Lara-ism

It’s been a month since I last recorded. Whoa. Listen to my first episode of the year as I struggle (while spacing out in between words) talking about how mental health can affect your libido and the realities of having a relapse and how to manage it.

In this episode, I talked about how we always tend to reflect on our life at the end of the year based on our productivity and why we should stop doing it. I also shared one of my lowest moments in life, what led me there and how I overcame it – which includes accepting professional help for the first time. As you reflect on the past year, I hope you learn something from this!

This episode is pretty random and definitely more candid than all my other episodes. I started feeling better after almost half a year of being depressed. You'd probably notice a difference with the way I think and speak, but disclaimer that I just babbled my way the whole 20 something minutes. I talked about anti-depressants, how I celebrate my diagnosis anniversary, how waking up feeling normal is a privilege and an answer to a question I was recently asked – how to support people with depression.

In this episode, I explained how the current pandemic is proof that Mental Health is real and how we all have our own mental health issues to a certain extent.

This is a short sequel to the episode, “I'm a Recovering Drama-holic." There are multiple sub-stories to my journey adjusting to a more stable life. In this episode, I talked about how I came into terms with my medication and how I found my art again.

In this episode, I talked about my addiction to a tumultuous life. If you find yourself getting bored with peace and stability, maybe you'll find this relatable.

Pardon the background noise — from my boyfriend’s alarm to my neighbors slamming their doors lol.

Anyway, in this episode, I talked about different examples of binary thinking on mental health – how we expect people who are diagnosed with a mental disorder or people who are simply not okay to consistently look the part and how we tend to immediately invalidate what they’re going through when they’re not. Mental health is NOT binary. Mental disorders or feeling pain DO NOT render people incapable of doing or feeling anything else.

This is a letter I wrote for my parents. Finally seeing them as human beings, just like me, helped me understand that all their actions when I was growing up, regardless of how it made me feel then, were done out of love. That discernment enabled me to forgive, heal and love them even more.