I’ve come to realize that the mind, body and soul are severely affected by perspective. In other words, the solution to any problem in your internal ecosystem is found in viewing it from the correct perspective. You can take therapy, pop all the pills in the world and find all the reasons why it is impossible to get better, but until you are brave enough to step out of your mental tendencies, all remedies are merely Band-Aids to deep wounds.

In essence, they are futile. The first step is recognition, admission and all the empathetic sentences which make you feel rewarded for accepting the fact that something is off inside you. That is undeniable. Whether you are deemed incompetent due to the sheer disability of your illness or whether you have all the money and success, that society says that you should have, in order to be happy and “a productive part of society”

I know that if you want to do well in most fields of study, you must enroll in classes, join a university and gather degrees. But for internal remedies, I feel the only way of attaining true insight is through grave turmoil and the catharsis that follows. Everything else is superficial. Whether it is cracking heavy psychology books, working out till your bones hurt or diving deep into work to pursue your dream career.

Why should you consider my opinion? Given that in today’s society, no one will look your way unless you can hold their fleeting attention. I will tell you that I managed to, more or less successfully, overcome years of debilitating mental illnesses like clinical depression and panic disorder. If I look back (trust me I’ve done a great deal of ‘looking back’), it must have started right in my formative years. However, the true catalyst to all of it was when my back gave out at the age of 13.

At the time, I was the school team captain of my basketball team. If you would’ve asked me before the injury, I would’ve told you that I would definitely be the first Indian player in the NBA. However, one day, when I was in practice, I went for a layup in the last play and didn’t really get up afterwards. I did not know how this problem, or rather the inability to solve this problem, would haunt me for the next 6 years. Throughout high school, till I was 19 and had already faced 2-3 years with clinical mental illnesses and a slipped disc in my back.

It’s all okay now. If that is what you want to hear. Today I am more or less ‘free’ of these issues. To whatever extent you can be. In a sense, my back is great and I know how my mental framework is designed. I can tell you all the remedies, all the solutions and everything that helped me. Until you really see what it was like back then. What is the point?

Honestly, there is no “quick fix” to mental illness. There is no such “get 6-pack abs in 30 days'' kind of shortcut routine that can cure you of your issues. Nor is there for getting 6 pack abs, but that’s a different story. I say ‘cure’ because that will translate better. In reality, it is not a cure, it is reflection and acceptance of who you are, how you work and what you want from your life.

At a very early age, my father gave me words of wisdom which I hold true in any situation. “Too much of anything is bad for you.” Too much work, too much food, too much water, too much pleasure. The connotation of “too much” implies that whatever line there must be, has already been crossed.

The age-old saying of “finding your purpose”, would be a key ingredient for making things better, for sure. However, that is something that is a slippery slope. Till it isn’t. The search for this purpose could take you weeks, months or even years… maybe even a lifetime.

In many ways, despite everything I had to go through before I was of legal drinking age, i.e. I was 21 years old, I do feel lucky that my clinical problems were not as bad as some others. Truthfully, they were pretty terrible and the deep gratitude I hold within me when I go through the day can very easily become a denial of the horrors of yesterday.

There are days when I feel like none of it ever happened, and that I made it all up and that is what everyone around me thinks. There are nights when all that repeats in my head are flashbacks of specific miserable times and I can’t help but toss and turn till I have really gone through it.

Here I begin the real ‘what happened to me’, without feeling guilty about talking about it. Without feeling like a privileged kid in an ivory tower and without dismissing the true nature of trauma that once soaked in my very being and made me act like, and do all the things that I don’t relate to anymore. And in many instances, feel deeply embarrassed about.

So, here it goes. Like I said before, I had an injury at the age of 13. It kept me out of my true passion back then, which was sports. It cut off the source of my happiness. The only problem was that I was 13, and then I was 14, 15 and 16. And guess what! After that, I was 17. None of these ages are very suitable ages for keeping everything aside and doing disciplined exercise, which exacerbated the pain that would go wild throughout my back.

Neither were they ages where you change all your eating habits, suppress the true misery of your insides and make permanent lifestyle and posture changes. Given the complete cluelessness related to what was going on that surrounded the problem. The exercises were physio exercises. If you’ve ever visited a physiotherapy center, it is no place for a child to be in. The exercises were more boring than staring at a blank wall. They only made the pain worse. Spending hours with people closer to death than you are to a quarter-life crisis every day does not do much for your psyche.

The pain further hampered my psyche, one which had already become pretty damaged. I was always ready to explode throughout my teenage years. I spent some time hanging out with the kind of kids who would boast about carrying knives to school. Some would openly smoke in the school washrooms and others would, much like me, be eagerly waiting for their involvement in the next fight.

In a way, it was metaphorical, that in order to improve a painful issue, there is no way to cure it but to feel more pain. It’s all fun and games when I say it now. However back then, it was suffocating and just arbitrary instructions barked at you. Much like politicians, physio doctors have a tendency to return the blame back to the patient in absence of progress.

There were long periods of different forms of treatment like yoga, physio, different doctors, different trainers, acupuncture and so much more. All of which failed. There were long periods of no treatment, where I was a lost and depressed kid and nobody in my vicinity could wrap their head around the emotional turmoil I faced due to this. I did not know, or did not accept, or understand, as a teen, how complex the back is. How little humanity knows about it and the sheer cluelessness that goes through an underage patient. There were somatic factors involved, which I only came to understand at the age of 21.

It was only in hindsight that I truly understood how tough it was to sort my back out. I had a disc herniation in my L3-L4. How many factors were involved and how I had to pause all my life affairs just to focus on improving this one particular problem? I grew up in a family that was scared that I would remain weak and always encouraged me to carry on with life as if nothing had happened. Which was pretty difficult as a kid with more pain in his body than what most people feel well into their midlife.

Eventually, I did come to terms with the fact that the agony I faced was really unfortunate for a child of that age. In a society where mental health was not accounted for and where the solution for most problems was “toughen up” or “at least, it is not as bad as xyz” like saying at least you have legs to someone with a broken leg.

When I had panic disorder. It was unlike what I have usually read or heard about. These attacks usually last for minutes or hours. But for me, they were in episodes of weeks and months. It is difficult for me to believe this today, but I would be in that state for days on end. All alone, in a household that did not understand mental illness and thought I was making things up. It was only after a year of this denial and turbulent relationships that the concept of therapy and getting better took place. Along with it came the suicidal phases, the pseudo-suicide attempts and marks of self-harm. This phase taught me a lot more than teenagers usually get to learn and none of it was pleasant.

I smoked a lot of cigarettes and marijuana too. In heavy excess and essentially a lot of it was blamed on that. This is true to a certain extent. However, there is more to this, which might sound like an addict in denial. Throughout my journey till now. I have realized that substance use is a symptom, not a cause.

Without overtly victimizing myself, I would like to say that a child who had to go through something incomprehensible like this, is bound to find vices. The spine is the gateway to the higher dimensions (if you’re open to the concept of dimensions and realities). Our thoughts do not just take place in the brain, as is commonly understood, but a large part of our mental processes take place in the central nervous system along the spine.

I do not possess enough theoretical knowledge on this, it is more experiential. There are many who say that your entire body is your brain. With each cell playing an active part in your thoughts and actions. This can be difficult to comprehend, but of late, I have come to understand how this could be.

Also, I did go through months completely sober too, in which I was immersed in devastating attacks and depression. How my psyche worked back then pointed me towards the futility of it all. Which I still agree with. Even though it might sound naive and defensive.

For those who may not know what exactly happens in a panic attack, your body basically feels like it's dying and your brain says the same. That’s the difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack. The connotation of “I’m dying right now”. Hence, at that formative age, I spent a large amount of time facing death, in the comfort of my own home. I woke up knowing I am dying, I spent the day knowing I am dying and I managed to sleep on most days thinking the same. There was a period when my brain could not comprehend time. In that sense, I could not see a tomorrow or a day after because there was no tomorrow or day after in my head. Something that can only be understood if you have truly been through that phenomenon.

In a panic attack, your oxygen supply gets cut off and your logical brain stops working. Your emotional brain overpowers everything. Eyes get blurry and you faint while hyperventilating and have your worst fears overtake your mind. Like a visual representation of everything terrible, that could happen, stream in front of your eyes. I remember times when my brother or parents would come home to find me passed out on the floor, barely conscious with no idea how much time was spent there.

I remember times when I would yawn and my throat would bounce up and down at the end of the yawn because there was just not enough air in my body. All the while I had no fucking idea what was going on.

In terms of insight, how to get better, and how to overcome. I feel that if you have one answer for everyone then you’ve found the solution to the world’s problems. By which I mean that is impossible and futile to pursue this approach. The sad bit about mental health is that it is subjective. This is nothing new, you ask any psychologist this and they will roll their eyes and pretend to act like you just had a moment of great discovery. Why else is there an entire industry?

It’s easy to say that of course, given I had the luxury of going to therapy, getting treatment, and having medication. Being able to take time away from life and focus on getting better. Honestly, I really wish that there was no post-trauma effect of feeling guilty over doing the same. Blaming society usually seems naive but society's view on mental health in India is not the most supportive. It is true that what we blame society for is nothing but what we blame on ourselves.

Therapy helped me understand where my ego stands, made me view the true problematic nature of my behavior and recognise the core problem.. my back. Something which had been inculcated so deeply in my head, that I did not perceive it as a temporary illness anymore.

By then I had dropped out of college twice, Once due to heavy anxiety and the other time due to extreme depression. All the while smoking marijuana and the second time being on heavy medication. Antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and antipsychotics, all prescribed and never really abused.

I was lucky enough to find my passion for writing at 17. Once basketball went, I fell in love with theater and would spend a large amount of time involved in the theater club from when I was 15 until school ended.

In the years of therapy, I gained a greater awareness of my psyche. I was lucky to have had psychology as one of my subjects in high school. In society, a boy pursuing humanities is deemed a failure in India. Even though I was absolutely horrendous at mathematics, I still opted for it in high school. Just so that my ego could tell itself that “Yes, I am a valid man.”

However, you could say this deviation was one of my earliest experiences of me vs the world. Making risky choices that one day might come to fruition. And in many cases, might never.

I was lucky, way more than I knew at the time, for having parents who allowed me to pursue what I wanted to. I’m more than certain that my teenage angst and anger would have been more than a fair share to deal with. My parents came from humble backgrounds and made great things of themselves. An aspect which came into consideration for me, like many angsty teenage boys, during the “coming of age” phase of my early twenties. Where I still reside whilst I type out this text.

It seems alien for me to talk about the vast disagreements and turbulence that used to occur between me and my parents. Given my elder brother was one of the easiest children to rear, with a calm temperament and early rationality to listen to his family and be an obedient and subservient child.

In today’s day, perhaps what I cherish the most is my comfortable relationship with both my parents. A true arch in my life cycle. This topic is perhaps one with a great scope of duality. In that sense, I know of many households where parents shed their anxiety over their children's lives and replace it with trust, like I was fortunate to have.

Around their early and mid-twenties.

And then there are those parents who cannot place a single strand of autonomy or trust in their children's hands, till the day they are buried six feet under. Rationalizing it as the “way things should be”. I have never been a parent and I am hoping that there is a great deal of time before I become one. My opinion should be taken with a handful of salt rather than a pinch, but what I have come to observe is that my friends, whose parents place less trust in their hands, grow up to be less confident in themselves and take additional stress in working through their independence. Or even through their day-to-day life.

There will never be two people born generations apart who can see the exact same way through their life. Despite the natural cycle of genes, or nurture or of similar proximity.

In my worst times, what many spiritual people, or people falsely implicated in the “spiritual industry” might call “The dark night of the soul”, I came across one week where my entire body hurt. Each and every part of it, and it didn't stop. I remember all other tragedies mentioned above pretty well. Yet, for this week I really have to reach out and convince myself that it truly happened.

This was the catalyst for me, where I saw the immense hill I had to climb and began making an effort to overcome my shortcomings back in 2019. I began exercising daily, developing new habits and sticking to them every day.

Working on my internal world and recognizing that there was a lot more to do.

I started meditating daily, whether it was 1 minute, 2 minutes, or even 5. I feel that was one of the best decisions in my entire life. All the past experiences which told me that I must develop this habit rang true in my ears. All the people of the past too.

Ideally, I’d want to show how I went through everything and what I am today. But there are still faults in my self-confidence. Doubt is the seed which exacerbates my shortcomings. Even though I am extremely fit. My former back, which had herniated discs, can now deadlift over 120kgs on a good day. The journey within this feat is something to which no words can do justice.

Yet, today my back hurts. Just like it did before. Only now I am familiar with the role of somatic pain. I understand that mental facilities light up the central nervous system. That my back is used to flaring up pain signals when I am under pressure. You see writing about all this trauma on a daily basis, triggers back pain. Even though there is no physical problem there. While this may be attributed to my psychological history. It is true for everyone, whether or not they chose to believe it, that pain does manifest in the muscles of their body parts.

Each body part has a psychological connotation as to why it pains or is prone to injury. A doctor once gave me a good example while explaining it, he said that if there is an office of 40 people. They will sit for similar hours and with similar postures. But there is a reason that 10 of them will have neck pain, 10 will have back pain, 10 will have knee pain, and 10 will have shoulder pain. That is the emotional predisposition to pain. Perhaps, lodged in our DNA.

I have not come to understand whether this pain caused by my brain makes me weak and unfit or makes me brave and persistent. But it does alert me to the fact that there is more going on in my subconscious than I seem to realize. I resume this writing today in a terrible mood. A day where all the frustrating micro-aggressions of life seem to pile onto me.

That’s the true insight of mental illness. Or physical illness. No matter how bleak it sounds. How much effort you put into getting better. There will always be days when it all comes back. This can be viewed in a futile tone. In all honesty, I did view it in a futile tone for a large part of my own childhood. Why did it have to be me? Why do I have to give everything up? Why do I have to go through this pain? Why me? WHY ME??

Now I see things differently. I realize that pain is my friend. It can bring me down, yes. But it can also tell me a lot about what I am thinking, what is going on in my life and whether I am headed towards what I want to become.

In this text, there are enough instances where I chose what I wanted versus what the world suggested I should want. In that sense, I’m a male college dropout who pursued humanities in high school and chose to work on his mental health and pursue his passion. After years, I am in a place where, on most days, I feel like these were the correct decisions and I will reap the fruits of my decisions as my life unfolds.

There was a huge chunk of my life where there was no positive in sight. Where I would work hard, gain knowledge and improve myself without any sign of betterment. Like the months of pain of exercise with no change in my body. Or the uncountable passages, failed stories and pieces of writing that never saw the light of day. The failed opportunities, jobs I left because they did not suit me and the humiliation I saw in others eyes, when I publicly wrote whatever was on my mind and it just was not good enough.

But here’s the thing, all of it took me one step closer to becoming who I want to be. I remember there was a time when I even shaved my head unevenly, was out of shape and still attended parties and took on the chin what others had to say on my face and behind my back. Why did I put myself through this masochistic practice? To develop a thick skin.

This ‘thick skin’ is essentially the moral of this story. Not the virtues of meditation, eating better, exercising, and following your dreams. These are things that everyone knows. Also that life brings you down and that you should not quit when things get difficult. In my view today, I see it as the thicker my skin gets, the more I am comfortable in listening to myself. The less weightage I put on what another person has to say about my journey, the more I feel uncomfortable with being resentful or jealous.

This is the current step which I struggle with. I could say that and ‘making a great deal of money’ too. But I feel if I can let go of resentment when I see someone else doing better, when I see the choices I make not turning out as good as the instagram stories put up by my peers. I will get there.

My regular meditation practice has helped me transcend through the thought patterns of yesterday. What was 1-5 mins back then can easily be 2-3 hours today. However, I have come to realize the power of ‘quality meditation’ rather than ‘quantity of meditation’. I can talk to you about chakras, and enlightenment and all this spiritual jargon to show how I am so good at this practice and know so much. Like a businessman going “Wow, I am in the BEST company, with the BEST product, which you really need to be the BEST.”

It is only the ‘spirituality industry’, the one which sells you crystals, quirky sounds, candles and potions saying that “you need this to be the BEST at meditation” that points towards this mentality.

What I have come to realize is that if you truly are the BEST at something, then you would be silent about it. What shows me that I am progressing in my meditation is not the psychedelic experiences or that heightened awareness, or the control over my temperament. It is the fact that I know now that a person truly knows a great sum, when they realize that there is so much more to know.

When things come from love rather than fear, there is no need to be the BEST. There is no need to outshine and win every competition. When thoughts arise from a positive place rather than a reaction to the fear of being weak or failing, that’s when true success can be attained. Be it monetary, spiritual, physical or the sort of success that I cannot possibly decide for you. It could just be something small such as waking up to your alarm, eating your medicines on time or being able to draw a straight line.

In the end, I was born alone and I will die alone. I can spend my entire time here thinking about all the reasons why it is unfair that bad things happen to me. I can blame others for not suiting my needs. I can highlight my heartbreaks and shortcomings. I can feel very strongly about the fact that I do not get as much in return for what I give. Or I can use my life to add to whoever and whatever is around me.

Where I make fun of another person, where I put someone else down, where I broadcast myself as superior are all places which tell me that I am inadequate. There is no one who is better than anyone else. It is all about where you look. You see if a rich man's house catches fire, it is a poor firefighter who jumps in to save lives. If an executive drinks themself to sleep every night, it is a therapist who provides aid to them.

In many ways, you are much better than what I am and what I will ever be. You are probably more wealthy, more stable, have more intimacy, more hair, better looks, less guilt and so many other aspects which I feel I could lack. Yet, if you have made it till here, I can guarantee that there is some perspective that my writing has offered to you which you really needed to see.

.    .    .