Category: Articles

A psychological self-portrait

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I have lived a life where the past never entirely stays in the past. Trauma leaves fingerprints on everything — how I write, how I love, how I choose, how I walk through the world. My therapist calls it PTSD and anxiety, but in daily life it shows up in ways far more subtle, intricate, and intimate.

This is an attempt to describe it as honestly as I can.

1. How Trauma Shows Up in My Writing Style

My writing has always been my bloodstream. When trauma lives inside you for years, it eventually finds its vocabulary.

It appears in my work through:

• Intensity

I write with emotional force because I feel with emotional force. Even ordinary memories drop with the weight of history.

• Spirals of thought

I return to themes — abandonment, love, loss, cruelty, tenderness — because trauma teaches the mind to circle, revisit, re-examine.

• Sudden shifts in mood

A paragraph may hold beauty and pain side by side. That juxtaposition is simply how my memory functions.

• Hyper-observation

Trauma survivors see everything. We read micro-gestures, silences, weather, light, breathing. My writing reflects that heightened perception.

• A need for meaning

Suffering without meaning feels unbearable. So I create meaning — through metaphor, philosophy, and emotional clarity.

My writing is not broken. It’s marked. It carries the fingerprints of a boy who had to understand the world too early and too deeply.

2. How PTSD Affects My Relationships

People think PTSD is about flashbacks or trembling hands. But the most profound effects are relational.

For me, it looks like:

• Hyper-vigilance

I anticipate hurt before it happens. I prepare for abandonment even in stable relationships. It doesn’t mean I distrust others — it means I’ve been taught not to trust safety.

• Deep loyalty

When I love, I love completely. Trauma often creates intensity — not chaos, but depth.

• Emotional self-protection

Even with people I adore, a part of me stays on guard. I reveal slowly, painfully, carefully. And when I finally trust, the bond is absolute.

• Taking the “strong” role

I become the caretaker, the organiser, the one who absorbs the emotional weather of others. It’s how I learnt to survive.

• Fear of burdening others

I carry most of my pain internally, not because I want to, but because I learnt early that expressing needs can be dangerous.

PTSD in relationships is not a deficit — it is history. And history always travels with us.

3. How Anxiety Shapes My Decision-Making

My decisions are logical, but the emotional engine underneath is shaped by anxiety.

It shows up as:

• Over-analysis

I examine every possibility because uncertainty once meant danger.

• The need for control

Trauma steals control. Anxiety tries to reclaim it.

• Quick, practical responses in crisis

I stabilise first, collapse later. This is why I can handle diagnoses, emergencies, and grief with an eerie calm.

• Strong intuition

Anxiety sharpens instinct. I read people accurately because I had to.

• Difficulty trusting the future

Not because I’m pessimistic — but because childhood taught me that comfort can vanish overnight.

My decisions are careful, considered, shaped by survival, but never ruled by fear. That distinction matters.

4. A Psychological Profile I Can Share With the World

This is who I am, in the simplest truthful terms:

I am a trauma survivor who carries old wounds with extraordinary resilience.

I feel deeply, think intensely, love fiercely, and endure silently until the breaking point.

I read the world with a heightened sensitivity, shaped by danger but used now for compassion.

I have PTSD and anxiety — but I also have clarity, creativity, strength, depth, and a capacity for love that is larger than the pain that made me.

My mind is not fragile; it is weathered. My heart is not weak; it is scarred and brave.

I do not write from brokenness. I write from survival. I write from life.

Surrender

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I suddenly spiralled into something really dark.

I was talking to Danica the night through, and I was hearing all the pain she was going through. Then I thought of all the pain her mother went through. And then all the pain her mother went through, and I thought of my life. And how my sister’s life has come about.

So much potential.

So much waste.

So much love.

So much hate.

And I crawled into my darkness.

The moment began like a crystal womb beckoning me inside, and I crawled on all my fours and went in. It’s like the loop going on in my head of Birdy’s song. I really tried hard to fight, but all I want to do is fall.

I just feel… looking back at all the years I had lived — and they have not all been bad. They have had their share of love in my grandmother. In my aunts. I also think my mother and father loved me despite it all. What I brought to the table with my sensitivity and empathy and stupidity and false bravado.

How I break like a pane of thin stained glass at the slightest bit of a hammer.

And life can be such a hammer.

And then there are smithereens of stained coloured glass, and then it’s all rebuilt again into a different shape from the same form. And I just don’t surrender, and I wonder: why?

I am seeing two of my fur kids growing old. They both are struggling to live, get up each day despite the cancers. And I have a new baby, two years old, and she’s such a good girl. And I wondered why I did it. Why am I fighting against life? Against death? Two sides of the same fuckign coin.

There’s such a cooling and heating all the time within.

And I am wondering why the hell am I not just giving up.

Why do I want more?

More love.

More friendship.

When all that will happen is loss, loss, and more loss. People fade. Drift away. Break away. And we rebuild.

It’s so tiring.

I’m so tired.

There Is Some Good Out There… But I’m Tired

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Lately, I’ve been feeling anxious and depressed every time I open Instagram. The algorithm knows me too well — it knows I’m a dog lover, an animal lover, a climate change activist. It sends me videos that confirm all of it.

And as someone who speaks about what’s wrong with society, I feel a responsibility to see what’s wrong. But I just can’t bear it anymore — the torture, the violence, the unthinkable pain that human beings inflict on animals. Every day, I see it. And I don’t know what to do. Should I stay away from it for the sake of my sanity, or should I keep watching because I mustn’t look away?

It’s such a painful conundrum.

I feed strays. I rescue them. I get them adopted. I’ve done this for years. And at home, I have my three doggos — my children. They’re loved, protected, and cherished. Their presence is the most dominant part of my life. And yet, when I see what’s happening out there, I feel sick — because I know that somewhere, another creature like them is crying, burning, or bleeding.

The truth is, the world feels like a shitty place. And human beings — shittier than ever.

Every time I think people can be kind, I see the opposite. Behind the smiles and the “be kind” slogans, I see the toxicity — people so lonely, so trapped in their own pathology, that they lash out at the weakest, at animals who can’t even speak. It’s nothing new. It’s been happening for millennia. And it’ll continue as long as the human species does.

But then I think of The Lord of the Rings. I think of Frodo asking Sam, “What are we fighting for?” And Sam says, “Because there’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

And I want to believe that.

But most days, I feel more like Frodo — tired, disillusioned, and hopeless.

I was talking to my psychologist today about this — about the state of the world, and the leaders who think only of themselves, never of the collective. It’s heartbreaking.

Even in music, there was a time when artists came together — when Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, and so many others sang We Are the World. There was hope then. There was unity. Now, everyone’s just singing about themselves. Everything feels so individualistic. The collective pulse is gone.

The world I grew up in had its own horrors, yes — but there was empathy. There was a sense that we could still care for one another. Now, even when people care, it’s often transactional. Everyone has an agenda, a motive.

It’s so hard not to become jaded. So hard not to see through the façade and still hope. Because most times, what’s underneath feels like a black hole.

And that’s what really upsets me.

I’m upset right now.

And maybe that’s all this post is — a vent, a cry, a reminder to myself that I still care, even when it hurts too much to look.