The journey of emotional healing, with or without therapy, can be riddled with feelings of loneliness. Does that, then, need addressing?
In a recent interview, Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui openly snubbed the existence of depression, stating that it is an urban issue and that rural India doesn’t suffer from it. Siddiqui grew up in a village in Uttar Pradesh, and mentioned that his father would reprimand him if he expressed feeling low.
Mental health is often misunderstood in a society like ours, highlights Dr Pallavi Bhurkay, a clinical psychologist and founder of Awareness to Wellness, a Mumbai-based wellness programme. She says that it is viewed as something pitiable, especially if it affects one’s family member. An unsupportive environment can lead to stress, which is the leading cause of anxiety disorders, clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The damage takes a toll from a young age and the situation is worse in lower-income households where there is a lack of awareness and access to affordable healthcare is almost close to naught.
More often than not, a person seeks professional help for their mental health only when they reach their breaking point. What people often fail to understand is that therapy isn’t magical, where a genie stands waiting to dispel a person’s mental health problems with the snap of his fingers. But for those who actually put in the work, the process of self-transformation is invisible to the outside world, and navigating its waters can be a terribly lonely experience for the individual.
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The emotional damage takes a toll from a young age and the situation is worse in lower-income households where there is a lack of awareness and access to affordable healthcare. Image: Unsplash
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For those who actually put in the work, the process of self-transformation is invisible to the outside world, and navigating its waters can be a terribly lonely experience for the individual. Image: Pexels
The stigma and generational gap
Lisa McCarty, a PR professional and women's health advocate for mental health, reflects on her father’s rigidity towards therapy, when she had been undergoing fertility treatments in the past. "He said to me years ago, ‘I would never talk to a shrink.’ There was definitely a generational difference in our perspectives," she says. A similar sentiment was echoed by Piyush Hegade (name changed to protect privacy), a PR professional based out of Bengaluru, "My father was supportive but he never completely understood (the need for therapy)." Piyush was diagnosed with Specific Learning Disability (SLD) at a tender age.
"People see therapy as something for ‘weak’ and ‘crazy’ individuals. This idea in itself is isolating as a client,” shares Divija Bhasin , psychologist and founder at The Friendly Couch, a Delhi-based organisation that helps people find reliable therapists. Bhasin adds that for many such cases where the client feels they might be ridiculed, they tend to have a “secret professional relationship” with their therapist to protect their peace of mind.
But rejection coming from one’s own family, who are supposed to unconditionally love and support you when you are in mental distress, can be disheartening. As a result, people often find themselves all alone with no social support outside their therapy sessions.
Isolation setting in
"The very process of healing for a person like me is very self-isolating,” shares Debalina Das, a biotechnology engineer. “I remember asking my therapist: ‘Why does healing feel like a punishment rather than a gift?’" Das has been struggling with a set of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
One aspect of Michael Stein’s book, The Lonely Patient: How We Experience Illness, outlines how the therapeutic process can lead to feelings of loneliness through confronting painful emotions, losing unhealthy coping mechanisms, becoming aware of a lack of meaningful connections, and desiring change in relationships.
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Rejection coming from one’s own family, who are supposed to unconditionally love and support you when you are in mental distress, can be disheartening. Image: Pexels
Miloni Trivedi, community relationship executive, Paradyes, relates to this. "I have been taking therapy for a few years now and self-realisation is very important. And that journey makes you distant from everyone. It's just that nobody is going to really understand you and it's just you (who is going to understand yourself),” she says.
Communicating your thoughts and needs to people can be laborious when you constantly feel exhausted from working on your emotions. It makes it difficult to face struggles of everyday life—deaths, family issues, acknowledging feelings in a relationship, adds Trivedi.
This makes it harder to co-exist with your own community, much less be vulnerable, as you come to terms with your own wants and needs. Burkhay states, "The onus of understanding others when they are unwell lies on the client, (and) this tends to make them even more lonely."
A study by social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary argues that the need to belong is not just a luxury, but a necessity. Humans are social creatures who need each other to survive and thrive. Another study by clinical psychologists Alexandra Bachelor and Adam Horvath mentions that clients felt lonely when treatment brought up the fact that they didn't have many close friends outside of therapy or when it made them doubt their existing connections.
While the two studies might seem conflicting, there are ways to work around it. Therapists strongly recommend stepping out to socialise and both Bhurkay and Bhasin concur with this. They further recommend setting firm boundaries without coming across as rude to others, and surrounding yourself with people who support your healing to make yourself feel less lonely.
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A study by social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary argues that the need to belong is not just a luxury, but a necessity. Humans are social creatures who need each other to survive and thrive. Image: Unsplash
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Communicating your thoughts and needs to people can be laborious when you constantly feel exhausted from working on your emotions. Image: Pexels
What about those still in the dark?
Rohit Gupta, a commerce graduate confides that when he used to feel low in the past, he had joined social groups and volunteered to deal with feeling ‘depressed’. He admitted to not being able to be open up to his family but finding close confidants in his friends.
Another person who is a private tutor in West Bengal (kept anonymous upon request) opened up about not being able to express their emotions and dealing with them quietly by distracting themselves with reading, playing video games, and partaking in other activities.
Dr Rakhi Sengupta, a psychotherapist and lecturer based in Kolkata, encourages those who are struggling but not seeking therapy, to search for their life's passion. She strongly recommends engaging in hobbies, religious worship, and activities that involve some kind of physical movement.
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