As it has been rightly said by Iyanla Vanzant, “Family is supposed to be our safe haven. Very often, it’s the place where we find the deepest heartache”.
The family forms the foundation of society in Pakistan and encompasses a wide breadth of relationships. These interlinked relationships within the family members are enshrouded by love, care and intense expectations from each other. Paradoxically, the expectations are usually clouded by secondary happiness, achievements and success. Siblings identify each other on the basis of how much they are contributing to the entire family in the form of capital or academic excellence that results in a rivalry and complexes among each other. In this struggle of attaining the expected social self-image and acceptance from the family, there comes a serious mental debate and psychological turmoil suffered by each member of the family depicting their hidden vulnerabilities.
Ironically, we all are being grown up in a collectivist culture but we never have given much heed to what it feels like to discern beyond of certain guise that has been maintained by any individual. Family bonding’s is merely embellished in photo frames and an extended family get together. We have been grown up in an environment where gazes decide who we are. In this astringent struggle and conundrum, we are never being mindful of our real self-image. Due to this lacking, we never have wondered beyond the curtains that our siblings who are living with us are nothing more than a physical entity for us. For instance, five family members are living together but they all are disillusioned about each other’s emotional, psychological and intellectual needs because they are too focused on living up to set standards of what has been expected from them by the society.
This void can be pacified by taking in regard of individual differences among family members rather than imposing the desired and fixed social self-image for everyone in the family ties. A “Sehatmand Gharana” is a beautiful integration of family members who are well aware of each other apart from just relying only to their physical existence in a four walled space. The real art is taking care of their mental health. It is just like the same way that we all try to proscribe our family members from different physiological diseases and make them cognizant of the protective measures.If we begin to teach our children while growing up that being anxious or depressed is perfectly okay. It’s not something that is deteriorating your social self-image and would lead to shame and self-guilt. We will protect majority of our growing children from the looming psychological commotion.
The author Zainab Shabbir is a survivor herself and a passionate mental health advocate. She wishes to start support groups in Pakistan where sufferers can open up and seek peer support.