Philosophy & Mental Health

Why Philosophy Matters Here

I came to philosophy not through a university course but through necessity. When you grow up across cultures — Bengali at home, English at school, French in adulthood — you start to notice how much language shapes the way we think, and how much the way we think shapes the life we build.

Philosophy, for me, is not an academic exercise. It is a practical toolkit. Stoicism helps me manage what I can control. Existentialism helps me own the choices I make. Phenomenology helps me pay attention to experience itself rather than to assumptions about it.

Teaching English — at its best — is a philosophical act. You are helping someone build a new cognitive architecture. You are making the implicit explicit. You are showing someone that meaning is not fixed, that language is alive, and that clarity is a form of respect.

Mental Health — Out in the Open

I was diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and Bipolar I disorder in my late thirties, while living in La Réunion. I also carry a diagnosis of Complex PTSD. These are not confessions — they are facts I share because silence never helped anyone, and because the stigma around mental health still costs people their lives.

I write about mental health here because I believe in transparency. Not for sympathy — I have a full and meaningful life — but because someone reading this might be exactly where I was before I understood what was happening in my own mind.

Stoicism

The dichotomy of control. What is up to me: my effort, my attention, my response. What is not: other people’s opinions, outcomes, the past. This framework has kept me functional through situations that would otherwise have been overwhelming.

Existentialism

Radical responsibility. Sartre’s “existence precedes essence” means I am not defined by diagnosis, nationality, or background — I am defined by what I choose to do next. This is uncomfortable and liberating in equal measure.

Mindful Attention

Not as a spiritual practice but as a cognitive tool. For a brain with ADHD and bipolar patterns, the practice of returning attention — again and again — to the present moment is not optional. It is survival.