Battles of The Mind
Author - Anna Chandy
Publisher - Penguin, Rs 399
Battles Of The Mind is a book about breaking the shackles and conquering yourself, your self worth and finding a way to transition pain into happiness and success, writes Sidharth Dang
In a country where there is so much stigma on mental illnesses, it helps if a celebrity comes out and reveals she’s suffering from one. Because essentially that’s what it has become in this day and age, hasn’t itIJ ‘Coming out’. Talking about your mental illness in India receives the same amount of judgement and depreciation as coming out of the closet.
But when a fan favourite discloses she’s going through something serious and requiring medical attention, the common man sits up and takes notice. And then judges anyway. But kudos to Deepika Padukone for not only being brave enough to talk about it, but doing so much in the form of her charity foundation, live love laugh, of which the author of this book, Anna Chandy, is the chairperson.
The book entails the journey of the author from a docile, subservient, eager-to-please archetypal Indian housewife to a celebrated counsellor, mentor, therapist, columnist and now author. She is the first in the Asian continent to be certified in transactional analysis (readers of Eric Berne will be familiar with the famed 50s’ term) with a specialisation in counselling accredited to the prestigious International Transactional Analysis Association. Her primary area of interest is the design of strategic interventions to support organisational development and enable powerful personal change. She’s also a trained Mind Body Healer and is certified in neurolinguistic programming and art therapy. But all this would not have been possible had she succumbed to the roles designated to her by society and the psychological trauma she had to bear due to her tumultuous childhood.
Battles Of The Mind is Chandy’s personal story, sprinkled with anecdotes from her highest and lowest points in life and how that made her the person she is now. She has laid bare her heart and soul and is unabashedly honest and frank in her opinions on various aspects of Indian culture ranging from familial bonds being a deterrent to the need for destigmatising mental disorders to pave the way for better healthcare in India. She lends an interesting insight into how her parents’ difficult marriage shaped her understanding of love, something that might be relevant to a lot of women of the current and preceding generation.
Our cultural understanding of mental illness is that you are just not “trying hard enough”. We never say that about cancer or heart disease. You are bound to be hoarded with a plethora of vile opinions and insensitive judgement. And it’s high time we changed the existing antediluvian mentality. Mental illnesses don’t discriminate between the rich and poor; Caucasian and Negro; the successful and the struggling (as the general misconception might be). It can happen to the most aesthetic (Deepika, Demi lovato), adulated (Kurt Cobain, Chester Bennington), academic (John Nash), artistic (Van Gogh) and unlikeliest (Robin Williams, Jim Carrey) of people. The land of jhaad phoonk still has to come to terms with accepting it without stigmatising and blowing it out of proportion. But the times are changing. People are certainly more sensitised to these issues than before, though there’s still a long, long way to go. Not for profit organisations like live love laugh further attempt to bridge the gap.
Battles Of The Mind is a book about hope and the indomitable will to transition from pain to happiness and success. It is an amalgamation of philosophies and therapeutic techniques by Eric Berne, Carl Rogers, louise Hay, Thomas Anthony Harris and the like presented in very layman and perspicuous terms.
Chandy reveals the various therapeutic processes of counselling and how it transformed the lives of people while also stating that it’s no foolproof panacea that the readers might mistake it to be. “What it can do is help to live your life with authenticity and find strategies to handle situations wisely and well, in a way that is aligned to your own needs and benefits.”
It’s a book written by someone who has experienced a whirlwind of emotions, humiliations, highs and lows, ups and downs, and emerged a true winner. In her own words, “At five feet three, I am one of the tallest, strongest people I know.” And that’s an attitude we should all admire and aspire to have. To be able to start living, loving, and laughing again.
The reviewer is a medico by profession and a writer by passion