You’re Going Through A Lot In This Lockdown; Are You Taking The Help You Need?

As we all know physical pain hurts and needs a doctor. In the same way mental pain too needs a doctor.

Yesterday I accidentally cut to my finger while cutting a vegetable. My mother was immediately by my side, and applied haldi to it. It was really nothing to worry about, but still, we take our physical pain so seriously into consideration. But do we do the same with our mental health?

So being at home is way hard for all of us. We are used to step out of our house every day. We love working, exploring, learning, etc. But now the best way to stay safe, is to stay at home and take care of ourselves.

Are you going through some similar issues?

Our day starts and we clean ourselves, our house, we carry out our daily chores. But what we do not do is going to the office, school, college etc. We need to stay at home.

You are not alone, your family is at home. No one is stepping out. Maybe you are three or four or five people at home, and more than that too. Yet do you feel alone? Do you feel lonely? Do you feel you have nothing and no one?

Most of the times you aren’t really ‘present’ with your family. You are just nowhere. You are worrying. You are thinking about a lot of things. You prefer being in your room. You prefer less communication over family discussions and the games they play, and the Ramayan and Mahabharat they watch together. You aren’t interested in eating. And you cannot concentrate. Your creative mind seems not so creative.

Days are passing and you haven’t done anything, anything creative, you haven’t worked, you haven’t studied, you could not learn anything new. And you suddenly realize you have just thought, thought and thought. You have worried a lot. Without any reason, you cried at night, in the day. At some point, you have felt completely useless. You feel you cannot do anything.

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This quarantine has given you time to revisit your past, your regrets, your pain, your faults, your bad times and worrying about the future.

Self-doubt

Here the self-doubt starts. Thinking that you cannot do anything and whatever you do isn’t good enough. That your friends don’t want you.

When you go through your past then you start doubting yourself rigorously. You doubt yourself by thinking too much. You doubt yourself by comparing. You doubt yourself by your pain, weakness and you doubt yourself for being the way you are. You feel frustrated, emotional, angry. You feel weak, and this feeling continues for a long time.

It troubles you. You become an insomniac. You skip your food. And that’s not healthy.

The trigger point

There are a number of reasons for self-doubt and anxiety or for just feeling sad. But for youngsters, social media stands as a trigger point in many cases.

Since the lockdown began, people are posting a lot about the food they are cooking, new dishes they are learning. They are posting photos and videos of their workout, paintings, doodles, dancing and singing. They are posting their write-ups and photographs.

On the other hand you are the audience to all of it. And it takes you into self-doubt. You doubt your every step and everything you do. Yet you keep on scrolling through your phone, unaware of what actually is happening.

It’s okay to feel like this

It’s okay to feel bad. It’s okay to cry without any reason. You don’t need to be ashamed of feeling this for the first time. Or realising that you feel this always. It’s okay to be silent and not be able to socialise. It’s okay to sit back in your room. It happens and you are not alone. It’s not okay to not work for it.

What can we do?

The most important thing we need today in this lockdown is positivity. Positive vibes, a happy mind – all of it is not a myth, it exists.

We are stuck at our homes due to a pandemic. And not because we have to prove our creativity level to the world. It is okay to just be an audience. Yet you need to start something. You need to reflect on yourself. You need to meditate, focus, calm yourself.

And to meditate doesn’t mean that you need to sit still and close your eyes. If you don’t like this way of meditation search for your way of doing it. Explore different ways to do it, and you will be shocked with the results. Google does the searching part for you. You explore. All of the khichadi in your mind rests in peace when you start exploring yourself. Meditation is all about the self and nothing else.

Practice yoga, explore your body, its features and you would start loving it.
Try to understand what gives you happiness, invest in it. Any stuff. But do it for yourself, for your satisfaction, because you are beautiful the way you are and you do not need to prove to others.

Try to sit with your family, if you don’t want to talk listen to them. Try to understand your family in a different way.

Read books, watch films of any genre you want. Explore knowledge.
If you feel too messed up. Try to pen it all, in your way in your language, for you.

To sum it up all, start loving yourself. Just be sure you are doing what you want to and not what you see people doing, or what’s trending.

Keep smiling, though you hate it. Try it.

You need help for mental pain too!

So here we reach a vital step.

As we all know physical pain hurts and needs a doctor. In the same way mental pain too needs a doctor. But we don’t take the help of a doctor or a counsellor for our mental issues. We say, ‘Psychiatrist ya counsellor ke paas jane jitni badi baat nahi hai.’ (It isn’t such a big thing that I need to go to a psychiatrist or counsellor.)

Remember that no pain is ”smaller, it’s pain, that’s all. You need a doctor, a friend, you need yourself.

Image source: pixabay

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