What Became My Biggest Coping Mechanism for My Mental Health

We spend a lot of time judging others, whereas a whole world lies inside our little minds, which can turn our life upside down.

It was in late 2016, but I clearly remember myself lying down on the bed staring at the ceiling fan and wondering what is happening to me. Is this it? I was always an ambitious learner and proactive person and suddenly my world came to a halt when was diagnosed with lymph node tuberculosis. I had 15-17 tumors inside my body and my daughter was just a 2.5-year-old at that time. I had a happy family once, and suddenly my life started abandoning me from every corner possible.

My health and my relationship both started falling into bits and pieces at the same time and the more I tried to find the missing pieces and patch things up, the more it went out of my hands. My illness made me anxious as the treatment period went on for one whole year; I had to leave my job, and maintain some distance from my little girl in the fear of passing any infection to her.

To distract me, I created a blog and started writing about my thoughts and feelings, people started connecting and eventually. I used the power of my pen to raise mental health awareness and beat the stigmas attached to it. Because I realized how your thoughts matter, how your feelings control you and unless and until you start to talk about it no one will be able to help you. My treatment was successful physically, but it did change something inside me. I felt more vulnerable and sensitive. I always talked about how I felt, I always reached out to my father about how the last few years have been impacting my mental and physical health, and he would always remind me of my capabilities and my past achievements and instill a ray of hope with patience and love.

As I went to fix my relationship issues with my ex-husband, I realized how much mental toll this has been taking on me. I used to get hospitalized every now and then, my immunity level went down, I would feel heavy, and with no energy to do minuscule things. I would drag myself and I knew something is not right. As the situation started worsening with my marriage, I even went into a deep depression, I had this strong urge of taking my life and I use to fight with that urge every single day and every time my daughter’s innocent face would snap me back into to the present moment. I fought and fought daily.

Then writing helped me. Writing became my biggest coping mechanism; I would feel restless if I was not able to write, and I have written over 1,000 blog posts and published three books in the time span of four years, I have a 25k blog reader base per month. This is something unbelievable for me coming from an MBA finance background.

I learned SEO, educated myself in this field, and learned to write effectively, and it helped me. Writing is cathartic to me and I took time to educate myself, believing how my mental state can impact my physical state and I needed all the help I could get, my family helped me a lot and I even consulted with a psychologist, who made me realize a few things and ever since then I have never stopped working on myself. That’s what I try to do through my blogs, my podcast and Instagram page, I try to keep it real and promote self-awareness. I understood that the more we know ourselves, and understand our thought patterns and triggers, the more we enable ourselves to develop coping skills to stay resilient and work towards healing.

Today, I am a respected mental health blogger and a single mother still working on creating my own space. I wanted to set an example for my daughter and decided nope, this is not how my story ends, so I changed the narrative and I moved to the UK at the age of 36 to pursue another master’s degree and start my career, giving myself another chance to do things right and with more courage and grit this time. I am still working on myself, I still have those days when I don’t feel like getting up from the bed but the moment I feel like slowing down is the exact moment I get up and do something, I leave that space and change my view. Through my blog “Sanity Daily” have dedicated a part of my life to helping others.

Two years back, I started an initiative called “Letters of Compassion,” where I write and send hand-written letters to complete strangers. I run a talk show on my channel called “Humanity ki Chain” where I invite people to share their stories and enable others to talk about mental health. I use my podcast channel “Mental Health First” to spread awareness.

People want to talk about what my husband did, what I did, what went wrong, what I should have done and all other thousand things. But I chose to focus on today and only now because I have no control over the past and future. All I know is to work on myself and I have taken full responsibility.

I never felt this liberated in my life; there is a sense of reward when you give something back to society. People call me sensitive, my mental state might be vulnerable but today it is my biggest strength because now I own it, I know myself and I am open to learning and discovering more, loving more and living more. I am grateful to my family, my daughter, my friends, and my ability to write. I am me, because of them.

Thanks and regards
Priyanka