I Love What I’m Doing

by Parlé Patel

I really, really love working in what I’m doing, particularly because where my journey started about choosing to work the media. In 2013, I set up my own YouTube Channel, Planet Parlé and I did this after coming out of probably the most challenging time in my life, first because I was at university and second because I became unwell with depression and anxiety, and this lasted for about a year officially but at the same time it pushed me to do everything I am doing in the media now; I’m kind of glad I suffered from mental health as someone from the South Asian community because I feel my experience can help other South Asians.

I think, in all honesty, I knew what mental health was, I was always aware of it, and I knew very much about mental illnesses as well. But I feel that in my community, the South Asian community, even if you did know what it was, you would always steer back to South Asian stereotypical examples of what mental health issues were, like the pagal one (the crazy one), and the misportrayal of common illnesses because depression is the common code of mental health, it’s so common, I think more than one in three people are likely to suffer from it. I think my biggest challenge was not with me personally but it was with the people around me struggling to understand what I was going through. So whereas I could understand very much that hey, this is quite a normal illness, it’s curable, bearable, fixable. It was more the people around me who where like wow. It’s not they didn’t know what is it, they probably didn’t want to understand. I think what happened was, once I was diagnosed with depression and I tried to speak to people about it, they weren’t willing to listen and even if they were listening, they wouldn’t really grasping what was that. That was probably the first part of the challenge.

‘I tried to speak to as many people as I could’

The second part of my experience is that I didn’t realise there was so much physicality involved. It messed up with my body clock, it messed up with my eating habits, my digestion and my general wellbeing. You start to blame other things, maybe it’s because I went out last night and I was up until late or maybe it’s because I was driving for too long, this is why I’ve got back pain, you would start blaming other things but you would not realise that they are all linked to your depression and that was why I was tired. My friends circle, the people around me, were either ignoring what the problem was or didn’t want to associate with someone who was depressed, that was a big thing; there is a lot of stigma around this.

How did I deal? I tried to speak to as many people as I could, I was very honest about everything, I wasn’t trying to run away from the situation, and that happened because I knew what depression was; I would have seen on television, in a film or probably read about it somewhere but not a lot of people of my age at university had real life examples of what depression was. They might have read a statistic in a headline or have seen the misportrayal of someone with mental health illness on a TV show and that’s probably it. I knew a lot more because I was curious about the world of mental health. And I’ve had examples in the family of people that were unwell so that always made me curious about what is this and I didn’t want to just go by examples on television. As I was a young person working in and around media, studying and learning about media, I studied broadcast media at university, I knew exactly how composed the media is, how it is created, so I didn’t want to use these examples.

I spoke to a lot of people, and I got myself to the doctors as quick as I could. I had a counsellor, I spoke to them for a little while. But overall I was trying to change the way I was thinking, there was a lot of self-help involved; but I don’t think that self-help is suitable for everyone suffering from mental-health because a lot of people fall into depression or anxiety and they don’t know what depression or anxiety is. In my case, I knew I was depressed after I got to the doctor and they confirmed, and I knew what is was; so there was a little stream linked back to reality whereas a lot of people who get depressed didn’t have that. They would be depressed but then they would lose that grasp on reality and I luckily didn’t.

‘We created a video to rise the profile of depression, particularly in the South Asian community’

But the healing process was long and it was catered for myself. I would literally stick posters and notes up around everywhere around myself. People would actually think I had something else wrong with me seeing these notes, they would be literally all over my room everywhere. It was a kind of reality check reminding myself that everything you’re feeling is what your mind is feeling, it’s not reality. Thanks to that, I created a coping mechanism and now I use it every single time I’m unwell. Also, I would always had a go-to friend, who I would always speak to abundantly without feeling ‘oh my god I’m the needy friend’ . That was really important, building relationships with people who would just listen abundantly and openly. This is how I started the mental side of the healing process. But the physical side, because I was becoming so unwell physically, I made a sort of rigid diet, I would have much more structure about what I was eating. I felt that not having a structure would derail you more whereas if you put yourself into a routine, I sort of knew everyday. If you will be worrying about something, give yourself an hour to worry about, then stop worrying and move on. There was a time table for the day with a worry-moment: ‘don’t worry about it now, you’ve got things to do, think about it later, reflect at the end of your day; but I wouldn’t reflect at the end of my day because if I did do that, I would end up reflecting the whole night until the morning, so that didn’t work.

I was at university so there was a lot of alcohol and narcotics around me that played a big role, because when you’re at university and you drink, unless you’re 100 percent teetotal, you will end up drinking a lot. I can’t remember being at university and being around anyone who would have a casual drink ‘I will have two drinks and that will be the end of the night.’ You would drink or not drink. That was really dangerous. What would happen is I would drink so much and wouldn’t realise, that wouldn’t be lie drunkenness, that would be numbness in alcohol, I think that played a big role because with the hangover, you wouldn’t have any serotonin left in your body, you’re draining your body from its happy hormone, on the top of that you’re depressed and you’re entering into a vicious circle, but because of depression and being depressed, I had so many physical problems, I never fell into the habit of drinking to get out of depression. I didn’t have an alcohol problem where I would be drinking everyday lots and lots and lots, because I would be in so much physical pain from the hangover my body would be very weak and in limbo. I was around many people who were drinking and telling me: just go out and you will feel better, but that was anywhere near the right thing to do. Sometimes it can help like changing the scene or whatever, but I was diagnosed with depression, that’s not the same thing as ‘I’m feeling depressed today’ when you’re having a down day or whatever. But feeling like that every single day of the week, every single hour, you know you would rather see a doctor rather than just making up yourself. Because a lot of people now would just diagnose themselves but realistically you should see professionals, your GP or a drop-in clinic or any facility you have access to whether it’s from work, university, school, college. I think we’re lucky here in the UK. Although we’ve being told there is a lot of cuts in the mental health department, we still have a lot of resources compared to other parts of the world.

Just quite recently, my colleague who is one of my really good friends now, Attika Chaudhary, we created a video where we took some real life examples of how were they suffering from depression like someone in their family was and the impact on them. We wanted to show how it affects not only the person that’s unwell but the people around them. We created a video to rise the profile of depression, particularly in the South Asian community. That video did really well, we put it up on YouTube, I think it’s got like 25,000 views. BBC world picked that up, London life picked that up, Zee TV picked that up and there was a lot of interest because the statistics were so alarming. And how by 2020, depression will be the second biggest cause of disability after cancer. And that’s extremely alarming because if we loo around ourselves and see how much is gong on in the research departments for cancer, and the charities that are available to look after the people unwell with cancer, which is great, we need that, and more of it. Compared to that, the amount that is being done for depression and anxiety is far less. Since then we’ve been doing panel shows with young people and particularly South Asian people and what is fantastic is that one, so many people come forward to these events, people from the old generation come along as well. The negativity and the stigma that has been around depression I think in its last days because more and more people say let’s address this, let’s talk about it, because before it wasn’t even spoken about. Now we’re speaking about it, on social media, on these panels that we’ve  done at universities, it’s really exciting to be honest, its removing the stigma and that’s the biggest thing. Because once the stigma is not there you can talk about it as a normal health condition rather than a scary mental health disorder than no one really wants to speak about. I’m grateful having gone though something like depression because I learnt so much about our community it inspired me to do what I do. I felt I need to rise in the media and in what I’m doing so I can be more vocal about issues in our community; and it’s not only depression, in the Gujarati community for example, thalassemia is a big problem but a lot of people don’t know about it, what it is and what are its symptoms; that’s another thing I would like to learn about. As someone who suffered from depression, it definitely pushed me to go into the media and the public eye because I wanted to talk about it and get other people to talk about it.

‘In the search for trying to find out why you became depressed, there are two things you can do: you can keep looking and looking or you can walk away from that situation or try to fight it and learn how to cope with’

How did I fall into depression, this is the question you first get asked a lot of the times, how did you become depressed or why are you depressed, but there is not only one reason why you fall into depression. In my case, there was a lot of culture clash going on in my life at that time and it became more and more real because I went to college and high school wit people who weren’t from the South Asian culture and it was quite mixed. Culture clash was kind of normal. Only at university I met people from my own community or people who I thought would have a very similar upbringing to mine. When that clashed, it created not a lot of friction, not hostility but you become less closer to people once you understood that even though we’re the same, we’re not. It was great to understand that there was diversity in the South Asian community but I never really fit in with the people I was around, there was like a deep sense of loneliness, relationship issues. At the same time, I never really wanted to go to university to do something like a BSc in broadcast media, I always wanted to do a BA perhaps in digital media. Now I’m extremely glad I did the BSc but at that time, there was so much going on, and one thing triggered another, it’s like a vicious circle and it’s also like a domino effect, one something falls, then everything begins falling and you begin to feel hopeless. I wasn’t really sad during my depression it was much more a feeling of not being interested in anything I was doing so I was no longer interested in studying, I was not longer interested in Arts, I was not longer interested in things I liked, I was staying away from things I used to love and enjoying a lot and I wouldn’t watch particular films because I thought they would trigger something off, I wouldn’t go out and hang out in certain places because I would feel tis might happen then, so this was the anxiety side of things but.. I still can’t totally pinpoint it what it was exactly but I think that as really important because as you are fighting depression and as you are healing it’s important to understand that it’s not your responsibility to understand why you became depressed, it’s your responsibility to understand what you could do to get out of depression, because there is a lot of things that can lead to it. In the search for trying to find out why you became depressed or what exact reason it was, you are keeping yourself in this world of depression so I felt that okay, there are two things you can do: you can keep looking and looking or you can walk away from that situation or try to fight it and learn how to cope with it. For about four months that was just a coping period when I was just learning how to cope with what it is and slowly, slowly slowly, it’s incredible when I look back to how I used to think to how I think now, I can’t believe I’m like a different person, the way I used to think about life and the way I think about life now, I’m totally different and I think it’s incredible for me to know I was the same person really but I’m a new person now as well. But I’m glad it did happen because if it didn’t happen, I would never be able to care for the people around me in the way I do now

Parlé Patel, is a presenter at the BBC Asian Network, a YouTuber and a Digital Creative. His works can be seen on his channel here.