chaos and the calm

The techniques in the relaxation prompts have been invaluable. It finally worked. “Before I went through this, I had no appreciation or understanding for mental health at all,” he says. “It was exhausting because I could actually feel in bed at night my joints being sore because I would be so physically tensed up during the day,” he says. You can also text “HELLO” to 50808, Simon Carswell is The Irish Times’ Public Affairs Editor and former Washington correspondent, For the best site experience please enable JavaScript in your browser settings, Donie O’Sullivan: ‘The chaos I’ve had in my mind is more terrifying than the riot at the Capitol’, Irish journalist Donie O’Sullivan trends amid US Capitol unrest. He has been particularly busy for the past two months because of how topical his beat covering Trump and misinformation has been. He talked things through with his mother over Christmas and by the end of the holiday knew he needed help and had to go to counselling. His photographs, like his walks, began extending beyond the little bubble of Bandra, finally resulting in Still Bombay, published by Tara Books. These Mumbaikars-on-the-move pop up ever so often in the book, walking across the length of the frame, somehow embodying that movement is the primary preoccupation of the city’s residents. But he concedes that his is “an illness of the irrational” where, even with all the work he has done, “it is possible that you get into such a dark place that you can’t even use those skills you have built up.”, “I am very scared,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion. Keeping him company was his camera and, two months into his daily walks, he thought of a book of images of the city. His on-the-ground dispatches from the frontline that day and his measured but searching on-street interrogation of the conspiracy theorists he met as they sought to overturn the US presidential election result made the Cahersiveen native a household name at home overnight. “If you go to therapy, you have to work on it, you have to spend a lot of time thinking about it, you have to articulate and unravel what is going on inside your own mind, and verbalise that and work through it with someone,” he says. “I am sure somebody will read this and be like, ‘oh my God, he went to New York and got a shrink.’ Well I had one in Belfast and in Cahersiveen,” he says, laughing. “I just thought it was important for me, while I have my 15 minutes of fame at home – and before it ends – to say, one, I have gone through this and, two, I am still going through this. It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to do it. He appeals to people approached by someone close to them who needs help not to brush it off with an “ah cheer up” or “sure what do you have to complain about?”. He says, “People hold on to heritage and are a bit averse to change, but the reasons for this seem to be ownership or title; not because of the real value of something. He cut his teeth in journalism at UCD, at the university’s College Tribune newspaper, and by the time he returned to journalism at Storyful, it had just been purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In September, after finishing his masters, he moved home to Kerry, still struggling at that big juncture in his life between the end of his education and what should be the start of a career. For all the latest Books And Literature News, download Indian Express App. We all have these big questions in very, very uncertain times,” he says. He can feel tension in his body or joints at the end of the day; the overthinking; the ruminating on “something someone has said or something I did or something in that day and thinking about it over and over again.”. This time of isolation from others and uncertainty leaves many unanswered questions and causes wider anxiety within the population, making the current environment “the perfect breeding ground for people to buy into dangerous conspiracy theories,” he says. “I told him, ‘look, I don’t want to rush in – I don’t want to do medication.’ I had this idea that I would be living in a sort of fog if I was on drugs and I wouldn’t be the same,” he says. Yes. At the time, he was working for one of the committees in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont. In a section on ‘Parel’, the photographs take a shot at the controversial mill-lands, while ‘Banganga’ pays homage to Mumbai’s most famous temple pool. “I can’t remember when the penny dropped, but this was anxiety, and it then quickly developed into the anxiety being so bad. For some, these theories bring the certainty they crave. If you are affected by issues in this article you can call Pieta House 1800 247247 or text “HELP” to 51444, Contact Aware at 1800 80 4848 or [email protected] or the Samaritans at 116123 or [email protected]. I look at that as movement in the book.”. Lockdowns have been anxiety-inducing for many people; being busy with work and therapy during that time helped him through 2020. A veteran of reporting from riots and protests, Guff had filled her backpack with snacks grabbed from their New York apartment expecting a long day in Washington and produced one when Donie, having not eaten all day, was peckish: a bag of Tayto Cheese & Onion crisps that someone had sent as a Christmas gift under lockdown. “I would wake up in the morning and go, God, another day,’” he says. UPDATED: Chaos as Senators disagree over bill to establish Armed Forces Commission The senators rose from an executive session and appealed to the sponsor of the bill, ... the chamber was calm. There is still plenty left to figure out.”. Tekchandaney initially approached the city as a designer might, observing its many colours and contrasts. “I so desperately wanted to work. “For me, right now, I am obviously very focused on my work, but I try to get time for family chats, for meet-ups and calls with friends, for breaks, for walks outside when I can. It is a week after Joe Biden has been inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States and the TV reporter from Kerry is reflective as he talks to The Irish Times over a Zoom call from his latest assignment on the road in the Deep South. It gave him a taste of how US newsrooms and media companies operated. “I thought I was having a heart attack in bed one Sunday night,” he says. They are singled out from the crowd by the camera, dwarfed against the giant canvas of the city, creating that sense of stillness even in movement. “I am a fan of cities, whether it is Mumbai or New York, where i was a student once,” says Tekchandaney, 43. Over the past 30 years, the Option Institute has helped thousands of people to overcome challenges from eating disorders to depression. No, he says, mainly because he didn’t think about it in those terms. ‘Time Travel’ presents nods to a colonial past, and ‘Fantasy’ leads Tekchandaney to consider Mumbai as “a compressed version of Bollywood”. It was just very scared that I was going nuts, that I was going to be institutionalised. At home in Kerry that Christmas, after dinner out with his family, he asked his parents if they could go for a drive on their own; there was something he wanted to discuss with them. “It is like building up an arsenal of weapons or a defence,” he says. “That has helped in terms of telling other people’s stories and knowing the questions to ask other people because I have had to delve very deep within my own experience and within my own biases and weaknesses and insecurities,” he says. “I remember sitting down on the floor of the bedroom bawling crying because I was eight or nine months into this thing and every day is the same day of depression and anxiety and worry; is this ever going to end?”. I am terrified of it still and I don’t want it to come back,” he says. O’Sullivan says that, at 21, he thought he was “an absolute goner” but that the professional help brought him back. O’Sullivan always wanted to be a journalist. He recalls “one beautiful summer evening in Dublin”, sitting in his bedroom, distraught and panicked. His despair never reached the point where he would have done something more serious, but he understood then how it could happen, without help. Reduce And Eliminate Your Child’sMeltdowns, Defiance, Extreme Aggression, And Other Difficult Behaviors In The Next 90 Days With 7 Simple Steps… “People need to be conscious that in a year or two years, or when we are all hopefully out of lockdown and out together, people can be suffering still from the anxious episodes and mental health episodes that might have begun in the lockdown,” he says. The CHAOS Cure: Clean Your House and Calm Your Soul in 15 Minutes But, for O’Sullivan, his most frightening moments have not been in the face of a violent mob but in the midst of his own battle with depression and anxiety. It took time for O’Sullivan to recognise his illness and that he needed help. “When I went back to Kerry, I honestly didn’t think I would be fit to work, ever. The title also came from the publisher’s suggestion, a nod to Tekchandaney’s attachment to the city of his childhood, before its name was changed. “In fact, they can probably handle it better than other people would because they have got help because they have experienced something that is so scary in their own mind,” he says. “As an officer, I enjoyed helping to bring calm to the chaos,” Vorpahl said. The photographs are sequenced across a mixed bag of themes. I didn’t think I would be able to function,” he says. When you are commuting to work, and you are only worried about the potholes and the bad infrastructure, then you forget how nice it is.”. However, Tekchandaney is not a nostalgist. The anxiety first started taking a toll when he was studying for a masters in politics at Queen’s University in Belfast, from September 2012. “Everybody is worried about the future in different ways, I guess, and as I think about the future, I worry,” he says. Expect to see him on your television sets again soon, reporting from another breaking news event, still looking calm and poised. All that time he was still taking his medication. I never had the moment where I was walking down to a bridge or something. So that was hard too because this illness makes you think you are a s**t person, makes you think you can’t do anything.”, His younger self thought: “Is this going to be what the rest of my life is like?”, Now, he talks of the benefits of therapy but feels it is important to burst the stereotypical perception of the therapy chair as portrayed in movies or on television, like on The Sopranos, with “the guy just sitting there, not doing a whole lot or being unco-operative.”. The CHAOS Cure: Clean Your House and Calm Your Soul in 15 Minutes [Cilley, Marla] on Amazon.com. “It is very scary to think that you could be back in that sort of place.”. There is help out there. “It put me off,” he says. Since the Covid-19 pandemic struck, O’Sullivan has been seeing his therapist via Zoom calls, sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month. And then it started to get hard to get up in the mornings because the only bit of peace I had was when I closed my eyes and slept.”. He had originally wanted to produce a “rainbow book” of colour swatches of the city, but Tara Books felt that there was more to his images than just aesthetics, he says. He anticipates that, for some, an end to lockdown may not mean an end to those feelings of anxiety that many are feeling and that the pandemic might leave lasting effects on mental health. He knows that among certain men of his age in Ireland, mental health is a taboo subject, never to be spoken of. “People just need to know that when you are in that moment, things can literally only get better when you have reached that very, very dark place.”. O’Sullivan admits it was “very hard” but people battling anxiety or depression “can get help”. Though the shooting process was fairly regimented, lasting till early 2019, there was a sense of adventure, he recalls. Clarins Calm Essentiel is a new line of skincare that makes the most of calming, antioxidant-rich clary sage to provide comfort and boost the skin's tolerance to environmental aggressors. The product line is beneficial for bolstering the skin against heat, wind and pollution, and the soothing scent of the line makes the application process a relaxing one. But I had so many moments where that seemed like the more appealing thing to do,” he says. It was a “fairly hellish” time for 21-year-old Donie. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines. Yes. But even when he is feeling good, he continues his therapy because he wants to be ready for a future difficult “big life event” that could push him over the edge again into anxiety and depression. “I would say that the chaos that I have had in the past in my mind is far more terrifying than anything I have encountered, even at the riot that day at the Capitol,” he says. The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. They live on with it, in torture. He thought he was having heart palpitations at first. I so desperately wanted to be normal and get on with my life, and do all those things. He also knows that people with anxiety and depression can handle those difficult moments, particularly if they have had help. Donie O’Sullivan: ‘The chaos I’ve had in my mind is more terrifying than the riot at the Capitol ... reporting from another breaking news event, still looking calm and poised. By the summer, he thought a return to Dublin, a place he was familiar with given that he had studied for his undergraduate degree at UCD, might help and he returned to live with a friend. I was just in such agony and anxiety,” he says. But more importantly, when he had an opportunity to kind of calm the waters and just send out a statement to have his followers pull back, he did not. “If I didn’t get help, I would not be in America, I would not be at CNN, I would not have been at the Capitol and I am not sure if I would be alive because the way I was in 2012 – nobody could live with that.”. “So 13 months after the first panic attack, I got the internship, starting in January 2014,” he says. “Some people who are suicidal don’t want to accept or admit or talk about being suicidal.”, He knows that it is hard, particularly among men his age, to talk and to seek help as mental health issues are still stigmatised. O’Sullivan believes more listening needs to be done at home when it comes to mental health. I would be imagining ways I could let my family down or be a disappointment to them or to friends. Still Bombay starts with frames of Bandra’s yesteryear villas, but swiftly moves on to consider the rest of the city, the vignettes accompanied by short essays and musings written by Tekchandaney. He would like to see better access to getting help and easier routes into treatment before it reaches a crisis point. Producing new writing or images of a cosmopolis that has been documented and interpreted over the centuries is admittedly a daunting task today. Calm Down Activities: By far the most effective tool in our calm down toolkit has been our anti-anxiety kit. Doing so, Still Bombay takes into account some familiar tropes — the Sea Link and Worli Koliwada, the lowly chawls and the soaring skyscrapers, expectation versus reality—but it’s also a very personal experience of Mumbai. I just want to say thank you for the work you do helping others to become better fire officers. But I think the listening part is important.”. Obviously, I take precautions with Covid but I plan to keep doing that for a number of years more before I have to become an adult,” he says, chuckling. As modern American democracy faced its greatest threat last month, the Irish reporter best known as “Donie” impressed viewers with his calmness during scenes of chaos at the US Capitol. O’Sullivan’s job, as he sees it, is about trying to figure out their stories, where they have come from and to, by asking questions of them. Do we call them out? His hardest questions have not been ones he has asked of others at the end of his microphone boom but the questions he has had to ask and continues to ask of himself as he manages his illness, through therapy, medication and spotting the warning signs of when it could come back. His US citizenship, through his Boston-born mother, allowed him to move to the US with Storyful at the end of 2015. “The most terrifying position I have been in in my life has been in my own mind in the grips of anxiety and depression.”. O’Sullivan says he takes it one day at time. Around that time, he applied for an internship at Storyful, the Dublin social media news agency founded by former RTÉ journalist Mark Little, and landed the role. Sometimes it’s an emotion or a memory; at other … He describes his approaches to mental health services and the leap to the first question during triage of “do you feel suicidal or have you tried committing suicide?” as something that could put people off. I was feeling good, but I was extremely, extremely nervous that the panic, anxiety and depression would hold me back or stop me and that I wouldn’t be able to do it or that I would have to quit in some way. 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