Imran Khan has been open about his journey to mental health so he can help someone else going through it too. The actor, who was recently seen on screen after 11 years with a cameo in Happy Patel, has wrapped up the shooting of the film.
He will make a comeback with Adhoore Hum Adhoore Tum. Bhumi Pednekar and director Danish Aslam. In an exclusive chat with ETimes, when Imran opened up about his divorce and mental health, he revealed what made him realize this and seek help. Although he admits he never had any problem opening up about it. “Back then, you know, eight or 10 years ago, there was still a lot of baggage and a lot of stigma even in talking about mental health.
I didn’t have that, so there were no obstacles to overcome. Rather, it was my own feeling of “I don’t feel good” that I was able to identify and define it as “I don’t feel like the version of myself I see in my head.”
” Further explaining how he feels so different, he said: “If someone asked me, tell me about myself, I would describe myself in a certain way, that I see myself as a really chill, laid-back guy, I don’t have a lot of baggage.
I don’t take stress, my self-esteem was like this, I’m a really cool guy. But I realized that no matter what I thought I was, I wasn’t really that guy. If I look at the way I interacted with the world at that point, it was different and it didn’t match who I am.
I communicated with the world through feelings of great fear and awe, incredible anxiety. He was the complete opposite of an easy, cold guy.”
“The breakup of my marriage was a turning point in my journey to better mental health”: Imran Khan
Imran spoke about the importance of talking about mental health and said: “Everyone struggles with mental health issues as it is as much a part of your body as physical health.
Talking about physical health is much more. We say, “Oh, you shouldn’t be eating carbs, but you should be taking fish oil, and you know all this to take care of your body.” You should take care of your mind in the same way.
It’s just that we have more discomfort around it. So for me, because I didn’t feel that discomfort, I could really look at it and say, OK, they’re not lining up. The “Break Ke Baad” actor admitted that mental health should be given the same importance as physical health.
“I had a mental health scare. You can say that people are afraid of health. They’re like, all of a sudden, something’s going to go wrong, like I’m going to change my diet. I’m going to change my lifestyle. Oh, it’s all cooked vegetables. And I had a mental health scare. I looked at it and said it was all wrong. I have to decide this consciously.
How you would start taking care of your body if you suddenly had health problems. It seemed to me that this was necessary for health.
I have to consciously do it.” He also clarified that although rumors suggest that he had mental health issues due to the divorce, this is not true. Imran expressed that the divorce was actually the beginning of his healing as he was in a bad state in the last few years of his marriage to Avantika Malik. “During the analysis, I realized that my dynamic with my partner was unhealthy. It was a relationship that started at a very young age, and when you were 18 or 19, you didn’t have enough life experience to understand what a healthy interpersonal dynamic was and what an unhealthy dynamic was.
” Imran added: “In that context, I realized that this is not how it happens, this is not how it works, and for me to be the healthiest version of myself, I have to remove myself from this relationship. I don’t blame anyone for this. I was not in the media. I’ve been out of the public eye, and in my absence there’s actually been talk, rumours, gossip, all these speculation-type things just happen, so things get confusing and confusing.
That being said, I think a lot of people saw my divorce as something that affected me, and that I was affected by the separation, which triggered a mental health crisis. The truth is far from that. In fact, I was at my worst during the last two years of my marriage. It was my choice to end my marriage that was the turning point in my personal mental health journey that allowed me to truly heal and get better. It’s because we weren’t, we weren’t in sync. We couldn’t support each other being the best version of ourselves.”
