A psychiatric hospital where people came to be tortured and die. — Professor Ivanzir Vieira could not believe what his eyes were seeing. It was March of 1970 and he was right on time for his lecture. Upon entering the lobby of the pharmacy university, dozens of dead bodies of women and men, older and younger stood on the floor. The bodies…

#5 Depression makes it hard to make decisions — Being diagnosed with depression earlier last year was quite shocking, although not surprising. I went to a psychiatrist after the advice of a psychologist I was seeing that diagnosed me with autism. It’s been a much harder process than I anticipated. Here are five things I didn’t know about depression…

Understanding and preventing sleep paralysis — I was recently approached by a journalist who was writing an article about sleep paralysis. I was surprised. I’ve written an article about my experience with sleep paralysis a few years ago. Apparently, she found it and wanted to ask some questions about it. I helped as much as I…

Your value isn’t measured by your productivity. — I recently questioned someone on Instagram stories about how to do a Ph.D. part-time. The answer I got was partly useful and it partly made me want to hit unfollow. It was something along the lines of “we all have the same 24 hours in a day and what we…

#2 The spoon theory — It’s been a few months since I laid out all the reasons why I thought I was autistic to a psychologist. I waited patiently on the edge of my seat to hear what he had to say. Perhaps I was still hoping for him to say it was all in…

For the past year, I’ve been sleeping better than at any other time in my life, despite being prone to anxiety — Being autistic, I’ve struggled with anxiety ever since I can remember. I’ve also struggled with sleep since kindergarten. Research shows that sleep and anxiety go hand in hand. The higher your anxiety, the more likely you are to stay in bed for hours ruminating over everything that went wrong that…