graphic by brian jean
Without the pandemic’s restriction to communicate in online spaces, I wouldn’t have had the courage to join therapy. Without the creation of Headspace, I wouldn’t have learned how to navigate my own thoughts and self-regulate my emotions. Without meditations on YouTube, I wouldn’t have understood how to be compassionate and kind to myself. Without social media and online magazines, I wouldn’t have been able to share my journey with anxiety and find solace in the community. And without Zoom therapy, I wouldn’t have opened up to my parents about anxiety. The creation of digital spaces — where I could address my mental health helped me enter the physical world as a more authentic and vulnerable version of myself. In reflecting on how these spaces have changed my life completely, here are a few anecdotes about my journey with mental health and technology:
2022
Sitting in my younger sister’s bedroom — at her old flower-trimmed Pottery Barn desk — I stared at my phone. My heart was beating fast and loud, and a thin layer of sweat covered my upper lip. I scanned the blue Post-It note in front of me once again, reviewing the five questions I planned to ask. It was 6 months into the pandemic, and I finally had decided to try therapy. Today was my first consultation.
The phone rang, and I heard a clinical voice mispronounce my name. After a few awkward greetings, we went through the routine questions.
“What brings you to therapy?”
“How are you feeling lately?”
“What do you hope to gain from our conversation?”
I answered each one, at length and in detail. But my nerves were obvious as my voice shook. My stomach turned, over and over and over.
Was therapy even the right thing to do? I only ever heard white people talk about it.
No, maybe it could be helpful.
What the heck, no. What was I doing on this phone call? This lady couldn’t even pronounce my name.
But she can give you some advice, maybe help with your overthinking.
Um, or she would say something corny like ‘take care of yourself’ or ‘be kind to yourself.’ I don’t need that.
The therapist interrupted my thoughts with a question about my birthday. As soon as she said “Leo,” the nerves disappeared. We began talking more freely — about star signs, my life and the benefits of therapy.
Over the course of the next four years, this lady I talked to once a week — a little moving head on my laptop — became someone whom I deeply trusted. Someone who helped me learn how to search through my thoughts and self-regulate my emotions.
2021
I was crouched in the bathroom stall of Doe Library on campus. My hands shook. Thoughts flooded my brain — one after the other after the other, almost blurring into one. My first job interview was in twenty minutes, and I could not get myself to calm down.
I tried counting backwards as my therapist suggested. That didn’t work.
I tried boxed breathing, inhaling for four and exhaling for four. That didn’t work.
I even tried journaling on my phone for ten minutes.
Nothing worked, and now I had only ten minutes until my interview. I finally opened a meditation from Headspace, an app that my best friend had been recommending for years. For the next ten minutes, I followed the calm lady’s instructions:
Breathe in.
Softly close my eyes.
Relax my toes, then legs, then arms, then face.
Relax the knot in my chest.
Slowly open my eyes.
Breathe out.
As the bright yellow door of the bathroom stall came into view, my hands were no longer shaking. The knots in my stomach felt unraveled, instead of extremely tight. My mind wasn’t blank, but my thoughts weren’t coming as fast, now sort of meandering in and out.
I had been going to therapy for two years by then, and usually, I would call a friend or my therapist when I was feeling anxious or overwhelmed. But, this was the first time I calmed down on my own. It felt like a puzzle piece was falling into place as I discovered Headspace’s meditations. Finally, all the self-regulation techniques I learned in therapy — the random tidbits from the numerous self-help Instagram posts, the advice from friends, as well as access to Headspace — had come together to help me calm down.
2022
I sat in front of my laptop. I had three hours to write my article for the month of July for Grain of Salt, and I had no ideas. I attempted writing a review of “Aftersun,” a breakdown of different romantic tropes I noticed, and an essay about my mother, but nothing worked.
Another hour passed, and I was so desperate that I just started writing. At first, I wrote random sentences, and then I began writing about my summer. I was visiting family in Hyderabad, India, with just my mom. It had been a pretty hectic visit.he cultural differences that came with living in India, the isolation from my friends and the unease of graduating college and starting work created the perfect combination for an intense bout of anxiety. And that was coming out in my writing. I found myself going all the way back to my journey with finding a therapist, to accepting that I needed therapy, that I even had anxiety to begin with.
Two hours later, I had written an article about prioritizing mental wellness as a BIPOC woman and child of immigrants in America. Reading through my essay, I felt my stomach twist. None of my extended family members knew that I went to therapy. I had only told my parents and three close friends. I was afraid of the impact the article would have on the people close to me, whether they would perceive me differently or how the community that I had grown up in would judge me.
Two weeks later, “July” was published online. I shared it on my Instagram story. Instead of the judgment I expected, I found an outpouring of support. Not only from my parents and friends, but also from all the people who read my article online, and random high school friends whom I hadn’t talked to in years. My cousin even sent the article to his friends. This was the first time I had publicly shared my journey with my anxiety. And in doing so, I had found a community to help me navigate something I had felt alone in.
2023
Last April, I found myself attending a Zoom therapy session with my parents. I was introducing them to my anxiety, something that I had worked on hiding from them for so long. And I was beyond nervous.
I already assumed that they viewed me as weak and dependent. I knew that they doubted therapy and considered it frivolous. That they were confused by how talking to a white lady once a week could possibly help me. I feared the outcome of them attending my session.
Would they once again think that I was just weak and incapable of handling my emotions? They had immigrated to a whole new country and had survived. But I could barely handle just growing up. Of course, they thought that I was weak.
But they came to the session. They sat for an hour on Zoom while I talked to my therapist. They asked questions. They were clearly confused, but they stayed the entire hour. My dad even cracked a couple of jokes.
By the end of the session, they no longer thought that my therapist was a random hippie. They actually liked her a lot. And to my dismay, she liked them too. In my sessions, she calls me out for projecting my insecurities onto my mom or assuming the thoughts of my dad.
Post that session, I am more open and communicative about my anxiety with my parents. When I have a panic attack at home, my dad sits next to me and squeezes my hands until I calm down. When I feel overwhelmed, my mom will come sit with me in a park and watch me journal. When I finish, we drive back home. And this wouldn’t have been possible without Zoom — without the technology that helped me create a safe space to talk to my parents.
2023
I was sitting on the bright red couch in the living room. It was really hot, and our apartment had no air conditioning. I hadn’t left the house in a couple of weeks, and though it was a sunny day, I couldn’t bring myself to go outside. I couldn’t even bring myself to shower. I wanted to go on a walk, but my brain would make up scenarios of everything bad that could happen if I left the apartment — from a car hitting me to missing an important work call to forgetting my keys and being locked out. I was paralyzed with anxiety and confusion. A friend was staying with me at the time, and I could barely stay present in conversation with her, often zoning out or getting lost in another anxious spiral.
After multiple attempts of trying to get me to journal, go on a walk, cook and draw out a diagram of my feelings, she suggested that we meditate together, following the instructions of a YouTube video focusing on your inner child. I was so desperate I didn’t even have it in me to roll my eyes. We sat together on the couch and began the video.
I was told to imagine myself as a baby. So I visualized a newborn with a head full of thick and curly hair. My heart filled with a sense of protectiveness. My hands, sitting folded in my lap, started getting really sweaty.
I imagined myself as a toddler, with cheeks so chubby that my mouth drooped down with them. I noticed myself smiling at this point, laughing at my droopy mouth. A rush of relief or nostalgia or comfort, I still don’t know which, washed over me.
I imagined myself as a six-year-old with my hair in two pigtails, wearing a pair of pink Sleeping Beauty pajamas and jumping around my room. I laughed again as my eyes filled with tears.
I imagined myself as a teenager, dancing around to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry in my room. And tears began streaming down my face, so much so that I could feel them wetting my pajama pants.
The meditation told me to send love to all these younger versions of myself. So I did. Tears turned into sobs, and I started shaking. I hunched over, curling into myself. I could feel the snot dangling from my nose against my mouth.
When we finished that meditation, something had shifted inside me. My anxiety, fear and doubt were all still there. But instead of swarming through me, I was able to accept them. Visualizing younger versions of myself was liberating. It gave me the space from my present self, and the ability to feel compassion and love for my past self. And somehow, that helped me calm down.
After wiping my tears, I showered and went out on a walk with my friend. We got dinner at this small sushi restaurant. Then we walked around, settling onto the grass to watch one of the last sunsets of the summer. The sun shimmered against the pool of water at the center of the park. Rows of dahlias in full bloom — pink and purple and yellow and orange — were almost glowing at dusk. We sat on a warm patch of grass, and I reached out to hold my friend’s hand. As we watched the sun disappear, laughing at the high schoolers squealing in the distance, I felt something I had almost forgotten how to feel — peace.