I’m a closet comedian, bona fide artist – check out my “Inspiration” Page, Amazon Kindle Best Selling Author, 3-time Certified Wine Educator, tree hugger, business entrepreneur with a Master’s Degree, allowing me to work in corporate communication!
As one of the few hundred Certified Scientific Hand Analysts, I can decode people’s neural pathways from their fingerprints. I am also fascinated by epigenetics and neuroscience.
My work as a keynote speaker is to inspire organizations to create mental health-friendly workplaces and truly diverse and inclusive work culture for the Gifted neurodivergent. This blog also represents my advocacy for the Gifted population, whose many traits overlap with and can manifest as depression and anxiety symptoms.
How other people may describe me and many of these I know you can relate to – quick learner, brainiac, creative, driven, wacky/quirky, an unlikely combination of both elegance and poise but also the girl next door, down-to-earth, warm, who composts kitchen scraps and loves farm animals.
Most importantly, how you and I share a kindred spirit is also because of our depression. What I am talking about exactly is High Functioning Depression and the kind of depression resulting from your Gifted traits. This means that people around you might not detect your depression.
At work, you are invincible! Your talents, skills, and experience have won your professional awards and an exemplary reputation. At times, you may wonder yourself about why you just don’t feel motivated outside of work. What you and others may not understand is why you cancel social plans more often than you are willing to admit.
You much prefer not having non-work related obligations. Yet, life seems to be full of “obligations”. You fantasize of having a beautiful, satiny cocoon to lie on/hide in, for days on end.
Forget it. Just any cocoon to hide in. With an On-Demand button for rose water/mint water and healthy bites, just so you would survive without stepping out of your door.
I’ve been there and worse. In the damp, dark inner underworld where I slipped in and out of full consciousness, I felt barely alive.
It seemed like I was grieving for the sudden death of my cat of 14 years, Shimmer. The thought of her sent me straight to the land of guilt and grief. How did I deal with it? I buried myself in work.
I worked with some of the most intelligent legal professionals. The work was challenging and exciting. It took me to Seoul, which welcomed me with its first snow of that winter. It also took me to the exotic Hong Kong where I found one of my favorite organic eateries and a reliable Indian kitchen, where the light in the eyes of the 5-year-old son of the owner, made my day.
Yet, back in San Francisco, the picturesque, the century-old City-by-the-Bay, with some of the best Michelin Star restaurants, Bi-Rite ice creams, world-class opera and the San Francisco Ballet whose orchestra was so outstanding that they published their own albums and recently one album made it to #1 on the Billboard Charts for “Traditional Classical Albums,” ravishing views of the Ocean, tree-lined hills, with great urban cellars where I once interviewed acclaimed winemakers, if I wasn’t working and performing at my mental best, I was in my cocoon.
Here I was having everything and every experience I wanted, and yet, happiness is a distant thing.
I was hijacked by an undercurrent of emotions that I couldn’t put my fingers on. It became clear that what I was going through was more than the grieving for my late cat. I felt devastatingly hopeless. One day it dawned on me, “Oh boy, I think I have severe depression!”
How I got my life back, before and after antidepressants, is what I am here to share!
I spent years living with countless ups and downs. I searched everywhere for solutions that did not have pharmaceutical side effects or yet-to-determine long term brain damage. I even became a part of a psychiatric study.
I was willing to try another antidepressant. When that SSRI did not work, I knew that I had my work cut out for me and would become a resource for those that had lost hope. I became the lab rat/guinea pig/research rabbit. . .pick the one that you like!
I had difficulty finding real help or effective information that was untainted by special interest groups. Everything I found continued to be very limited to one, therapy, two, antidepressants and three, electric shock or brain magnetic treatment.
If these were the answers, then depression would not be the leading cause of disability globally.
I started my healing journey looking for the silver bullet to cure my severe depression. Instead, what I discovered is a treasure map leading to a treasure trove of solutions that I now use every day to allow me to enjoy life and effectively manage the symptoms of depression, or traits of the neurodivergent, gifted brain, that used to hold me back and that may be holding you back. I share the treasure map in this blog!
I actually stopped looking for a cure. I embrace who I am and offer my special, unique blend of talents to the world.
When each of us start to live from our gifts, rather than feeling ashamed of our uniqueness and trying to unsuccessfully be like others and being unhappy for being out of the ordinary (or “extra-ordinary”), we will be one step closer to end the suffering of the world and closer to living in our collective utopia and experiencing our life from our strengths.
This blog is a celebration of yourself and of life.
Join me.
And, Read on.
Bonny.