Navigating Mental Health & Relationships ft. Ira Khan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Love Matters. I'm Lisa Mangeldas, and
before we begin today's episode, I'd like to request that
you review, rate, and comment on this podcast wherever you're
tuning in, because we love receiving feedback from you, and
we're going to be reading some of the most interesting
reviews and comments at the end of each show. On
that note, let's dive right in. Today we're going to

(00:27):
be talking about a topic that is often hidden behind
closed doors, even though it impacts all of our relationships,
mental health. How does mental health impact how we're able
to connect with our partners, and how can couples navigate
challenges that come with mental health with empathy and resilience.
That's what I'm going to be chatting about with our

(00:47):
wonderful guest. Ira khan Aira is the founder and CEO
of Agatsu, a foundation dedicated to promoting mental well being.
She's someone with deep compassion who approaches the mental health
journey as I conduit to achieving an awareness of personal truth.
I hope I have paraphrased accurately, but I'd love Ira

(01:08):
for you also to tell us a little bit more
about your work and the deeply personal place that it
stems from.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
I guess my work started because of my lived experience
and because I got diagnosed with clinical depression and it
was unnecessarily difficult to navigate, and I also developed a
fear of having to go through that experience, and that

(01:38):
then that fear extended to other people. So if someone
else is struggling with their mental health, I'm probably more
scared than they are for themselves because I'm like, no,
it's not fun, save it before it gets bad. So
that's kind of where it stemmed from. And then, you know,
I didn't want to just on a whim do it,

(02:01):
because mental health is something that is sensitive and you
have to take it's a big responsibility to be working
in mental health, and so I spent a bunch of
time thinking about it, reading about it. To me, mental
health extends beyond just mental health disorders. And to me,
it's called a mental health company because there was no
option of life in the form as to what are

(02:24):
you working in, So it definitely extends to more than that.
And so yeah, now we have a community center and
a clinic, and yeah, that's a.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Thing you know, the who estimates that one in eight
people are living with mental illness. I think the other
seven are just undiagnosed. And I'm not even kidding, but
I think that people underestimate how common it is to
at some point in your life have a mental health

(02:58):
issue and you're all So there's not sufficient distinction, perhaps
between a clinically diagnosed disorder and just having a bad day.
People maybe have a hard time distinguishing between mental health
and mental illness. How would you distinguish between those?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I think mental health is the same as physical health,
so just the state of your body and the state
of your mind. But you're right, people use mental health
as a as if it's a bad thing. There's already
a negative connotation to whatever sentence you are saying if
you are using the word mental health. So definitely separate
the fact that when at least Atgatsu and when I'm

(03:36):
talking about mental health, I just mean the state of
your mind. What is what is your relationship with yourself?
What is your relationship with your parents and your friends,
what is your relationship with you know, your job or
whatever it is that you want to do with your life,
and your mental state of mind. Affects your body a lot,

(03:57):
So if you've got stressed, you'll get constipated. There's a
whole you know connection, So all of that is your
mental health, and then there is mental distress, and then
there is mental disorders. And I would say that the
clinical aspect of it, when you go to a psychiatrist
and they diagnose you with a disorder, is when you

(04:18):
would say that you have a disorder. And then there's
a whole spectrum in the middle that a lot of
people fluctuate between. And it's very important to realize that
everybody has mental health. There are some people who are

(04:39):
struggling with their mental health and go through a lot
of mental health distress, and then there are people with
very severe mental health disorders. Because right now what has
happened is sometimes because we are trying to spread awareness
about it, we've kind of negated the people who are
going through very civil your mental health disorders. And it's

(05:02):
great that we're spreading awareness, but they kind of need
to find a balance between the two. It'll happen slowly,
but yeah, it's very important to tell the difference because
also how you approach it then changes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
I also really like this term that I learned from
your work emotional hygiene.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Could you explain that for us? I don't know whether
it's a technical term, but I heard it in a
dead talk by this psychologist called Guy Wench, and it
was something that I had been trying to articulate for
a long time and he finally said it, and I
was like that, that's what I meant. And it's basically
the fact that you have your physical hygiene routine, and

(05:51):
you know, the world has figured out a bunch of stuff.
You know, you're supposed to wash your hands, and because
people started washing their hands, our life expectancy went up
as a civilization by many years. And so if we
learned small basic things that we could do for our
emotional well being and do. When I say hygiene, I

(06:11):
mean do daily, irrespective of whether you're having a bad
day or not. So it's not that I do it
because I'm not feeling good. I do it generally. And
that's what I mean by emotional hygiene. And the thing
is that psychology and neuroscience and all those fields have
figured out what we can do. We just don't know it.

(06:33):
Nobody's taught our parents and our teachers, so they haven't
taught us, and so we could be doing these things,
but we're not doing them. And if we did them,
we wouldn't get to I mean, we'd get to distress
and disorder much less we know how to cope with
it differently. So that's what I mean by emotional hygiene.
And I have tried at Agatsu to create a simplistic

(06:54):
video to sort of explain to you what the basics
of it are with examples, because I feel like a
lot of people say, oh, do this, or process your
feelings or do that, and they don't tell you how
to do it. So it's a three and a half
minute video. It could be a six hour video, so
there's lot more to it, but I feel like it's

(07:16):
a good starting point.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
I feel like even though obviously we're meant to steer
this conversation towards navigating relationships with you know, when you're
when you're someone living with a mental health issue. But
I have to ask, now that we're on the topic,
if we can share some of the best practices daily
best practices to keep your emotional hygiene.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
So some of it is a process like self awareness,
because so it will take you some time to build
that self awareness. It's not something to attain self awareness.
It's about getting good at the practice of self awareness.
So if you someone gave me the analogy of like
a CCDB camera, and it's always going to move around
because things will be happening in your life right and

(08:06):
you need to be aware of what's going on in
the world, and self awareness would be when you turn
it towards yourself in that moment. So right now, am
I feeling awkward about my feet? Is me trying to
be self aware? What am I feeling right now is

(08:27):
me being self aware in the moment. It does not
mean I have achieved self awareness. It's not something to achieve.
It's something that you do. It's a verb. I guess
it's a nice way to put it. What I really
picked up from the guy bench video is emotional injuries,

(08:47):
which I think is genius. I was like, thank you.
So he says that as human beings, we constantly get rejected, fail,
stuff happens, and if you count that as an emotional injury,
then you will treat it before you move forward. So
if I failed in an exam, sure I should figure

(09:08):
out why I failed and do better next time. But
before I do that, I can just take ten minutes
be and put like a bomb because if But instead
what we do is, oh, you're such a stupid person,
and you should yourself or you think badly of yourself.
If you get rejected, you're like, oh, it's because I
was fat, or because I was stupid, or yeah whatever.

(09:33):
Whereas if you got a cat, you won't take a
knife and be like, oh, let's make it deeper, right,
you would put the band aid. Even for your child,
you would put the band aid and then explain that
knives are sharp and you need to be careful. So
because you don't want to be whiny, um, you're supposed

(09:53):
to be like, oh, it's okay, and move on. It
is okay, move on, don't play victim, but at least
treat the wound and then move on. So it's not
about playing victim. It's about acknowledging that you got hurt.
It could be a little hurt, but it's still a hurt.
Do something about it and then could work hard or
you know, push yourself. Do all of that. It's gonna

(10:14):
help you push yourself if you healed from the little injury.
And sometimes we do things and we're like why we're
not feeling better, And it's because you've identified your need incorrectly,
so you're not fulfilling it and so you're not feeling
better or whatever it is. And I think the need
we forget about the most is intellectual stimulus and the
need we ignore the most is connection. My favorite game

(10:38):
is guess the social media word for this tip. Anyway,
So there's gratitude. I hate the word. I don't hate
the concept, but I hate the word. So basically, everybody
tells you to be positive and all of those things,
I think it's important to understand why you need to
be positive and what it means so that you can

(11:00):
move towards toxic positivity and still be positive. So basically,
we have to be aware of threat right, we have
to survive. So if there is a smoke, you will
notice it. Baby crying is so annoying, so that you

(11:23):
notice that the baby is crying so that you can
help the baby. So everywhere in your life you will
always first notice threats because you have to save yourself
from those threats. So and that's a good thing. It's
not a bad thing to be negat to notice the
negative in your life because you need to be able
to save yourself from it. The thing is, there's so

(11:44):
much negative in the sense there's not negative. There's so
many threats, whether the bye guy is running past you
or you know you're going to bump into something, whatever
it is. You need to notice these things. If you
get into the habit of noticing those things, you miss
out on the not so bad things that are happening
in your life. And so if the Rick Shavala says, yes,

(12:07):
do a little dance, because you need to consciously focus
a little bit more on the things that are going
well to not get like zombied out on the things
that are going badly. And I think that's what's important
about the idea of gratitude because sometimes, like I've tried

(12:28):
to write a gratitude journal and I was like, I'm
writing the same three things over and over and over again,
and I'm not really feeling grateful for them in the moment.
I'm grateful for them in my life, but right now
I'm not feeling grateful for them. Versus when you look
back at your day and you think of all the
little things that were actually fun, like when you're Amazon
Barcela Arrives be a little excited about that and take

(12:51):
that joy because it's all points that are adding up
to make your day good or bad. Then there's connection
and relationships. Nobody has any friends. Everyone's lonely and sad,
and secretly everyone wants friends, So I don't understand why
I we'll only in sad. Yeah. Yeah, See, you go
up to someone and you tell them you want to
be their friend because you want to be their friend,

(13:13):
and eight times of ten you will not be rejected
because everybody wants to make friends. So yeah, the fact
that after school and college you don't really have a
place where you're confined with a group of people, so
you automatically make friends. You need to put yourself out
there and make friends. And a lot of us are
very scared of rejection because rejection hurts very badly, So

(13:36):
you're allowed to be afraid of it and it's normal.
But that's a kind of non negotiable. You know, if
you feel like you don't have enough people who love you,
if you feel like you don't have enough friends and
that makes you sad, A, you're probably not realizing how
many people love you. But B, if you truly believe

(13:57):
that you don't have enough friends, then go make friends,
a thing even your psychiatrist and your doctors can do
about that. You have to go out there and make friends.
If you feel like you're not as connected to the
people in your life as you want to be, then
you need to connect with them and spend time on
those relationships and invest in those relationships and you will
feel connected. Then there's input versus output. There's constant input,

(14:22):
your phone, the lights, everything around me. I'm constantly receiving
things I'm rarely putting out. So watching TV is input.
But if we're discussing our favorite TV show, that's automatically output.
And we need both. But we need the kind of
lives we live right now. There's much less output than

(14:43):
there is input. So whether it's writing, or it's talking
to someone, or it's using your mind and body to
create or to do, would be output. And that's very
important and we need to find by. And the last
thing is ask for help. You know, you use your

(15:05):
phone on Google Maps. You don't try and figure out
how to get there on your own. You're asking for help.
You're only afraid to ask for help for this, and
it's a little silly. You go to all other professions
when you need help, but because of the stigma and
the fear, when you need psychological help, you don't reach out.
So you need to learn how to ask for help.

(15:26):
And actually we have the worst help seeking behavior, So
Southeast Asia I think has the worst help seeking behavior
in the world. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty
sure I'm right in the sense for the least likely
to ask for help.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
There's so much shame around asking for help when it
comes to mental health sexual help. Right, Gosh, you've given
me so much to think about AIRA that was so profound. Honestly,
I'm sure you get better a lot, but I'm just
like having my mind blown.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
I do want.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
To ask you about your own lived experience of depression
and navigating relationships through that, because it seems like your
work and so much of what you do to raise
awareness comes from such a personal place, and I think
it would be so powerful also for people who are
going through this to hear that first person perspective. You
want to start at the diagnosis, when you know when

(16:20):
you didn't have all this information, and maybe it was
the struggle to understand what you were going through even
for you.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
So I think what's important to flag is that in
an outward sense, I never had any stigma about my
own mental health. I judged myself, but I was never
afraid of people judging me. So when I started to
see the signs and symptoms, I didn't understand what was
going on, so I couldn't communicate to my partner because

(16:48):
I don't know what was happening either. Once I figured
it out, there was never any question of should I
tell them, should I not tell them? When should I
tell them? Because if you're getting to know, I mean,
then you'll I'll tell you pretty pretty soon as soon
as it comes up. So that was not a thing

(17:08):
that I had to consider or deal with. But I
do feel bad for my partner when for my partner
at the time when I was discovering my mental illness
because I had no idea what was going on, and
I couldn't articulate what I needed or what was happening,
and so then there was no way for them to
know what was happening. And I know that with Popoy Nopur,

(17:33):
whatever you want to call him, I call him Pope,
We're going to call him Popeye, I hesitated to get
into a relationship with him, even though I knew I
liked him very much because is IRA's husband, Sir, you
can say that he's my husband. We got married in January.

(17:53):
He also goes bye yes. So I was hesitant to
initially get into a relationship with him because I knew
that I liked him very much and I knew that
it would be a serious relationship, and I was very
excited about that. But b I was like, I'm in
this so I have cyclic depression, so it comes, it's episodic.

(18:14):
I'm pretty okay in between episodes, but then when I
have an episode, I'm even now. I mean, I'm better now,
I manage it much better now after eight years, but
I'm still in a dip. I was like, I'm so
confused in my own head that I shouldn't get into

(18:35):
a serious relationship right now. And I went back and
forth with myself like so many times, and then I
was like, he's a grown undult. I should just tell
him what's going on in my head and let him
decide if he wants to be in a relationship with
me right now, or whether he wants me to get
better and then be in a relationship with me, or

(18:56):
what we should do about this at all, because I
do need to figure it out for myself, because this
is a joint decision. And so I think the thing
that has helped me most through my entire mental health
journey in terms of a partner is it's forget mental health.
Your journey with a partner period is it's not you

(19:18):
against them. There's the problem, which you both need to
figure out because it's a problem that is affecting both
of you, and so both of you should be involved
in the decision making of how that's going to be
dealt with. And so finally I was like, you know what,
I call him up and I was like, see, there's
a lot going on in my head and doesn't make sense.
So I'm just gonna tell you every single thought that

(19:39):
I'm having and then you help me figure this out.
And he was like cool. Suddenly became so much simpler.
And so he's known since the beginning. We knew each
other before, so he knew about my depression even then,
but like he knew I had it, didn't know what

(20:00):
it meant, he didn't know what it looked like, none
of that. And it genuinely took us four years to
get to a place where I was able to helpfully
articulate what I was going through and he was able
to be there. I mean, he was always trying to

(20:21):
be there, but it took us time to reach a
place where we could communicate with each other. It required
changes for me, it required changes to him. Sometimes he
had to call my aunt who's a psychologist, and you know,
have meetings with my best friend and him and my
aunt to sort of figure out how to be there
for me when I couldn't articulate how I needed help.

(20:41):
So it was genuinely a process that took time and
energy and emotional investment. So, yeah, we figured out a
lot of things. And it's all communication and vulnerability. You
have to be vulnerable and you have to communicate. When
you are vulnerable, the other person's not going to attack
you because you're not attacking. And when you communicate, then

(21:06):
both people know what is going on, and then you
know they love you and you love them, So then
obviously you all will make decisions that are pro your
relationship and pro each other.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
So yeah, do you think that it's easier said than done? Though?
Vulnerability and communication, especially for people who might not be
as aware of the sorts of toolkits that exist for
emotional hygiene and mental health, and who sort of project
everything onto the partner and sort of seeking therapy.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
For example. I think a lot of men do this, like.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
The entire emotional landscape they know was their mother and
then it becomes their wife, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
So to be honest, I didn't have a toolkit in
the beginning. What I had was the luxury of therapy
and time. So I will say that I could drop
out of college and I could take time to try
and figure out what is going on with me, which
is a luxury that not everybody. Hence, emotional hygiene. It's
small little little bits that are inexpensive for the most part,

(22:07):
except therapy. The rest of it is not necessarily expensive,
and you can do bit by bit by bit every day.
The fact that I had been in therapy for a
while and I had the luxury to spend time thinking
about it, how do I articulate this? Also, my fear
made me extremely motivated to find a way to articulate

(22:28):
myself for myself and for other people. I think if
you understood what vulnerability meant, it would be easier to do.
I don't think people understand what vulnerability means, and then
you practice a little little every day. You don't go
and share everything with everyone on the first day you're

(22:52):
you be a little bit vulnerable with different people. Also,
you need to be, you know, mindful of who you're
being vulnerable too. There may be some people who are
not helpful to be vulnerable around, and you need to
safeguard yourself so you know, do it bit by bit,
assess who you want to talk to and let in
how much you want to let each different person in,

(23:16):
And it is not a factor of how much you
It is not an indication of how much you love them.
You may love someone very deeply and not want them
to know certain things of your about your life because
it may not be helpful. It doesn't mean you love
them any less. Chill. We have these strange markers for
what love means. When you think about being vulnerable, you

(23:38):
think you have to share your deepest, darkest secret. That
is not the definition of vulnerability. Being vulnerable is basically
telling you, honestly, how I'm feeling in this moment and
the things that may be silly but are making me
you know, shaky or whatever it is. So when you

(23:59):
go for a new class, like an activity that you've
never done before. To me, you're already building resilience because
you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable in that space. I've
never done this movement before, and I'm willing to do
it in front of ten people I have never met before.
That's me being vulnerable. So you can be vulnerable in
lots of different ways. There are many ways to be vulnerable,

(24:22):
and I think when you understand what vulnerability is, it's
a little it's you can start small, and it's a
practice and you get better at it. So I'm sure
it's easier said than done, but that's life, and if
you did it bit by bit, it would be less
easier said than done.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
I love that you have to try, right, Yeah, were
there ever moments where because you were grappling with just
daily life, which is complicated as it is, to the
idea of a relationship while also having to navigate mental health, etc.
Seem like an added challenge or like something that was

(25:03):
a source of fear, Like do you think that for
some people it might be worth being mindful of what
it means to love and be loved when you're also
struggling struggling.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
I think that finding a safe seck your relationship is
something that you need to take seriously in any case,
and then when you're struggling with your mental health, all
the more you want to be mindful of it. I

(25:40):
was very fortunate that Popoy is a very compassionate person,
and I kind of knew that I wanted to spend
my life with him, Whereas I would imagine that if
you're in a dating space where you know you're on
dating apps and things like that, you're not sure whether
you want to spend your life with this person. So
it's not about let's try and make it work because

(26:01):
we know we want to do this. I haven't even
decided if I want to spend my life with you yet,
so I have to now decide. I have to now
weigh out some questions about, you know, how much do
I want to invest in my communication with you, because
it's exhausting. So it's really like a process of investment
of we will do this, and if you don't even

(26:26):
attempt to subjective experience, but if I feel like you're
not trying to understand me, it's exhausting for me to
try and explain it to you. And I'll just be
life fire. I'll rely in my room. It's less exhausting.
So with depression, that's a big thing. Getting tired. So
a lot of times if I don't have faith that
there is any point in communicating, I'm just not going

(26:47):
to do it. Too dired, I want to save my
energy for things that I have to do. Like when
you're a teenager and you have all these make all
these bad decisions, It's fine because that's your learning process
and that's life, and it's cool. Be heartbroken and you'll
get yourself pick yourself up three weeks later and find
a new person to flirt with. When you have a
mental health disorder, and now I'm not talking about distress,

(27:10):
I'm talking about disorder, you do have to take a
lot of things far more seriously, make more mindful decisions
about a lot of things. And so yeah, in that sense,
I think it would impact your relationship. And also, if
you have a disorder, the person needs to understand what
they're getting into as well, right, So yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
What are some of the things more people would do
well to understand about being in a relationship with someone
who is living with a mental health disorder.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
I think that if you psycho educate yourself, it becomes
much easier. When I see psycho educate yourself, I mean
understand how a what their particular disorder is, what is
common in that disorder generally speaking, but also how specifically
that disorder manifests in the person, which will require some

(28:03):
time and communication and maybe understanding from their doctor, also
what they're going through, some want of reading, and that
sort of stuff, because then you realize which part are
the symptoms and which parts are in the person's control,
because you might get frustrated with someone for something they

(28:24):
have no control over, which is unhelpful, versus getting frustrated
with someone who was something they do have control over,
and therefore they can compromise and help you figure it out.
Like once but I moved in with me and then
I realized that I needed space, so I had to
ask him to move out, which was an extremely difficult

(28:48):
conversation because I didn't want him to move out because
I didn't want him there. I wanted him to move
out because I was feeling so confused and disoriented and
I just didn't know what was going on and I
needed I thought I needed my space to Jodo start
just like figure it out. I still loved him as

(29:11):
much and I still wanted to get married to him
at some point, but there was just this like weird
feeling that I couldn't explain, and I was like, how
do I do this? So I did the same thing
I did when I wasn't sure whether we should go out.
I just told him all the bizarre not bizarre, sensible

(29:33):
not sensible thoughts in my head, and we sort of
figured he was obviously upset. It was not like whatever,
but we sort of figured it out. So you get
to know what the person is going through so that
you can tell whether this is, oh, you love me less,
or this is something that is not necessarily about me,

(29:54):
because if I think it's about me as a partner,
then I start to get upset about it or feel
rejected or feel whatever it is. If I can tell
the difference between what is not about me and what
is about me, and then I can also tell you, Hey,
you think this is about you, but it's affecting both
of us, so we need to figure it out together.

(30:16):
Versus you can handle this on your own, versus it's
actually about the relationship and not you. So once you
know these things you can figure out whether it needs
to be a situation, or you need my support situation,
or you need to give more. Then you can make
informed decisions about all those things instead of winging it.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
I think that also so much of our sort of
idealized vision for what a relationship should look like. It's
something we've just, yeah, we've been fed some ideas. Often
there are absolutely no boundaries, unrealistic, completely in that sort
of rosy picture we're presented with what a relationship will like.

(31:00):
These templates for what romance and love and relationships, especially
heterosexual relationships should look like often completely absurd, actually right,
And then you end up feeling guilty or like you
can't say something, or that your ability to articulate what
you actually need becomes harder because there's a dissonance between
what you've been told you should aspire for and what

(31:20):
you actually would like.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
And I think that can be also very difficult.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
To navigate when your own family is also projecting those
idealized this is how your relationship should look like, or
your marriage should look like. You know, but I think
it sounded to me when you said I told him
everything in my head that was a moment of vulnerability.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Right, If you're able to.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Be honest with yourself even and your partner about what
you actually need, the relationship is more likely to be
a success.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
I mean, I think so many relationships crumble under the
expectation of the should this is what it should be. Yeah,
and I think that like all all movies, right, you
have to be apps, like you have to be the
other person's everything, which is so unrealistic. What I realized

(32:07):
with Boboy is that so sometimes if I would put
up on my Instagram story that I'm not doing so well,
or I would reach out to multiple people, or like
if I called my cousin to sit with me, he
would get a little upset because in his mind, he's
supposed to be able to take care of me. So

(32:28):
he's thinking it's about him not being like me, thinking
he can't take care of me, or me thinking I
can't trust him. It has nothing to do with him.
This happens when someone doesn't tell you something, or when
someone is struggling. You're like, how could you not tell me?
You know me so well, I'm so trustworthy. It's not
about you. But especially in romantic relationships, you're supposed to

(32:53):
be the everything for that person, which is not possible.
You will get tired, They'll get tired. Supposed to have
work friends and football friends and painting friends and school
friends and your partner exactly, and all of them together
as supposed to meet your social emotional needs, not just

(33:15):
your partner.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Can we talk a little about how you both sort
of worked through the understanding of how best to support
and cope with whatever you were struggling with, as well
as sort of allow for the relationship to progress in
the way that it did because it guys are married
now and were there certain things like I don't know,

(33:39):
couples therapy or medication or just like arsenal and the
mental health toolkit that again many people are reluctant to
even try.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
You know often I mean I think that often we
see the partner as.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
The therapist also, you know, like now you should solve
all my problems instead of recognizing there's some external interventions
that can help as well.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
We didn't do couples therapy because we didn't reach a
point where we needed it in the sense that this
communicating worked for us and we kept working at it
and he was open to doing it. I spend so
much time thinking about this that I have learned to

(34:26):
articulate myself. I've been in therapy for eight years, so
you know, I've done my share of the self work
to be able to communicate with him. I am on
medication and that is my part of the work that
I have to do on myself to be able to
maintain that relationship with him. If you feel like you

(34:47):
need couples counseling, please go for a couple of counseling.
It's not shameful at all. Like I said, everybody needs
help in various things in their lives, and it's totally
fine to us help. Honestly, I feel like a lot
of times, sharing and talking about my mental health and

(35:12):
just this relationship between us has strengthened our relationship because
he gets to know me better, I get to know
him better. So if anything, you know, we feel closer
to each other while talking about it. So I would
genuinely say being you know, having open communication and vulnerability
solves most things. So I think that communication is key,

(35:36):
and learning to communicate involves.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Vulnerability and patience. Yeah, I think that's and trust. Communication
is something that so many people struggle with, whether or
not they have severe mental health issues. You know, people
are just so poor at communication so often that it's
a skill worth spending the time on cultivating. You mentioned

(36:04):
that you've been on medication. I wanted to also ask
about how medication impacted your life, because I think, again
it's something maybe people don't fully understand, and there can
be some side effects of medication that can impact your
intimate life, for example, or various aspects of your life.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
I suppose please ask your psychiatrist how your medication is
going to affect you. But my medication definitely affects my libido.
The other option would be it affects my weight. So
they're different drugs, and the different drugs have different side effects,
and some of you may not have the side effects,

(36:45):
or you may have the side effects, and your psychiatrist
will be able to tell you what are the most
common side effects for the medication that you are on.
Certain mental health disorders have a few options of medications
that you can try. If you would rather lose your
lobido then put on a weight, you can choose which

(37:06):
fun which will affect you less. So, yeah, my medication
does affect my libido. But I can only say that
much about medication because no imagine, even mental health impose.
So when you're depressed. When I'm depressed, I have no
energy to do anything. So I don't even think about sex,

(37:29):
like it's so far away in my consideration because right
now I'm just trying to like get up and be
when I need to be, Like, I'm too died to
do that, so I will only get up to drink
water or do anything else when I also have to be.

(37:50):
So when you're feeling, when you're when you're not doing well.
So I mean it's different for different people, because I
have heard that some people want to distract themselves so
have lots of sex. I've heard of that as well.
I don't know whether it's linked to any disorder, but
that's also a coping mechanism. Right to feel love in connection,
you find lots of sexual partners and that's how you

(38:10):
fill the void in you or whatever it is. For me,
it was the opposite. I was just constantly tired, and
I would be worried that I would get tired if
I tried to have sex. And if I was tired,
then I would not be wet, and if I'm not wet,
then I will painful sex, and then I will disappoint
the person and then it'll just be horrible and you're

(38:33):
thinking about all of these things and you're not good
to enjoy it, and so I yeah, it definitely completely
wrecked my sex life.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
It's one of the things that again that's like a
double stigma, right, So don't talk about that. We don't
talk about sex.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
You don't talk about sex. You don't talk about mental health,
and we don't talk about Because we don't talk about sex,
we don't talk about how crucial it is to your
happiness levels in life. Naturally, as living beings, we are
supposed to have sex, and apart from eating and sleeping

(39:15):
and shelter, sex is a big part of your natural
healthy existence. However, nobody told me that, and mostly it's
not actually reinforced to you that you're supposed to be
having sex and you need to have a healthy sex life,

(39:35):
and that's part of what will add to your net
net emotional hygiene, I mean emotional state of mind. There's
a scale of depression. If you're at zero, you're really happy,
and if you're at fifty you want to end your life.
Sex has a bunch of numbers in that, so having

(39:57):
sex is very important in your general sense of happyiness.
So is sleep, so is you know, all of those
things they add up to your general state of happiness.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
I think this is actually also a artificial separation created
between the mental and the physical when where like all
connect unified being and they both impact each other so much,
and then there's the stigma around acknowledging yeah, exactly both,
and so then acknowledging how they can impact each other
is like who is talking about that? You know? And
I think some people, at least anecdotally from my peer group,

(40:28):
regret not having even been given enough information by their doctors,
for example, about how their disorder or medication or both
might impact their sexual life or sexual function. Yeah, and
it can be a bit surprising to you instead of
something you've already been a true Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah. So I mean, I love my psychiatrist and she
always gives me useful information, but sometimes if I get
to ask things and therefore she forgets to tell me.
So I didn't. I assumed that my medication was affecting
my libido, but I wasn't sure. And when I started
put on a lot of weight, I asked her whether
my medication was affecting my weight, and she said, I
would not put a young adult female on a medication

(41:07):
that affects her weight, because that usually then impacts more
on other parts of you. Also, there's the diaredness aspect
of it, and probably the medication affecting the libido part
of it. But there's also just a lack of self
worth when you're going through this, and then that automatically

(41:28):
affects whether you feel loved enough, whether you feel attractive enough,
whether you you know, all of those things as well.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
I think that some people, unfortunately don't have the support
in their own home, either from their parents or their
spouse or whoever it is in their environment, to access
the tools or care or even just the words to
kind of navigate what they're going through.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Do you have any tips or I know, I hate,
I mean, but I think people in both you know,
I do, I do groups might be.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Watching like I also want parents and people to think
about how they can be supportive of loved ones who
might be struggling, as well as people who are struggling
to figure out what they can do when their own
environment can feel so hostile and so a place where
they cannot be vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
So one thing that I tell people is that when
you need help, you need help. You may want help
from here, but right now, unfortunately, you're not going to
get it from here. So you take help from wherever
you're getting help, and we'll address this, we'll come back
to this, we'll work on this relationship. But right now,

(42:44):
you're not getting help from there, and you need help now,
so you take help from wherever you're getting help. Don't
be snobby about where you're getting help from. You may
want your parents to understand and love you right now,
but for whatever reason, they're not being able to. Maybe
they don't have the away see they love you, Okay,
no question about that. But everybody has been brought up differently,
and everybody's going through different things in their lives. It's

(43:05):
very painful for your parents to see you in pain,
so it is natural that there are there will be
times when you're in pain and your parents would rather
not see it because it really hurts to see someone
you care about struggling. Now, that just doesn't excuse them
from supporting you. But I'm just saying it's unhelpful at

(43:27):
that point to be like, no, you must understand, you
get help from wherever you're getting help from, and then
you fight this. No, you must understand fight when you
have more time and energy and emotional bandwidth to have
that conversation right now, you take care of you first.
Happy to share some helplines and numbers and like resources

(43:53):
if you're in Bombay. Agatsu is completely free of cost.
It's open Wednesday to Sunday. We have lots of people
who come who want to make friends and chat and
stuff like that. We have activities where you can learn
to do yoga and art and dance and all sorts
of things. All of it is free. You don't have
to pay any money to come to Earth. Just walk in.

(44:15):
You can just walk in, just walk in. I mean,
we're on Instagram and to register you just have to
send us a text saying hi, I want to come
for this. But even if you don't do that, you
can walk in at any point that you want. We
have a library, es cafe, coffee, so coffee snobs take
your snobbiness somewhere else. But we have tea, coffee, WiFi,

(44:36):
we have a cat. So yeah, it's a space where
you can just come and be. Everyone is very supportive
because people who come sometimes didn't get support from elsewhere,
so when they come and they get support, and they're
also always happy to support the other people. So we
realized that it's a really very sweet community of people
who've come together, and like we have open mic once

(44:58):
a month and everyone is cheering you on, no matter
how badly you are singing. And there was this guy
who came and he did a stand up piece about
stuttering and he didn't stutter even once, and I was like, yeah,
so we're all very supportive in that sense. We also
have a therapy clinic and that we charge for it's

(45:21):
from fifty rupees to seven fifty rupees whatever you can afford,
so it's subsidized therapy. And we have peer supports, which
means that there will be people in the room who
have been through a similar experience as you. Nobody will
give you any advice, but y'all can vent and talk
and learn from each other's experiences, and it's facilitated by
someone who has been through that experience themselves. So that's

(45:45):
what a peer support is. We have one for grief,
new moms, psychologists, youth, LGBTQI, plus psychologists that said that
already depression the lots to check the Instagram, but yeah,
we do different things. We are studing for senior citizens.
Uh would love for you to come and talk about

(46:06):
sex Lisa anytime. But yeah, So if you're in Bombay,
you can come to Agatsu and then you know, look
around you. There are actually a bunch of things going on. Unfortunately,
there's a lot of clutter on the internet, so it's
difficult to find them, but they're there. Agatsu's trying to
create a repository of resources and information and please everybody

(46:29):
share it because it's meant to reach people. Yeah, is
that helpful? Super helpful? Okay, and think care of yourself
because for the for the parents and the partners who
want to help, you have to be well yourself. So
emotional hygiene. Yes, tell them where they can follow you.
Is it at Agatsu Instagram, at Agatsu Foundation dot org.

(46:52):
It's a Japanese word. It is It's a Japanese word
that means self victory. So aikido is a martial art
and it has a principle that says Massacatsu Agatsu true
victory is self victory came up with the name. You
can see that he's been a very useful part of
my life. But yeah, you can follow Agatsu. If you

(47:13):
get lost, then go to my Instagram and it's on
my bio. True victory is self victory. I love that.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Thank you so much, Ara. It's been such a privileged
listening to you. I've learned so much today and I
hope that you felt the same way. I hope that
if you enjoyed this, you'll also share it with anyone
that you think would benefit from listening. This is Love Matters,
produced by the Indian Express and DW, Germany's international broadcaster,
and as always, we would love.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
To hear from you.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
If you have a relationship topic you'd like us to cover,
or feedback or insights or really anything that is inspired,
do write to us at Lovematters at DW dot com.
As I promised at the top, I am going to
be reading some comments.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
So here is.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Jacob Lighton two ninety five four, who said on the
episode about consent with Barmita Vora, this video is so powerful.
I especially enjoyed listening to a woman who understands the
pleasure is not a bad thing for us as humans,
but we have trained ourselves to think otherwise. Consent really
is an active and nuanced situation. Consent was something me

(48:20):
and a previous partner discussed. Because it was so nuanced,
we came to a healthy conclusion that we would use
nonverbal cues to help us navigate consent and the journey
of being with each other. Some things might require a
verbal ask, some things did not. It made our connection
much more enjoyable. The discussion of shame being a catalyst
for dehumanizing pleasure and desire, I observed as well. I

(48:41):
really enjoyed her perspective so stimulating intellectually. We love hearing
from you, So louleave a comment wherever you're tuning in
till next time. This is Mi Liisamangoda signing off. I
believe love matters.

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