Skip to main content

Mental Only

This Vogue article speaks to my own experience and that of many other women I know. There is common and widespread belief that a much of what a woman complains about are in her head. The modern flavor of being hysterical by default. I saw a male nutritionist (and that was probably a mistake) to help me come up with a diet plan that I met my needs, was not too meat-based and helped me manage my weight more effectively. During the 45 minute consult he asked me at least five different times if I was depressed or anxious or experienced mood swings. Saying no to all of that two or three times was not sufficient to drive the message home. 

He must have assumed I was reluctant to come clean with my mental health issues and if prodded enough, I would come succumb and speak the truth. After the fifth time of hearing I had none of those symptoms, he offered to write me a script for an anti-depressant that I could get on if I ever felt "overwhelmed". The conversation about diet went absolutely nowhere. He just was not able to work within my parameters and instead I was prescribed a 1000 mg of Vitamin D to take forever. It was unclear to what end what such a great overdose. I took none of what he prescribed, did not get any advice that I could take action on and returned to the internet to seek guidance from other women like me - presumably deemed depressed, hysterical or both just like me. 

My friends have had it far worse. One went with undiagnosed diabetes for years and now cannot make it without insulin. The other was put on a full battery of mood regulating medicines because that was the easiest fix and now she cannot function without the cocktail. Stories like this abound - you only have to ask a woman and she is likely to have a horror story. When I ask doctors how long the drug they want to prescribe has been on the market and what results from longitudinal studies show, I am often greeted with iciness - it is as if I don't have the right to ask what chemicals they propose to shove into my body. Asking that is crossing some unspeakable line. For me that is the litmus test, if the reception to that question is not what I need it to be, I have no trust in that doctor and will most definitely not do what they tell me to do. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more