I hope you all are doing amazing. Winters in Delhi are approaching and it’s time to snuggle into blankets with a cup of hot chocolate, some butter cookies, a book or maybe a romantic netflix movie to set the mood. That’s how my winters go by to be really honest and I eat a lot of chikki, gajak, panjiri, til laddoos and what not to complete my winters and by the time winters are over I have gained over 5kgs and then my summers goes in losing all the winter fat but this time around I plan to continue with my fitness journey that I began back in September this year. If you know me personally or are a regular reader at this space, you’d know how much of a lazy ass I am. I hate getting up early in the morning, I am not a morning person, neither a night person, I am just some type of permanently exhausted pigeon. And with my mood swings I do a lot of emotional eating which affects my weight a lot. And I have been trying to get on the path of fitness mentally from tomorrow for about years now but that tomorrow never came until I met this group called Healthwise (www.healthwise.in). I came across this beautiful person called Gayatri through one of my mother’s friend and she runs this group called Healthwise where their ideology is that weightloss is something that happens in a community. When I spoke to her I actually liked her, which is a rare case because I end up not liking people who promote such fitness programs because most of the times they tend to make you feel bad about your existence and tell you that you’re worthless because you are so fat and they are somewhat your saviours and would change your life and blah blah blah that after the first conversation I usually end up blocking them and try to buy bigger jeans like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, have a relationship with my Pizza and then get even more fat and sometimes it reaches to a point where you no longer give a fuck how you look and you would literally bite the next person who tries to lecture you about your weight or healthy habits or anything like that. I had reached that stage to be very honest and I would always eat more whenever my mother would tell me I need to look at what and how much I am eating, even though she was concerned and right, I was hell bent on doing self harm. But then I met Gayatri and she seemed kind and someone who could really help me without being mean. I basically got really nice vibes from her so I decided to give her program a shot, when I first talked to her, I told her that don’t expect me to follow the diet because I won’t. I’ll just do yoga and workout and even with yoga I can’t promise to be regular because it’s a morning class but with other workout class I will be regular, that was my first disclaimer to her and she was like you just join and show up and we will help you out wherever you feel lagged behind but when I joined and started doing the program and became a part of the community, it was such an enriching experience! People would share tasty healthy recipes on the group, they would boost each other up, and there were buddies that were allotted who kept track of each other whether they were showing up for the classes or not, eating healthy or not, taking care of themselves or not. There were little little challenges on the way like no sugar day or no biscuits today or have rainbow foods etc and everyone would share amazing pictures! Best part was I learnt to go into the kitchen and cook some healthy stuff for myself, I have never really cooked properly before this but now I can make proper meals!
Even though I gave the disclaimer I did end up following about 60% of the diet chart if not 100% and that’s progress in my eyes and I actually managed to be fairly regular. There were days when I would wake up at 6am for yoga, do the yoga class and doze off again at 8am and then wake up around noon and I did not miss a single workout session till now because the person who conducts fitness sessions is so candid and fun, Rishabh, does not let you falter, he’ll make you laugh when your legs would be shaking from all the squats and keeps you motivated. I might have slept through some of the yoga classes and Gitika keeps wishing me good morning as keep yawning through the class sometimes but still I was a good student considering my history and attitude towards the idea of fitness before joining this group. Now I want to work towards my body and I can feel the change. I have already lost 2.5kgs and I know I could have lost more if I had not cheated with my diet in between but yeah I am happy. So if anyone who is super lazy and wants to change their life Gayatri is the person to contact. You can call her at +91 8928744270.
P.S. This is not a promotional blog, I am not getting paid for this. I am just happy and wanted to share my experience ❤
Also, take a look at some of the amazing things I made/ate during the program:
I don’t know where to begin to be honest. Mental Health is one topic which is so close to my heart, not because I am a trained psychologist or a psychiatrist. I am just another girl in this whole wide world who like millions of people have faced mental health issues and my attachment to this topic comes from lived experiences. My struggle with my mental health has taught me to be more compassionate towards others, it has made me read the signs when people feel low or depressed, it has made me more self aware and more than anything it has made me want to learn more about mental health and do something in this field so that I can make people feel that they are not alone in this struggle. When the pandemic started off in India, somewhere around March, in Mid- April, I read the first post on Instagram that talked about how this pandemic is going to affect the mental health of the people and then I started reading academic papers about it and the projections were disturbing enough. Then recently I had started doing art in lockdown and there was Dr. Bhavesh Kathiriya who asked me to sketch something on Mental Health specifically and then it was just his little push and I started doing a full fledged series of sketches on Mental Health on Social Media which people could relate to and identify with and I didn’t reach too many people through my series but I got a couple of messages saying that they can really feel the art and my art saved them. And making difference to just one or two lives was enough for me.
Later on, I connected with one of my professors Dr. Keerty Nakray who taught me in my PhD classes and with her help I did a small project on Mental Health in the Times of Pandemic where I took interviews of some people and did a visual analysis of my sketches and that was one of the most enriching experiences for me because it helped me connect with people facing mental health struggles and also professionals who are helping such people. I tried to get my work published so that it could reach people and would be of some help but then I was facing an ethical dilemma which was that since I am not from the field of psychology and psychiatry, how credible is my work because it comes from a standpoint of lived experiences only so therefore, today on World Mental Health Day I have decided to share some of the key insights from my personal work on Mental Health in the Times of the Pandemic and then it is followed by stories of people who closely connect with the topic of Mental Health and have something to say. This post might get a little long to read but I am sure it will be worth it.
Mental Health in the Times of the Pandemic: A Qualitative Study
Research questions:
How do people define mental health?
How people facing mental health issues respond?
How pandemic and lockdown is impacting the mental health scenario?
Consolidated Findings and Discussions
People define mental health as something very personal. Their definitions differ and that is because of their understanding of it based on their real life experiences and their exposure.
While there are several factors affecting mental health, broadly they can be categorized as internal and external factors or individual or community factors and some of these factors are in individual’s control while the rest are not and there comes the concept of resilience on how one deals with unfavourable situations and factors.
Self awareness and self realizations have come up as major concepts in coping with mental health. If one is self aware about his mental health issues that is considered positive mental health and being aware also helps in employing the coping strategies effectively. Lori Gottlieb in her book Maybe You Should Talk To Someone quotes “I try to wrap my mind around this paradox: Self Sabotage as a form of control. If I screw up my life, I can engineer my own death rather than have it happen to me. If I stay in a doomed relationship, if I mess up my career, if I hide in fear instead of facing what’s wrong with my body, I can create a living death but the one where I call the shots” is a classic example of how control is an important aspect. Even though here is context is of self sabotage but having control over one’s own life gives a sense of achievement and helps in coping.
Pandemic and lockdown has impacted the mental health of the people as there is a sense of loss of time, businesses and stability. Pandemic has brought with it the inevitable lockdown and due to that, there is a lot of uncertainty, the businesses are shut, people have fear of losing their jobs, savings are drying out and income is not there, and in lockdown people are locked with each other, while family is often a source of support but sometimes, not having personal space leads to conflict which may lead to deterioration of mental health and sometimes our families can be toxic to us as well so one needs to take that into account while analyzing how pandemic has affected mental health.
People often shy away from taking professional help due to stigma attached to it and there is a tendency of label avoidance. Even seeking help has its own problems such as not finding the right therapist.
Coping strategies are different for all. While there may be some universally accepted strategies such as mindfulness, meditation and physical activity, people know what works best for them and try to do that. In the book Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, the author uses humor as a coping mechanism, she tries to make fun of every terrible situation in her life, Matt Haig in his book Reasons to Stay Alive started using writing and journaling as a coping mechanism. One of the participants used painting to deal with panic attacks while I have used sketches as coping mechanism. Coping strategies work only when one is self aware about what works for them and what does not.
Social media has been known to affect the mental health of the people but it has been looked in the positive light. My initial hypothesis was that social media impacts the mental health negatively but based on the interviews I have taken I have found that people view it in a different light, it’s the screen time that worries them not the content on the social media. One has control over what to consume and what not to consume.
Sketches that I have drawn in the time of pandemic have helped me in coping and also connect with the community that faces and connects with mental health issues on a deeper level. They have helped in spreading positivity and awareness about mental health and destigmatizing the act of taking help in a very small way.
Following you can see the glimpses of some of the sketches and my interpretation of them:
This sketch highlights that a person’s heart is broken and he is trying to hold it all together with a bunch of safety pins. There is tornado drawn at the end which highlights the turbulence and instability the person feels. The words on the side describe how mental health is an internal problem and not many people around you will realize that you are sick because it is not something that is visible like a runny nose. It describes mental health issues in a negative context when it uses the term a head full of darkness. Here the intention of drawing this sketch was to portray how sometimes people facing mental health issues fail to take care of themselves but they are so fragile and barely keeping things together. It touches upon the idea of self awareness about your mental health to be able to take care of your own self.
The girl in the sketch is looking inwards while she has a huge cloud of thoughts hovering over her. Overthinking is the process of constantly analyzing and anguishing over one’s thoughts. It may include rumination, in which an individual is stuck mentally rehashing their past or present decisions and/or actions. Many a times whenever a person who is overthinking shares his/her thoughts they are dismissed and people tend to say some of the insensitive things like “Get over it” as quoted above in the sketch but instead one should be empathetic and say things like “Your thoughts are valid” because it is a powerful statement and it helps the individual going through the issue of overthinking and makes him/her feel a little less alone.
In many of the books on Mental Health, it has been mentioned that your depression and anxiety lies to you and often it appears that your mental health issues are bigger than you are as portrayed by the monster of anxiety in the sketch but that’s not really true. They exist and they seem very real but humans can cope, they have the strength and they just need to tap into it. This sketch again emphasizes on importance of self awareness about one’s own mental health issues and speaks about emotional resilience. Breathing plays a key role in calming down as mentioned in the previous sketch as well and it’s because when a person focuses on his breathing he is becoming self aware and his attention is on his “being”.
Pandemic is a tough time and also it was observed that there was a narrative going around that you have to productive during this time, it’s not true. The times are tough and one needs to take care of themselves before competing in a social media race. The sentence “It is okay to be not okay” reinforces the idea that you can be not okay during this time and you can share your troubles. When I drew this sketch I was personally not feeling okay so I needed to feel a little less alone and in a way I am letting this sketch speak to me and giving me positive reinforcement and I posted this online and it was shared by a mental health page “Hub of Psychiatry” on Instagram and people connected with it and there was a feeling of togetherness in the community and the fact that we will all get through this time together.
People often hide their mental health issues and feelings because of the stigma attached to it and also because they feel that those around them will not understand so they pretend to be fine while inside they are feeling a lot of pain and negative emotions. Being asked “How are you” is a painful question to answer for some people and most of the time this question is asked out of courtesy and not because one is really interested to know how the other person is doing. Personally I have hidden my own mental health issues for a long time and acted like this girl in the picture before actually seeking out for help.
This sketch is more about coping strategy. One can cope with mental health issues by taking up a new hobby or creating something new, it gives a sense of achievement which is important for one’s own self esteem. I was feeling a bit off during the pandemic and lockdown and I started creating a series of sketches on mental health to connect to people and that helped me in my personal healing as well as those around me so that helped me gain some confidence and connect to people going through mental health issues and building a safe space for all of us to share our vulnerabilities.
This is about control we have over our minds. It has to do with self awareness that you have the power and control over your mind and thoughts and by growing positive thoughts and feeding positive things to your brain you can take care of your mental health.
This sketch highlights what mindfulness, meditation, yog nidra can do for a person. These coping strategies were mentioned by the professionals in their interviews can lead to a calm mind and that calm mind will help in building strength and resilience to fight the mental health issues.
People with mental health issues face so much pain internally that they don’t know how to deal with it and many a times they get attracted towards alcohol, nicotine etc because it hampers with their brain and they feel that it numbs their pain and before they realize it, they start getting addicted to such stuff. It’s important that the people around them take note of their state and guide them through it by giving them the counselling and the right kind of help at the right time. This sketch was purely drawn for sensitizing the people about the gravity of the issue.
Are you getting tired by this whole charade? Please don’t lose heart. First of all, I want to thank you for reading till here and now I am going to share write ups of the people who had something to say about World Mental Health Day.
My first contributor is Trishala Mahendru, she is a dear friend and runs a page on Instagram called as Dot To Stigma, she provides a safe space for people to share their stories and struggles with mental health. She has the following message for you all.
Mental health has become a hullabaloo in recent times; this has brought forward many different facets to it. Where earlier mental health was seen no more than a fancy word and a result of westernisation; it has now become a very serious and empathetic issue to discuss with anyone. For a person like me, who have had mental health issues, few trails of which are still on my mind; mental health is a very sensitive and important aspect of life for me. I see mental health as an integral part of my physical and mental system. Like how every morning i free my body from the undigested food and juices and detox it physically, similarly if we start detoxing our minds everyday from all the negative aspects surrounding our life, we can do wonders to our mental heath. One of the important keys for this is talking to yourself daily. We should more than often introspect our actions and try and put them in the right direction. Like it’s believed that every relation needs time, communication, connection and understanding; similarly you and your brain should also have a connection where you spend sometime of your day with your thoughts, try and understand them and communicate the reasons for any bad thought to yourself. The relation between you and your mental health is a daily task not the one on which you ponder only when you are reaching a breakdown. Therefore it’s important to give up bad mental health habits and inculcate a few new ones so that your relationship with your mental health can last longer and stronger. Be loyal to your mind, be loyal to yourself-That’s the mantra we all can thrive upon.
My second contributor to this post is Ekansha Khanduja, she is has been a support system and a dear friend and says, “I find it fascinating that we think of mental health as separate from physical health. It is ignorant to say the least that we can think of any physical health existing without mental health. The discourse of western medicine separated mental from physiological, but Eastern health systems like Yoga have always spoken of health from a holistic view. The importance of Yoga and meditation for maintenance overall health cannot be over-emphasized. Show love to yourself by making yoga and meditation a part of your daily rituals. Love and peace to you all.”
My third contributor for today is someone really special, her name is Soumya Singh Chauhan and she is a pursuing her PhD along with me in the same batch and one day we got talking beyond our PhD topics and there was no looking back, she is a lecturer as well as does digital art and does fun with make up series on Instagram, she is also a poetess and she has shared her most personal experience with Mental Health, to be honest, initially I told her that I might not incorporate her entire story because it’s too long but then I read and reread what she wrote and I did not have the heart to exclude a single word from it so here it goes:
Waves by Soumya Singh Chauhan
In late 2016, I went through my second long bout of insomnia during that year. I would lie down looking at the dark road and climb out of bed when the bay across the street would start to reflect day light. Now when I look back, I had been repressing a lot of emotions throughout that year, feeling abandoned, disposable, not enough, hurt. But it was the passing of my best friend that brought everything, even unrelated to that particular grief, to the surface. Within a week I was in a foreign country where I wasn’t close to anyone and I didn’t meet family friends who resided there for two months. I needed time to mourn. I needed to hug someone and cry. But I worked and studied and repressed, and stayed awake with my thoughts during this time that seemed longer than usual, and lonelier than ever.
I don’t know what the right way was to deal with that time. I knew then that writing helped me. I started writing in early 2016, but I penned most of my poems during my first year in Seattle [September 2016-June 2017]. That is when I bled out of me everything that I thought I had swept off my shoulders, not under the rug. I would write about everything, struggle to write about her but do it nonetheless, and never look at those verses again. As if they had served their purpose and going back to it would be stabbing at wounds without given them time to scab and fall off the skin. But like I said, I still don’t know if that was the right way to deal with it. I don’t know if there is any right way to deal with grief at all. But I know I wasn’t doing well, that writing helped me, sharing it with the public at large by posting it and holding myself accountable to creating more helped me; it helped me then, all it could. So much so, that when I went through a writer’s block, I embraced it. It seemed like I had finally written everything out of me. I cherished days when my mind wasn’t buzzing with thoughts deciphering emotions, and figuring out ways to envelope an ache to best present it in an appetizing manner; I could never really write a raw narrative.
Maybe at that time I should have gone to therapy, talked to a professional, detangled the overlapping loops of my mind. It makes perfect sense! I know I would have if it was normalized. If it was normalized to talk about death and grief, maybe that thought would have crossed my mind. It just never did. Conversations about mental health are important, if you’re reading this writeup, you probably already believe it. But not just about diagnosable conditions like Depression or General Anxiety Disorder or Panic Disorder, but pain and grief, sadness. We all feel it and we brush it aside as if we weren’t just mere humans specifically wired to feel those very emotions, intensely, with no recourse but go through it. We feel jitters and joy, and love and excitement, and know nothing of why we do. But happiness is comfortable. Sadness shouldn’t be, rather its silence shouldn’t be, and it isn’t. The silence of sorrow is not comfortable to the person who experiences it, its sound is uncomfortable to those who have to hear it and we shut our mouths and plug our ears so as not to bother others with the ripples of these disturbed waters. No matter how much it storms within.
I am no professional in the field of mental health. I can only speak of my own experience. I’ve learnt to always reply to texts, respond to calls, and thank god for it, for the many crucial conversations that have happened since. If your own mental health allows it, be there for people, as much as you can. Listen to them. It takes several pep talks in the mirror and in the corners of dark rooms before opening up to someone about the most intimate detail of your life, about your struggle with yourself. If someone comes your way, hear them out. [And then guide them towards a professional, no one expects you to cure your friend, and shouldn’t, it’s not enough in several cases.]
If you enjoy someone’s beaches, welcome their waves. Welcome their waves when they crash on your tranquil territories, we can’t love people in pieces. And when we love them for all they are, respect them for it, we’ll normalize everything they feel, that inevitable, by virtue of being human, we will feel as well. So grief becomes grief, joy becomes joy and neither is foreign to words and voice.
Fourth contributor for this series is Akshay Chauhan, he is the quintessential shy guy who will only speak up when it is necessary and is a poet too. He writes, “Nothing can push your buttons as hard as the lack of mental well-being. It is not something which can be hushed away or turn a blind eye. This is a real issue. And not doing something about it would be cancerous. See, it’s a simple math, when you are at peace with yourself you’ll find all the good in people around you; even appreciate little things to be grateful for; might even dance to bird’s coo but when you are not at peace, the world seems bleaker than ever; nothing makes sense and the worst of all…you just wanna give up on life itself! So, I beg of you all to not let it go undiagnosed. Talk to someone, seek professional help the moment you think there’s something funny going on up in there.“
Fifth contributor for this is Shivika Suri, a trained psychologist, she writes, “World mental health day is celebrated to make sure that the awareness about “mental health” is on point. This day is all about realising your worth and self-love. If loving yourself is important to you then mental health will be the first thing you would want to look into. Also, I want you all to remember that just because a person laughs a lot that doesn’t mean they aren’t dealing with any problem. Just because they haven’t gone through any pain in the past means that they are doing fine. Just because she/he is a therapist that doesn’t mean they don’t need help. Seeking help or taking therapy is a sign of strength because hiding it is a weakness and living with it is the weakest you can be. I hope you are celebrating this day by coming out and talking to someone about what you are facing and going through. After all, this is about self-love and that favours your sanity. 🙂“
And last but never the least is my personal favourite Rachna Kulshreshtha, she is a second mother to me, a teacher, a friend, family, guide, and someone who I really look upto. If you want to meet a strong woman, she is one and she can teach you to be one. But at the same time, she is humble, sweet, caring, gentle, feminine. Women like her are rare and she writes about Elephant Ears. Let’s Read!
‘World Mental Health Day’, I knew it was around the corner but was in my own mental trip, which I called being off the grid, to notice it was today. Neha asked me to send my thoughts by evening and I was like… Today? “Haan, it’s today na.” She replied.
Just then. That very moment this term World Mental Health Day mocked at me. As if saying, “Girl! You? You can’t be serious. You’d write about me!! You’re so fucked up in head yourself.” I looked at her, replied gingerly, “You know what I am going through, don’t you?” She said, “Yeah! So don’t even think about it. I want someone sane enough to be writing for me.”
“Huh! All the more reason for me to write instead.” I muttered. “Okay lemme see what you can do.” She shrugged.
I opened the notes and began and this is what I wrote. I wrote because I must. I wrote because when I pour out it feels light and good. I wrote because someone out there will read and might resonate and might decide to pour their heart too. Maybe through colours or through conversations or through any other form of expression.
Who knows, they might feel light and good too. You know, I have elephant ears to listen to someone when they genuinely need someone to listen. But sometimes even I need someone to be those elephant ears to me.
This beautiful day came was born because the ‘Human’ inside us got fucked by ourselves. World Mental Health Day is our illegitimate baby and of all the situations that we create around us and then we don’t find the courage to own them.
We look for surrogates, step parents, orphanages to nurture this baby but we don’t do it ourselves. High time that we take our own responsibility. I am ready to own my situations and help myself. If I am not capable enough to help myself then I am not ashamed of asking for help. It’s some courage and one decision away from you. Trust me.
For I truly believe, ‘If I can be the elephant ears, so can you.’
And that’s the end of stories from the contributors. I want to thank all the contributors for writing these and to you my dear readers for reading this. Mental Health Day might be just a day but Mental Health is something that needs to be taken care of throughout your life, so keep breathing and take good care of your bodies, your heart and your mind.
Euphoric Being 