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EXCLUSIVE: Shruti Haasan on realising about her anxiety disorder: Took me a long time to come to terms with it
Shruti Haasan opened up about the importance of mental health, her battle with anxiety, opting for sobriety and social media trolling
In an exclusive conversation with Pinkvilla for our special Women’s Day edition, Woman Up, Shruti Haasan opened up about the importance of mental health, her battle with anxiety, opting for sobriety, social media trolling and even plastic surgery. She said that she had anxiety even as a child. “It took me a long time to come to terms with it. I have had anxiety for many years, and I think it was triggered by certain traumas which is the case with most people. Trauma feels like a very heavy word, but anything can trigger it. Trauma is basically something that’s inflicted, (it) could be large or small. That’s why it's a bit complicated with anything with mental health, because what may be traumatic for you may not be traumatic for me. But it is the way each individual’s mind processes trauma, and there are various reactions to it. In my case the reaction was anxiety,” says Shruti.
She further adds, “So as a child I felt a little bit more competitive energy would affect me negatively. Getting on stage was a phobia for the longest time. When I started singing and performing on stage, since I was 19 I was in music school, I would get these symptoms of really bad anxiety. But I just thought I was not steely, courageous or strong enough for this big bad world. It took me many years, I think actually into my 30s to realise that I had an anxiety disorder.”
Shruti further informs that talk therapy was really beneficial. She also adds that those who suffer from depression or anxiety, it's not easy for them to talk about it to other people. “In fact, you are mostly trying to keep up the garb or image of being all right. For me it wasn’t fear of being judged, for me the fear was ‘I am supposed to have my s*** together’, ‘I am supposed to be okay’. For different people there are different triggers. In my case, my parents wouldn’t judge me. But that could translate into various things, so it’s difficult to talk at first for anybody,” Shruti asserts.
To know more about Shruti’s journey, watch the entire video below:
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