An innie in an outie’s world
Growing up, I was such a quiet child, especially compared to my loud, older sisters that my parents would often forget me. They sometimes failed to remember they had a third child. Once, they lost me at a supermarket and realised it when the store manager called. Had it not been for him, I’d be a feral child living in aisle six gorging on cereal and candy bars for the rest of my life. No offense to my parents, they just didn’t know what to do with a little person like me. Innately introverted Had someone explained to them that I was innately ...
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Demi Moore and our fear of ageing
Demi Moore’s recent divorce from her younger husband, Ashton Kutcher, and subsequent trip to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction have been documented all too well in the tabloids. We read the headlines, and exclaim our shock and horror at Moore’s “pathetic” behavior. Unable to keep her much younger man, losing the battle with Mother Nature, guilty for beginning to show her true age, Moore reportedly turned to substance abuse to keep her fledgling self-confidence afloat. We can balk as much as we want at Demi Moore’s troubles, but how long can they distract us from our own insecurities? With the deluge of bad press ...
Read Full PostWhy women need to complain more
I can’t tell you how much I relied on my girlfriends for my sanity in my 20s. During our student days at the University of Virginia (UVA), we were each other’s roommates, psychiatrists, parents, and siblings. Far away from my family in Bangladesh, my friends and I became each other’s families. But something happens to our female friendships when we leave our 20s and enter our 30s. As we get older and get married, have babies, work, work more, and did I mention, work more, we also begin to talk less. Why is it that when women need their girlfriends the ...
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No homosexuality in Pakistan, and other lies
While visiting Karachi University a few months back for a fieldwork assignment, I had a rather peculiar run-in with a group of clinical psychologists. All of them were involved in clinical and rehabilitative projects and had recently banded together to start a small forum to teach people aspiring to enter mental health and also to disseminate specialised information among professionals. They felt that such knowledge was largely disaggregated in Pakistan. This meeting was atypical for me since it was one of my first encounters with a group of well educated and professionally active psychologists who wanted to inject some vigour into the ...
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What your Facebook profile picture says about you
Sigmund Freud printed Interpretation of Dreams one hundred and eleven years ago. I’m sure he’s turning in his grave right this minute because I’m about to pay tribute to his great work in psychology with one of the most shallow representations of our personalities. I am about to embark on the noble mission of interpreting the many profile pictures I have come across on Facebook. Please find below my analysis of the top seven worst profile pictures: 1. The ‘I’m too hot to handle’ teenage girl Description: Hugging a bear and/or posing with a commode visible in the background. The pouty face is mandatory, of course. The low-down: ...
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Depression: Shamed into silence
In the dictionary, the term depression is defined as a ‘severe despondency and dejection, accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy’ or as a ‘condition of mental disturbance, typically with lack of energy and difficulty in maintaining concentration or interest in life’. However, nowhere in the above definitions, have we come across the words ‘weakness’ or ‘illness’. So, why do our people of South Asian origin consider depression as something disgraceful? Studies have shown that women are more likely to suffer from depression than men are and, from the list of ethnic identities, South Asian women – whether they are Pakistani, ...
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Why worry? These exams will come and go
Final exams are starting. Poor school kids, you think. So glad I’m over that, you muse as you reminisce about the hours you spent cramming text, the shock of your last year reports. And even if that’s not exactly what you went through during school, it’s what most of your friends did. Part of being a student is being equated with some clichéd exam story. So it’s totally understandable if you’re wondering why this time you can’t spot the telltale sleep-deprived puffy eyes, or why students aren’t clutching each other in corridors, weeping about how horrible the exam was. It’s ...
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For the Pakistan team, the hardest battle is of the mind
As any die hard Pakistan supporter can attest to, sport can be full of hope one week and result in complete misery and disarray the next. It can be a cruel business. After a hard fight, against all odds, a win can take you to cloud nine and a feeling of being invincible can follow. You get on the team bus and Pehli Nazar Mein (my favourite song) is playing at full volume. But before you know it, a few days later this feeling is followed by a swift kick to the stomach that makes all air leave your body and ...
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Fear in Pakistan: Hitchcock, the Taliban and us
Sometimes I feel like I am Melanie Daniels from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” A 1963 suspense horror film,The Birds is depicts Bodega Bay, California, which is suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few days. If you think about Pakistan, you can’t help but compare the birds in the film with the Taliban and militant groups . If only we could study what motivates them to carry out such acts. Of course, getting a terrorist to sit through a psychology experiment as a volunteer would be pretty ...
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Learning to realise we’re all OK
While perusing the best selling self-help book: I’M OK You’re OK by psychiatrist Thomas A Harris MD, one realizes how well the theory of the ‘not OK child’ can be applied to a number of Pakistanis (not only as individuals, but as representatives of the nation). Briefly, the book reveals that there are four life positions that each person can take: I’m not OK, you’re Ok 2.I’m not OK, you’re not OK, 3. I’m OK, you’re not OK, 4. I’m OK, you’re OK Most children initially take the position of” I’m not OK, you’re OK”. They see adults as strong and competent and themselves ...
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