Category Archives: Everyday Life

Her colourful, unstable brain

Posted in Everyday Life, Ponderings & Personal Development by

Not all doctors are prepared to manage mental health illnesses. Let alone family members. I knew at least a few doctors, my own batch, who once said, ‘nak sgt mati, terjun je lah’. To them, mental health is all just in the head and that what these patients are experiencing are merely pettiness and poor resilience. It is very difficult for this particular group of doctors to accept that these people are suffering physiologically as well. It takes an empathetic doctor to sit with this patient and explore the symptoms. In a fast-paced world with medicolegal implications lurking around the corner, empathy can be hard to train.

I have always thought that it is brave for someone to admit that they are unwell mentally and seek help for it. People with depression have anhedonia. They have poor appetite and sleep quality. It is not because they are not trying, but because something is always in the way of their recovery journey. A patient once described that she was actually ready to leave the world by paying off all her debts and decluttering her things. She noticed that the duration of her low mood got a bit longer than usual. It was no longer during the premenstrual period but almost every 2 weeks. Not only that, she was experiencing uncontrollable bursts of rage from time to time over small disputes happening at home and at work. She was beginning to hallucinate. It was either her name being called or doors being slid open when they were not. Or doors being closed shut when no one else was at home. She forgets things easily and tells the same stories all over again. But then at other times, she sometimes wonders if the things she knows about a person or an event are really true or if the ideas were something she conjured in her monologues before, and accepted by the brain as a fact. This went on for at least 6 months.

At one point, she contemplated the least painful way to die as she felt that her support system had crumbled. She felt that her husband was slowly pushing her to the edge so that SHE would be the one filing for divorce to get out of the painful marriage. The spouse also kept the kids close to him, probably as an attempt to win their favour in case there is a battle of custody. Not knowing that she was prepared to give it all up in return for her life. Every behaviour is deemed a nuisance and unnecessary by the spouse. Soon, heartfelt conversations are no longer shared because the patient doesn’t feel safe and supported. Everything just comes back to her for either being ‘stupid’ or ‘weak’. As a result, the partner would narrate the situation to the kids, in what he thought was a harmless manner, portraying the patient as an incompetent mother who has no brains to figure things out on her own.

The last time I met her, she was still refusing to start her meds as she felt she could still manage her emotions and that she could still function at work. She said she just needed someone to talk to without passing judgment. She is also refusing a CT Brain – I wanted to eliminate as many organic causes as possible. She was confident that if there was anything wrong with her brain, she would experience relentless headache and nausea. Or her limbs would just give way.

I hope that her resilience and protective factors would shield her from self-harm or suicidal attempts. I am rooting for her to still have a chance to have a seat in Heaven in the Hereafter.

Different versions of a person

Posted in Everyday Life, Parenting, Family and Relationships by

My sister was telling me the other day that our dad arranged an umrah trip for him and his missus. Meaning, our stepmother. It was a good package, fully funded by our dad. Of course, I would not expect any less from someone in the role of a husband (who has the money). But wait, why did this version of my dad not surface before? The version of putting the comfort of the wife in mind and not rubbing it in about how much he will be spending on the umrah. In fact, this version of him in this second marriage is totally different to how we remembered him treating our mother before.

Maybe this new wife befits his evolving taste for a woman with a career that he could parade to his friends and relatives. I have nothing against this lady. She has led her own fair share of hardships in life, as well as being a single mother. And her kids turned out to be great human beings. Or so we were told. The only thing I made clear to my dad was that I do not wish to participate in her life and her kids. That means if we are having a birthday party, with her being present, I am not going.

Anyway, back to the umrah story. This is not my dad’s first umrah trip. He went for umrah with our late mom many years ago, but I remembered him being a nuisance about it. Everything to him was either expensive or tedious. Up to the point that our mom, who was a housewife by the way, living on the pocket money that we (working) daughters gave her every month, said that she would fund the trip. In other words, she had saved enough money to fund an umrah package and proposed the trip to her husband to come along. She really wanted them to experience umrah together. Only to be met with defiance. Aisyah Retno’s song Tidak Adil is so fitting of the situation back then. Dad still went as a man with Nuisance as his middle name. Only Allah knows how it was there. My mother made the best out of the trip.

Hence, this different version of him is new to us. Maybe it is because he is getting older and is having more time with his pension money. Maybe his love towards our mother waned with time and they just decided to give up on each other. They were housemates who co-parents their kids.

Inevitably, it happens to the best of us when you don’t recharge the spark and keep the romance burning.

A small nugget of thought

Posted in Everyday Life, Ponderings & Personal Development by

Good mental health does not mean you have to be happy all the time. You must allow yourself to feel sad, angry, stressed out etc. This does not mean I am dismissing those with poor mental health status that could stem from feelings of extreme sorrow, rage etc. Everybody’s reaction towards an event varies, and this could be influenced by their previous experience, knowledge and personality.

Just because someone disagrees with you or their line of thoughts differ, it doesn’t mean it’s toxic. Nevertheless, differences in thought and behaviour does stir one’s emotions to a certain point. But always go back to a baseline where you could just sit and ponder the points. Then, take the good points from the confrontation.

I am not the best human being on earth. I am comprised of both positive and negative traits. Like I’ve always believed in – we can be either a villain or a hero in other people’s stories.