Ankush is a 21-year-old student from IIIT Delhi. He is pursuing a bachelor’s in technology, specialising in computer science.
Ankush hails from a small city in Haryana. He was born into a family of four, with his parents and elder sister, and he is more close to his mother.
Ankush shifted to Delhi for his undergraduate studies, and the transition has been challenging. He explains that the lockdown made things difficult in the first year, and later, being in a city different from his hometown required more time for him to adjust.
“I’m a selective extrovert; I talk to people if they are welcoming and make me feel comfortable. Otherwise, I just keep to myself. Being with new kinds of people felt very different when I started college.”
Ankush calls himself a “literature and debate geek,” as he occasionally participates in events related to them. He has recently developed an interest in writing poems. Ankush adds that he mostly writes about his emotions about the things around him. During his leisure time, Ankush also enjoys watching movies and playing badminton.
As Ankush started a journey towards understanding himself, he was posed with questions about his sexuality in his head. These questions and the cultural changes of being in a new place with new people started negatively impacting his routine.
“I started having insomnia and felt overwhelmed all the time. I was sensitive to any emotion, and I couldn’t even identify what exactly I was feeling. It was mixed with anger, self-doubts and a lot more. I knew it wasn’t healthy or how a normal functioning human should feel.”
Ankush elaborates that he realised he needed to sit with someone and talk about his emotions. He remembered the occasional emails that he received from his college’s Student Affairs Office about their subscription to the YourDOST platform.
Ankush made up his mind and explored the counselors on the platform. In his third session, he met Ms Kisha Das, whom Ankush says was the right person to help him through his struggle.
“I was initially reserved and unsure if I should share my thoughts with her. I feared being judged, but she made me feel comfortable. I opened up about the rough phases of my life from childhood to college.”
Ankush explains that his childhood was challenging and unfortunate enough as he went through some traumatic events. He adds that it became the root cause of his trust issues. As he couldn’t access therapy during that period of his life, he repressed the memories and moved on with life to escape from them.
Ankush shared these with Ms Kisha as the thoughts resurfaced while he was exploring his sexual identity. Ankush says that he knew since school that he wasn’t heterosexual, but there was always some stigma for him to accept this as he had some internal conflict due to the social learning in his life.
“I resisted my sexuality for a very long time, and I realised this during therapy. I started unwrapping things about myself, like peeling each layer of the onion, and things started making more sense with each session.”
Ankush adds that Ms Kisha listened to all his issues, asked the right questions, and gave good suggestions. He elaborates that he shared even his deepest secrets, which are unknown to most people in his circle.
The counselor employed journaling techniques to help Ankush deal with his emotions. She made him write about everything he was feeling or going through, and Ankush explains that this activity encouraged him to express his feelings in poems. To help with his overthinking, Ankush was also made to use a pros and cons list for making decisions and suggested that he think loud when his mind is flooded with a chain of thoughts.
“Writing eventually became my stress reliever, and she helped me adapt to a healthy lifestyle filled with good music, meditation and better sleeping patterns.”
Eventually, Ankush started accepting his past instead of repressing it and also embraced his sexuality completely.
“If certain things didn’t happen during my childhood, things would have been different. While that is true, I still resolved it during therapy and moved on, taking the learnings from it alone.”
Ankush adds that he also started accepting the difficulties that come with being queer and coming out about it. Ankush understood it would create many changes in his world, but he felt comfortable with it as his inner confidence improved with the clarity he got. Ankush also feels his anger issues are in control, and his overthinking has reduced after the sessions.
“The frequency of my sessions has reduced now as I’m doing better, and I want to thank my counselor, but I don’t think I can find an apt to explain my gratitude towards her; she has been extremely helpful and significantly impacted my life.”
Ankush rates himself 4.5 out of 5 on improving, which he believes to be the capability to perceive things better and be effective in his life. We feel great pride about being part of Ankush’s journey and wish him all the best in the future.
Ankush’s Warrior Tips:
1.“You are not alone. Some people might be going through the same situation as you, and it will be okay soon.”
2.“If your first experience in therapy didn’t work, change the therapist to the one who can fit well for you, but don’t give up on prioritising mental health.”
3.“The first step in therapy is to leave the internal inertia and open up about yourself.”
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