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I Didn’t Know These Common Habits Were Signs of Mental Health Issues
Recognizing mental health struggles hidden behind everyday habits and quiet survival
We all carry ghosts with us.
They don’t wear chains or float through walls. They wear smiles, nod at meetings, hold tears in during commutes, and burst out laughing over dinners with friends.
For years, I considered these ghosts just idiosyncrasies attributed to my personality, until one day, a close friend said to me, “That’s not an idiosyncrasy. That’s trauma.”
It smacked me like a truck.
I was not being “just a little awkward.” I was not “a perfectionist” or “too sensitive.”
I am a thirty-year-old Indian man who had been educated in the US and returned home carrying a backpack of unprocessed memories, unarticulated fears, and tightly bound anxiety.
The ghost was me.
I needed a lot of everything to come to terms with it.
I thought I was just lazy, but it turns out my Brain was just trying to survive
My parents always said I was lazy growing up.
