Mental health issues are scary. They are so deeply embedded in some people underneath a coating of superficial happiness that more often than not, they go undetected.
We are fortunate to be part of a generation that is slowly gathering the courage to voice their fears and share their vulnerabilities, their struggles with mental health. Who is constantly attempting to remove the social stigma regarding seeking help for the same? What’s absolutely terrifying about mental health issues is that you never know who is going through a difficult phase. Because it is only when you break through the exterior shell and try to dig into how a person is feeling, do you truly realize the magnitude of darkness the person is trying to cope with?
The one particular case that had shaken me to the core was that of Robbie Williams. A brilliant actor, happy, as gay as sunshine one day decided that he just couldn’t pretend anymore and took an unfortunate decision to end his life. I kept thinking about how hopeless and desperate he must have felt to reach that conclusion. My next experience with mental health was when a friend of mine in college, who was just another bubbly, cheerful, funny person opened up to me about how she had been going to therapy for two years because she had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. If you met her and spent even a couple of weeks with her, you would have never guessed. There are innumerable accounts and experiences of such people. How they coped with their issues, how they strived to get better and emerged out only stronger than ever. I’m going to tell you about one such story about Shalini Magdel Das.
She was a little girl of 7 when her parents started to realize that she didn’t hang out with children her age at all. She seemed to withdraw into a cocoon of hers from time to time and did not prefer to socialize. In an age where children usually spent their time outdoors playing than staying indoors, her parents noticed something wasn’t right and took her to a counselor. Although they didn’t get a definitive diagnosis, she was asked to go for therapy sessions on and off which would help at times before her relapsing in her zone again. When she was 16, she decided to embark on a solo trip. She had dreamed of traveling to different parts in India, the rural and the urban areas.
With immense help, motivation, and support from her parents she went to Conoor for an entire month, it was then when she realized how much traveling affected her mood swings and her mental health issues for the better. She made it a point to travel frequently and clear the intangible messes within her head with every trip. But it wasn’t easy. Shalini continued to struggle with the darkness in her head and the heaviness in her soul. There were good weeks and bad weeks, needless to say, there were two suicide attempts as well. By then she realized she needed to continue therapy on a regular basis if she ever wanted to get better. Even though she visited a couple of psychiatrists, they still couldn’t pin a name to her condition.
Six years ago, in 2014 she came across a few pages on social media that spoke about depression, bipolar disorders, and other mental health issues. It was then that she realized she wasn’t alone, there were others around the world feeling and undergoing similar experiences and she slowly let the thought in her head enter that she may have depression. As a girl who was always surrounded by people in school but never really having a close friend, she was never vocal, nor did she express freely. So, she started using the only medium she had to voice out her thoughts, feelings, and opinions. She started to write. However, instead of friends reaching out to her to support her or encourage her, she was called an ‘attention seeker’ or a ‘drama queen’ or ‘crazy’. Shalini, never let this deter her spirit and she continued to talk about depression and the social stigma in the society that surrounds it. Eventually, she found 3-4 friends who were genuinely concerned for her and used to constantly check-in. She was determined to get better and knowing that she had an inner circle of a group of 6-7 people helped.
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It was last year, in 2019 that she was diagnosed with Recurrent Depressive Disorder (a rare sub category in depression) and she finally had a name. Since then she has been taking proper medications, going to therapy regularly and finding comfort in her job, traveling, her three special friends, and of course, the people who stuck by her throughout it all, her parents. Her most recent achievement was when she decided to take a trip to the hills (which was particularly difficult for her as hills were a trigger point to her depression), for the mere reason that she wanted to slowly deal with her trigger points one at a time, and she emerged out of her entire experience stronger than ever.
So talk it out, voice it out. Ask the people you love about not only their physical health but their mental and emotional health too. You never know what a person is going through until you actually delve deep. Judge less, love more. Be kinder, it helps people more than you know. Shalini still has bad days, days when getting out of the bed seems an impossible task but she now knows how to cope with her situation better. She has been talking about her condition on Instagram and has inspired a countless number of people. Till date, she has traveled 16 states and 3 union territories and dreams of finishing them all up before her 27th birthday. She is still called a people’s person and has no difficulty making friends. Shalini has been successfully writing a blog as well for two years where she talks about all the stigmas and taboos in Indian Society. To cap it all, she has also been pursuing her master’s in psychology. I had the immense pleasure to talk to Shalini and I have no doubt she is an incredible woman and definitely a force of nature who is going to go a long, long way.
You can find her on Instagram with the name of @Lost_Loveadventure
Article is Written by Sanjana Saxena. Her Instagram id is @sanjanasaxenaaa
The article is Curated by Vaibhav. His Instagram id is @frameshade
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Inspiring story, Bravo!