Mental Health Log

[Mahat]

Yesterday, I facetimed my mom and her new husband. They looked so happy, healthy, and radiant that I wanted to cry because I was so touched and overwhelmed by how much genuine positivity they were radiating. All of the the angst and lingering grudges I had disappeared when I spoke with them. I guess being reminded of their love and care made me realize that in the end while I still need to work through whatever demons I have, I know deep down they love me and I love them. It made me grateful for the them and the people in my life. But most importantly, I felt deep remorse. Deep remorse for the fact that I entertained the thought of hurting my mom and the pain that it would cause my family, both old and new. I'm so thankful that I sought help when I did; who knows what would've happened to me and others if I didn't do what I needed to do.

[Mahat]

[Mahat]

I got the results of my psychological test today. It was testing a combination of cognitive and emotional processing. On the emotional component, my results indicated that I have a combination of depressive disorder and a personality disorder non-specified with borderline and obsessive-compulsive personality features. The cognitive component bode well though. On the vocabulary part, I got high above average and on the non-verbal problem solving part, I was in the superior range.

[Mahat]

Since my diagnosis, I've been thinking about it and its implications. I genuinely think my personality is not that disordered to warrant a diagnosis and here's why. I agree with the depression diagnosis since depression has had debilitating effects on my quality of life. These more disordered personality characteristics come to the fore when I'm depressed. At our worst, we share some clusters of characteristics from these personality disorders. The shadow exerts its greatest influence. But once I'm on meds and do counseling, these characteristics do-intensify and don't sabotage me. My personality neurosis could easily be explained away with enneagram since in my unhealthy states I'm fairly typical and average for my type. There's also a pragmatic reason for diagnoses - the insurance companies need a diagnosis in order to cover my meds,

[Mahat]

These days my anger has subsided considerably. The anger that I've felt in the past I would've described as a depressed anger. People commonly see anger as expansive and motivating, but no, not mine. It was a self-cannibalizing, imploding, and immobilizing type of anger. Imagine being too fatigued to do anything yet you have all of this violence inside of you. So not only are you initially angry at whatever, you're now angry at your own castration. I couldn't fully express my violence and aggression.


I had 3 days off of work and within those 3 days, I was ruminating on various malaise that have been haunting me. The anger got rekindled but thankfully not to the point that I couldn't function. But what frustrates me is that I don't know what to do with it. I could channel it into this enneagram project, but that feels dissatisfying to me. That's what I would naturally do, but that's not enough. I'd rather sit with it and express it to the greatest impact.

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I'm not entirely impressed with people tout themselves to be naturally calm, collected, and neutral. What internal war have they overcame? What tension have they resolved? To me it's like fearlessness without overcoming the fear. How do they know true peace and calm if they haven't let themselves experience their own violence and intensity? Maybe I'm being presumptuous but to me it feels like they're running away from something. They haven't earned their peace. It's like the sannyasin or monk who renounces the world without initially being in it. What's there to renounce? There's no nobility in that.