Pen What You Feel

As we go around and come across anyone fighting depression, our first response is to do our best to help them fight it, be with them, support them and that’s perhaps one of the best thing we can do for that person. But there are a few things we need to understand when we go through this process of support which will be helpful for them and ourselves: Be a listener: Listen to their experiences, but don’t minimize their experiences or trauma. In most cases doing so may actually be more harmful for the person than help. Don’t tell them how things could have been worse, validate their pain. “The thing about pain, it demands to be felt.”

Over the past years I have felt and recognized that India needs a better and open minded approach to mental health. I am sorry that it took me too long to realize that I actually was not doing anything about it rather than just hoping. So here I am hoping to do my part for the same. We are human, even before we studied Darwin’s law of evolution we have known in our instincts about the survival of the fittest; it’s a part of our DNA. We make expectations with ourselves, things we feel the world is expecting from us: be a good student, the best artist, a fit sports person and what all. I read somewhere on social media “The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” As almost every middle class Indian household, I too had made my own set of goals that I thought that my parents wanted me to achieve and that any failure to achieve them would be a disappointment to him. But turns out I knew him way less than I thought. During my class 12 th board results ...

The idea behind social media is to stay connected to people who came in our life at some point of time, keep each other updated on the good & bad things in our lives. But somehow the meanings have changed; it has become a platform to stay in touch with people you are already in touch with. We just scroll through the news feed looking for memes, jokes, gossips and maybe some effective news & that’s all. The only time we stop to see someone’s upload is for the person you are already talking to on a regular basis and comment on their post; and the of course in unconscious likes we drop at every random post out there. Don’t destroy the idea behind social media; connect with people you have lost touch with. Congratulate an old friend when you see his birthday post or admission to a college, console a friend when he posts a heart breaking news of their family, message them if you hear on the news about something bad happening on their side of the world or their job, share with them i...