Just because no one else can heal or do your inner work for you, doesn’t mean you can, should or need to do it alone.

Lisa Olivero

Have you ever felt the stark desire to just burst and shout out from the rooftops about what you feel, how much pain you’re carrying with you? But instead, you just accept your solitude in an empty chair and try to conceal your emotions within deep realms of your conscisousness.

A lot of us might have went through the same situaton at one point in our lives. The primary reason behind is usually, that we aren’t taught how to express our emotions. We merely feel that even if we do express, we would be mocked at. The main target of this toxic notion are usually men. They are often told since early years ‘not to cry like a girl’. A study revealed that a huge proportion of males in the country are now victims of depression, what they revealed themselves is that they have no one to talk with about their emotions.

Mental health is still a deeply rooted stigma that people aren’t ready to accept. In order to understand the concept one needs to broaden the perspective of understanding humans and follow certain ways like-

1. Instead of asking,”How are you?” ask,” How are you, really?”
2. Look for obvious signs in a person- whether they feeling low from abnormal no. of days.
3. Asking your closed ones to describe their day in detail and be a good listener.
4. Do not mistreat someone who is already going through some sort of trauma.
5. Treat people with kindness, you never know what someone is going through.

Moreover, in India, therapists are still not considered to be a practical source of curing mental state of a person. Someone who meets a therapist is labelled a ‘lunatic’. Owing to awareness spread in lockdown period of the pandemic, these issues are being highlighted on social media and people are indeed considering psychology as a main pillar in education system too. The unfortunate increase in cases of suicide during this period has prompted people to look at mental health as crucial as physical health. Still, awareness needs to be assured at ground level and there is still a long way to go to see the day when all of us are not reluctant to lend a helping hand to our fellow humans.

A fundamental aspect of any society should be understanding, accepting and embracing each and every emotion one feels which makes them human.