It is one thing to bring down section 377 and be happy for the LGBTQ+ community. However, it is nowhere close to garnering enough respect and understanding that is required. It is another thing to call oneself an ally and saying, "I support LGBTQ+ community."
The law, being struck down, just provides one side to acceptance. The rest is upon the society. But it takes more than just calling oneself an ally to understand the pain and mental trauma they go through every day.
Recently, a workshop was organised in the capital on the emotional and mental well-being of the LGBTQ+ community. Deepak Kashyap, a psychotherapist and wellness counsellor led the conversation. According to him, “Mental help is expensive, non-accessible, not sex-positive and not queer-positive. The case of medical help for queer mental health is more difficult to get.” He adds, “We take care of our teeth, our hair and our skin more than our minds.”
The workshop comprised of two sessions including - Community Building and Living in Post Section 377 India to help the community members define their identities as queer individuals. He discussed the philosophy and practices within the LGBTQ+ community to understand how we can march ahead to build an inclusive and respectful queer landscape in the country. The second session was on Emotional First Aid: Developing Emotional Resilience for the queer community in India.
Understanding the pain and anxiety, the LGBTQ+ community goes through Keshav Suri, Founder of the Keshav Suri Foundation said, “It is high time we addressed the stigmas and struggles around mental health. Depression and suicides are the highest in this community. This workshop is an attempt to create a platform and discuss the health and well-being of our community.”
He goes on to define emotional first aid as the help given to a person in the face of traumatic and challenging events until they (the people in need of help) can find someone to talk to. He adds that it cannot be used as a substitute for counselling. He explains that ‘emotion’ is simply an energy in motion and defines ‘feelings’ as the awareness of the emotions.
He was quick to point out, “We don't go to schools for emotional education. We're not taught how to deal with anger. We're not taught how to deal with trauma. Different people deal with trauma differently. We would wish that they would deal with it in a more functional way but it's still a fantasy.” When asked about his opinion on whether the feelings of rage is better when they come out, he says that catharsis according to research increases the likelihood of one being violent later. “When you are feeling really important or intense emotions, you should take a break. You should go think about the emotion and not just feel it", he advises. He then adds, “Our problem is we are a very emotional nation. We are a nation that prioritises feelings over fact.”
He admits that it is extremely difficult to inculcate emotions with feelings and says that emotional education becomes really harder when one is past their 20's. He then adds it is pivotal that emotional education is imparted among the leaders of a country.
“We always feel our own feelings. We always live in our head. What we have is a feeling of empathy and sympathy where we are trying to extend our feelings and other people's feelings. That doesn't mean we've escaped our own”, he clarifies on the notion that sometimes what one feels may or may not be theirs. He however feels that societal feelings can be duplicated and sometimes if one doesn't duplicate them may have to fear for their safety.
“No emotion is out of place. It is the intensity, the frequency of the emotion that makes us dysfunctional”, he states. He says, “We did not evolve to think. Our bodies have not evolved to sit on a chair in front of the computer. A lot of people think that your brain is there to think. The thinking is not its primary purpose. Movement is its primary purpose.”
He goes into the detail of various emotional injuries one suffers. Some of them include, failure, rejection, guilt, heartbreak etc., which could lead to depression, anxiety, loneliness, compulsive dependence on substances and mood swings. He then adds that depression and anxiety are different as depression deals with things and situations that have happened in the past. Whereas, in the case of anxiety, it is primarily concerned with the future and its fears related to the future.
He feels the psychiatrists and psycho need to be gender-sensitised more than the general public. “I myself can not serve all the people,” he adds.
