Ekaterina Netchitailova

It’s an interesting question to ask: what things give you energy?

By answering this question I would like to first make an observation that there are people who derive you off energy (psychic vampires) and those who give you energy.

I am a donor of energy. I give energy to others, and that’s why teaching gives me so much pleasure. I am a lecturer and my job gives me energy. I love seeing the students to succeed and do well in their lives after graduating. I love helping them to become professionals and gain confidence.

I also love writing. Writing gives me a lot of energy. I reflect and I try to share my experience of being diagnosed as bipolar (I was also accused of being a schizophrenic and that it might be schizo-affective disorder- go figure it out, the diagnosis that might fit).

I don’t care about psychiatric diagnoses. I am just trying to live my life fully and by writing about it, I hope to help other people to climb above their diagnosis and just enjoy their lives. That’s why I write. My fight with the psychiatry stretches for 20 years, after I experienced my first‘psychosis’ at the age of 27. It was an incredible experience where I had religious revelations, visions and enlightenment. But I was told it was a sickness.

Writing about how I overcome this ‘sickness’ is my message to many others who experienced the same. Those like me who ended up being heavily drugged, prescribed by psychiatry, unable to work or simply enjoy their lives.

Writing about how to live one’s life fully, despite a damaging psychiatric diagnosis, gives me energy. I write for myself and I write for others.

Besides writing and working, I also derive energy from simple things in life. I am a foodie where cooking is a hobby. I have many great friends in several countries and love talking with them. I derive energy from my daily walks, from reading a good book, enjoying coffee in the morning and a glass of wine in the evening.

There are so many beautiful things in life that give me energy that I feel blessed.

Music, unusual cafes with unusual people, trees and the canals I admire during my walks, fresh air, and seeing my son doing well.

I love this life and I am determined to live it fully.