The past year has been tough for actor Sandhya Mridul, who lost her brother in November 2021. “I reached a point where I felt I’m going to put it out there that I’m weak and I’m breaking. There are a lot of people like me. They should know I’m not perfect and always strong, ” she says on World Mental Health Day, today.

The Tandav actor penned her emotions in the form of poems, and even shared a few of those on social media. She also had no qualms in sharing that she sought therapy. “I’ve been seeing a therapist from a while before my brother [passed away]. I developed anxiety in 2020, it got a bit extreme. I had a few panic attacks, so I took therapy. Now, I know what to do with it. We’ve made the word anxiety a taboo. It’s like any other condition. Some people suffer slipped disc, some have cervical issues, some have anxiety. We’ve to learn to work with it,” she says.

While she has made progress, the actor admits there are days when things don’t go as planned: “There are a few days of struggle and more days of strength, that is the only thing I’ll go by right now. I can’t say I’m 100% okay, and I’m happy to own it that I’m not alright.”

But, Mridul now knows her “tools” to fight her anxiety. “I highly recommend acupuncture, I find it effective. I meditate twice a day, talk to my therapist and fill up pages in the morning,” she says, adding that she’s happy to see conversations on mental health. “When I used to talk about it, people used to say, ‘Negative baatein mat karo’. Now, it’s become cool to talk about it,” she concludes.