Talking About Mental Health: An Indian Man's Journey

The Background

I was the "successful one" in my family. IIT-educated, good job at a product company, married by 28 as expected. On paper, everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. Which made what was happening inside me all the more confusing.

I had been feeling — I didn't have a word for it then — heavy. Not depressed in the way I understood the word. Not crying, not unable to function. Just profoundly disconnected. Going through the motions. Doing everything right and feeling nothing.

I started having what I now know were panic attacks. Racing heart, sudden inexplicable dread, the feeling that something terrible was about to happen even when sitting in a meeting or eating dinner. I told no one. I googled "heart attack symptoms" four times in one month.

The Weight of Secrecy

Living with a family of 9 people and being mentally unwell is a very specific kind of loneliness. You are never physically alone. But you are completely alone in what is happening to you.

I became increasingly skilled at performance. Laughing at the dinner table, showing interest in things I couldn't care less about, maintaining the persona of the capable, together, successful son/husband/grandson that everyone needed me to be.

The performance itself was exhausting. I estimated, in my darker moments, that I was spending about 40% of my mental energy simply managing how I appeared to the people around me.

The Turning Point

It was my wife who eventually noticed. Not because I told her — I hadn't — but because she knew me well enough to see through the performance when it started slipping.

She didn't confront me. She simply said, one evening: "I don't need you to be okay. I just need you to be honest with me about what's actually happening."

That sentence broke something open. I cried for the first time in about seven years. And then I told her everything — the panic attacks, the emptiness, the performance, the terror that something was fundamentally wrong with me.

She listened. She didn't panic. She didn't tell anyone else. She asked what I needed.

Starting Therapy

I found a therapist through Summit. I told my wife, no one else. I scheduled sessions during my lunch hour and told my colleagues I had a recurring meeting.

The first session was the hardest. I kept waiting for the therapist to express alarm, to label me with something serious, to confirm the fear that I was broken beyond repair. None of that happened. He asked questions. I answered them. He reflected back what I was saying in ways that made me understand myself slightly better each time.

After about eight sessions, I started telling other people. First my mother, who surprised me by saying she had experienced something similar in her 40s and had told no one for decades. Then a close friend, who immediately said "me too."

The thing I had been most afraid of — being seen differently, being treated as fragile or incapable — did not happen. What happened instead was that the people who loved me became capable of actually seeing me, maybe for the first time.

What I Know Now

Therapy did not make my life easier. The stressors are still there. The family pressure is still there. My job is still demanding. But I have a fundamentally different relationship with my inner life now. I notice what I'm feeling earlier. I respond to it rather than suppressing it. I ask for what I need.

And perhaps most importantly: I am no longer spending 40% of my energy maintaining a performance. That energy is now available for things I actually care about.

If you are reading this and you recognise something of your own story in mine, I want to tell you directly: the thing you are most afraid of — being seen, being judged, being found insufficient — is almost never what actually happens when you choose honesty. What usually happens is that you find out you were never as alone as you thought.