We are born and meant to live, or at least survive.
In the present world, the process is to learn, skill up, work, earn, and then buy our freedom to live as we want. For that process to happen, we are sent to school, college, vocational training, and extra curriculum coaching where we get skilled and adapt to an environment. Science states that for any organism to thrive, its environment should be favourable for its life processes. Some of us face environmental challenges during development or growth phases at school or college, but some survive to find their place in society, and some face challenges later in life. Then there are some, who face challenges with life events. Thus we gradually created a mental health sector to help those who have difficulty overcoming these challenges or cannot function as they want to or are asked to.
The mental health industry has evolved rapidly in the past few decades having solutions to almost every human challenge except for those who are differently abled, brain damaged, economically dependent, and those who choose to manage by themselves. It is just that we are socially conditioned with embarrassment and lack of trust which stops us from taking or asking for help and also because of the stigma attached to mental illnesses. As professionals, the first process of help is to ‘identify’.
When an offspring is born, the physical health is examined by humans or experts such as physicians present during birth. Most kids get adapted to the education system given the fact that their personal and other social environments are favourable. As they grow up, there are possibilities of challenges they face starting from reading the alphabet to processing mathematics that results in the conditioning of failure concept. But if their personal development is proper, they do find friends in their school, college or other circles and eventually succeed at academics, later on finding a place in society. The kids who don’t have the privilege of a favourable home or friends, surely find their ways to sustain themselves, but some fail even there too, getting labelled as a problem child or troubled teen; but again if they somehow get over with academics, they mostly find a place in the society. Then there is a category of kids who don’t fit in anywhere because of their unfavourable environments either at home, school or other spaces or anywhere as such. This doesn’t mean the kids who grew up to find their place in society don’t have problems.
Any aspect of human life can be functionally challenging, especially if we live a life that doesn’t give a sense of meaning or purpose or at least joy. Human offspring are born prematurely resulting in 20 years of conditioning to make them mature enough to live sustainably. It is when they don’t find their fit in society, that they seek help to unlearn and learn a lot to recondition their brain and have the life they wish for.
To reiterate, here are the categories where humans require professional mental health:
1. Kids who face difficulty in their school and social life, but have a favourable home environment.
2. Kids who don’t have a healthy home environment, but succeed in academics.
3. Kids from dysfunctional households with difficulty adapting to the education system.
4. Kids who grew up without help and yet succeeded, but later on face difficulty in functioning efficiently.
Pick any category, and I have belonged there at some phases of my life until I came across a perspective of a social sector organization’s program, Gurukul – ‘How does an individual make an informed decision?’ Well, the social sector serves sections of individuals who get outcasted even from the above-mentioned categories, some who can’t even think of schooling or earning their daily bread. I always wanted to serve the environment for myself to thrive. But one can help others only when they have found help themselves.
My journey of finding help started with my 9th standard school principal, who had me take counselling from a Sister who was also my English teacher. At the age of 13, I realized I was someone who needed help. Since then it was a rollercoaster ride for my brain until now at 33, on which I will soon be publishing a book.
There are a host of mental health professionals’ services and even categories. I have evolved parallelly with the mental health industry for the past 20 years trying almost every help out there except getting admitted to NIMHANS, Asia’s largest mental health institute or ending up in some prison due to behavioural issues.
Here are a few types of help I found during the process that might help you:
Counselling/ Therapy/ Psychiatry/ Spirituality/ Life Coaching
There are branches of these, depending on the challenge you face and the help required. As mentioned above, for any solution, the initial process is to identify – the problem and the individual’s sense of identity to help them solve it to function efficiently.
They say the bravest thing you can ask for is help. Isn’t it so contradictory, that you do the bravest thing in the weakest moments of life?
For me, the challenge was what, why and how. The curiosity for answers to life. Not many have the answers or know how to implement the solutions they find, making it difficult for them to help me as I was holding on to the stress beyond my pay grade. But I had already taken the payment of life at the time of my birth. And I was hungry for answers and solutions.
I was hungry for help to come out of the agony of life. Now as I come out of all the pain and stress, I would like to share my journey and processes of finding help through 4 articles starting with this one.
Be hungry!
ego feels..! 