Rhea Chakraborty: What I went through was so public that people felt comfortable sharing their problems with me
Rhea Chakraborty talks about the mental toll the last five years took on her mental health, overcoming them and how it connected her to audience in a unique way
Rhea Chakraborty has had a journey in the last five years that hardly any person in show business goes through. The actor faced time in jail and a social boycott following the death of her ex-boyfriend, actor Sushant Singh Rajput in 2020. Recently, she got a clean chit from the CBI in the case, which was even opposed by Sushant’s family. The whole ordeal took a toll on Rhea’s mental health too as she suffered from PTSD.
However, Rhea Chakraborty admits that what she went through actually helped people connect with her. “What I went through was so public that a lot of people automatically felt comfortable sharing their problems with me because they believed that I understood mental health issues. Among my own friends, a few girls confessed to me regarding their husbands or family members after my incident, and I have known them for about 10 years. There is so much stigma that they didn't even tell me. They were so scared that they finally opened up to me after they realised that I have gone through something bad too,” she says.
Sharing what she went through this time and how she dealt with it, Rhea says, “I used to get up in the morning and before going to bed at night, say what I am thankful for, and sometimes it didn't even feel like there was anything to be thankful for. But I used to be like I am walking, my hands and legs are functional, my eyes are functional, so thank you for that.”
For Rhea, it was Hanuman Chalisa that came to her aid. “I started reading it in 2020 and now everyday at least once or twice a day I recite Hanuman Chalisa at least seven times in a flow, and that is kind of like a meditation,” she shares, adding, “Beyond that, the deep core connections that you have with a few friends, spending some time with them definitely helps. Sharing is a really powerful tool and that is the reason I started my podcast because I felt that I received a lot from understanding other people's life journey and I could draw inspiration from them. People just want to be understood. We all feel that we are not seen and we are not heard which is true to a large extent. So if we can find a community that suits us, that understands us and we can in turn provide the same empathy for them, that really helps human beings thrive on human interaction and human connection.”
{{/usCountry}}For Rhea, it was Hanuman Chalisa that came to her aid. “I started reading it in 2020 and now everyday at least once or twice a day I recite Hanuman Chalisa at least seven times in a flow, and that is kind of like a meditation,” she shares, adding, “Beyond that, the deep core connections that you have with a few friends, spending some time with them definitely helps. Sharing is a really powerful tool and that is the reason I started my podcast because I felt that I received a lot from understanding other people's life journey and I could draw inspiration from them. People just want to be understood. We all feel that we are not seen and we are not heard which is true to a large extent. So if we can find a community that suits us, that understands us and we can in turn provide the same empathy for them, that really helps human beings thrive on human interaction and human connection.”
{{/usCountry}}Opening up on the stigma around dealing with mental health issues, Rhea says, “There is still a large section of society that kind of believes that it’s nothing, it will be fine and it's just a drama. They will often say things like ‘you need to control your mind’. People need to fight their mind but what is really missing is the understanding that in a true mental health problem or disorder, the patient is not able to. They want to control their mind but there is a chemical imbalance, it's not a made up imbalance, and that people don't understand till date unfortunately.”
