When it comes to mental health I believe it is you who know what you need. No one can tell you what to do and how to deal with it. No other being is obliged or has the right to make you feel worthless, nor to tell you that you are being too dramatic with your issues. They are not your caregivers and you are not theirs. So, unless otherwise there is a compassionate environment you don’t want to indulge yourself with them and their toxic thoughts.

The stigma that some people associate with any mental health conditions should in no way make you feel less caring towards yourself. If anything is very important to you, it is important. Anything, if disturbs you, is disturbing. And it is you who will decide and deal with all of them. They won’t.

Having said that, what is required is you try and take a step towards dealing with them. Unhappiness, that one might feel with these situations could be addictive and one must not in any condition, make it a habit. Any small step, one small effort on your part could make a difference. Talk to someone who cares about you, understands you, exercise, read, make humor your partner, and breathe. Do whatever makes you happy, do whatever interests you, do anything that gives you the slightest of pleasure, however inconsequent, however useless and stupid it may seem, every small step counts. And with that, with every new step you might as well just reach the end of the tunnel where there is more light, and you don’t have to stare at your dull dark shoes.

I attach below a few lines from a poem ‘Perennials’ by Maggie Smith in a hope of spreading a little more hope.

Let us praise the girl
who lives in what they call

a transitional neighborhood—
another way of saying not dead?

Or risen from it? Before running
full speed through the sprinkler’s arc,

she tells her mother, who kneels
in the garden: Pretend I’m racing

someone else. Pretend I’m winning.