You are writing an exam and in middle of the paper, your hands start sweating, you get palpitations, your heart starts racing and you just stop writing. All these are signs of an anxiety/panic attack. Till few years back, anxiety was not in common lingo. I mean when I had my first few anxiety attacks, I did not know what the feeling was called. All I could assign to this feeling was that it was mostly fear. Basically it is a combination of fear, anger and sadness combined, but mostly fear of unknown or loss of control. I am no psychologist, but I am interested in psychology books and articles and read them in my free time. I still seek counselling whenever I feel that it is getting too much. I have learnt a lot in this journey, mostly about myself. Understanding the mind is empowering. Not only does it help to navigate through our own life but also help others.
I struggled with anxiety for around 10 years if I recall well. Initially, it was mostly exam induced but later it changed to waking up in the middle of the Night or getting up anxious every morning. A lot of you can relate to this story of mine in some or another way. Late teens to late 20s is a phase which involves lots of decision making. Adulting can be pretty tough emotionally. However, what I have uncovered from therapy (counselling) and books is that how we adult depends a lot on how our childhood was. Issues of childhood resurface while adulting and their effect can be overwhelming. Even though I slipped sometimes, career was bit easier to take control of. Because all that i had to do was hard, focussed and consistent work and I was rewarded. Many times the reward was less than expected, but it was there nonetheless. The real deal was my relationships with other people because it involved dealing with other minds apart from my own. And hard work doesn’t help solve issues with others. Most of the times, dealing with others brings us face to face with our own issues. It takes awareness to face these ‘not so pretty’ sides of ours and deal with them.
Therapy is a great tool which is not very popular in India. If you are seeing a therapist, people often assume that you are not capable of dealing with your issues on your own. But therapy is not a traditional treatment. It is about gaining useful knowledge about you or others in your life. And knowledge is power. Therapy can bring a massive shift in perspective. However , it has two hurdles, finding a good therapist and the cost of therapy. But my first counselling session during my masters was horrible. I opened up to her about myself with great courage and she imposed her judgements onto me. In another session which costed me 2000 bucks, the counsellor labelled my issues/experiences as garbage. I know my issues were/are not serving me well but somewhere they are part of my identity. So, i did not see her afterwards. Other factor is time, therapy takes time. And time multiplied by cost can be huge. Insurance policies do not cover therapy in my knowledge. Luckily for me, in campus emotional wellness facilities did good job. A good therapist and a long time in therapy is something incredible. I think all of us should seek therapy at least once. It is amazing to know new things about our own minds. That stuff is empowering. After 6 months, my therapist told me to see a doctor. Which was so frightening that I stopped seeing her for a month. But then I did what she told. That continued for 1.5 years and i did not fail to miss my appointments and medications. But it worked really well. Mental health journey is not a one way straight road. It has its bumps. But the more time you spend understanding it, bumps become less. I can write on and on about it.
As an alternative There are many resources available online. I was using two apps (One was sort of AI based chatbot) at one point of time and they helped me a lot. For an year or so, i was deep into spirituality. But spiritual bypassing does not help. I believe that Spirituality can be a great tool but it has its cons too. It helps a lot to have a wise friend. In other words, your fallback. I found that fallback only three years back when I re-connected with an old batchmate of mine. I learnt some great tools in this mental health journey. I will share them in some another blog post. Otherwise this post will become too long. The idea of this post was to remove some stigma around therapy and medication. If anxiety is troubling your day to day life, I suggest see a therapist. A therapist can tell you, if you need medical consultation. Seeking therapy, does not mean you are broken or not strong enough. It just means that you are ready to take help cause dealing alone is difficult. No one gave us those tools to deal and therapy can give us those tools. Till then, relax and try to sleep well. đ
Cranky Mind 