‘Nobody should have to be mature beyond their years’

As an active social media user and someone who is resolute about mental health awareness this writerrsquos favourite tweet by Scherezade Siobhan is ldquoWhen someone criticises you and says they are just being lsquobrutally honestrsquo they are more interested in brutality than honestyrdquo The psychologist posted this on Twitter addressing it to her teenage self but it struck a chord not only for its truth but its compassionWhich is why it is no surprise that Siobhanrsquos book takes an empathetic and kind view towards mental health issues some of which are openly talked about others grossly underdiscussed In a video call earlier this week Siobhan tells midday that That Beautiful Elsewhere HarperCollins India is an intersection of her observations over 20 years of practice and her own internal journeyldquoThe title refers to the temptation of a better safer space we all seekrdquo Siobhan says ldquoIt is a memoir but it is also an amalgamation of the cases I have seenrdquoThe 39yearold who is Indian and Romani witnessed her mother struggle within an abusive marriage and was diagnosed with clinical depression as a teenager Later she too was in a violent relationship and dealt with the posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD that followed Her book is a collection of 10 stories that talk about subjects such as depression and PTSD but also starts conversations on underdiscussed topics such as male childhood abuse and mental health challenges of sex workersldquoNo one talks about the fact that sex workers have no access to mental health support or the connection between male child abuse and patriarchyrdquo she says ldquoI was really impressed with an observation made by Terrence Real who has done a lot of work on masculinity He says that when he started his research he thought that any form of injury physical or psychological is an outcome of masculinity Later on though he discovered that you have to sustain injuries in order to attain masculinity like football players flaunting their injuriesrdquoMuch of what Siobhan talks about in the book is based on childhood trauma discovered in the direct links between the issues that her patients face and their growing up experiences For instance she finds that a person procrastinates not due to laziness but because they are afraid of consequences or the situation It could be that their childhood was spent hiding in the closet waiting for their parents to stop fightinghellip their default response is to wait it out until the situation has passedThe observation took this writer back to a conversation with a friend a man in his late 30s who witnessed his father repeatedly assault his mother As a result this friendrsquos default response to anger including by his girlfriend was to freeze His brain anticipated violence to follow angerldquoIt is easy to slap a diagnosis on someone without understanding what they went through in their formative yearsrdquo Siobhan recalls ldquoMany abused children become custodians of other people Growing up I was always the person who would not drink at a party to ensure my friends got home It was never even a discussion it was just the role I always assumedldquoPeople would always say I am mature beyond my years But thatrsquos the thing Nobody should have to be mature beyond their yearsrdquoSiobhanrsquos personality was also shaped by the fact that she belongs to a marginalised SCST caste While growing up in Indore she remembers her grandfather building a library because he was denied access to one Education has always been important in her familymdasheveryone except her sister and herself is a doctorldquoI did toy with the ideardquo she says ldquobut discovered that I couldnrsquot stand blood Ultimately after many odd jobs I got a degree in psychology My diagnosis contributed greatly towards this because I could not find the kind of help I neededrdquoCompiling the book took Siobhan the better part of 10 years with the last nine months spent feverishly editing in seclusion in Scotland She always wanted to write a book because it is in her words ldquothe last noncontent form of engagement in a contentdriven worldrdquoldquoApart from catharsis I just needed to put it out thererdquo she says ldquoMany people say their life will begin after they have healed but their life is going on even as they are healing There is no beautiful elsewhere it is right hererdquo