. Do things that make you Happy, that’s the key. Keeping yourself occupied with things that’ll get you out of a sad situation. Don’t just listen to music, listen to it as loudly as possible and let it HIT you, soothe you.

Go to the Zoo, spend time with nature. Get your mind off human beings for a while, we’re surrounded by people and often it gets on to our nerves. If your feeling low, ask your partner / friend / family member to take a walk with you and if the shops are still open, make sure you get some ice cream and enjoy it the clumsy way, in a cone.

Have you always been afraid of taking risks? You might not know the exact reason, but what matters is that you have been scared, you’d think a hundred times before playing a prank on somebody and even if you did have the guts to go ahead with it, end up feeling miserable after you’ve done so?

Well, I’d say this is the time… BE SELFISH… take some risks (not playing pranks), like playing or watching extreme sports, dancing the way you wish to, speaking to people you were shy of talking to, grabbing hold of your loved ones and hugging them real tight to express yourself… EXPRESS! You might not like to paint, but just take a blank sheet of paper and paint whatever you want or just splash the vibrant colors on the page, you’ll feel the colors help you feel more lively.

If you feel you have a lot of anger and frustration inside you that won’t come out so easily, maybe if you have the time, take up some kind of martial arts, through rough body movements and discipline, you would find yourself letting off the heat in you. Don’t give yourself the chance to hurt others around you emotionally or physically because you are frustrated from within. Chose from a huge list of anger management techniques that would suit you.

I’ll try and put up another article on what activities one can take up when one’s going through a rough period to come out as a winner, no matter how badly the situation is pulling you down.

Keep yourself happy… and see the happiness spread all around you. You are strong, beautiful and have every right to be happy. Love yourself and you’ll be able to love those around you.

I SUGGEST: Please find the video of Baz Luhrmann’s – Everybody’s Free (that is if you haven’t seen or heard it yet, in any case, you’d love to see / hear it again)

Breaking The Silence

There are many reasons we don’t disclose the past. Sometimes we forget what happened and just push it aside. Or we fear the outcome of our disclosure, like hurting family members, causing any pain or embarrassment to our loved ones, etc. We often blame ourselves for what happened to us and don’t have the confidence to open up to anybody. It’s the Guilt that makes us silent, it’s the cause of our sadness, the cause of our grief, the cause of our anger and the cause of our depression. And as long as we don’t let go off the Guilt, it will keep us from coming out of the web.

Sometimes, we decide to speak out because we can no longer hold it in as it’s killing us from within. It could be days of debating with your own self before you talk to someone about how you feel OR in one moment, it just comes out like you feel that in this moment you just let go of all the knots within you. Some people were often triggered by an incident that brings back old forgotten experiences, all the feelings rush back in to your mind like they were always there, so crisp and haunting.

Whatever it is that made you open up, consider it your first step to freedom. You will go through a really tough time once you’ve come face to face with your past. Someone will support you and someone might blame you, but you will be the only one who knows the enemy within. It’s easy for people to tell you “what’s in the past should be forgotten” but even though you might find it difficult to explain to them how you feel, IT’S NOT AT ALL EASY. But the tough time is only an indication that Good Times will soon follow.

So speaking about how you feel to someone you trust is your first and the most important step to deal with the crime that you faced as a child. If you’ve already done so, Be proud of yourself, you did the right thing and Yes, you are on the path to Recovery!

WHAT I DID: After 16 years of keeping my abuse incidents inside me, I finally broke my silence when I realised my past had made me look at sex as my relief to any kind of stress or loneliness that crept into my adult life. It took a few incidents before i realized it had become a pattern. No, I wasn’t addicted to it. At first, I told my best friend about it and after a little support in the beginning, I was completely shunned out. So there I was not knowing what the hell was wrong with me, completely rejected by my best pal, feeling stupid for opening my mouth and still having a difficult time forgetting being sexually abused as a child for 7 years. Since I was afraid of embarrassing my family, I didn’t want to tell them anything. I knew one thing though, I wanted to CHANGE and i wanted to LIVE.

So I went to see a psychiatrist, she made me undergo a psychological analysis and told me that I had to involve a family member before she could start my treatment. That was the worst thing, I took many days and then i decided to tell my elder sibling everything, but I could never figure out what to say. And being the impulsive person I am, one afternoon, I decided to speak to my mother, and as i started speaking to her, she was so comforting and warm that i told her everything. She had known I was depressed but didn’t know what storm I’d held within for so long. After that there have been Questions, Blaming, Denial, the works. And there has been Support, Love, Caring, Comforting and lots of Crying and Talking. I am lucky that the I wasn’t rejected by my family the way I was by my friend. I am not saying that my family was completely comfortable and supportive, there were many times they lost their cool but no matter what, they never blocked me out, they stood by me as I’ve tried to comfort them at the same time dealing with their feelings on this entire issue as well.

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