Adarsh Agarwal is a 23-year-old engineer working at a corporate firm. He pursued his bachelor’s in Computer Science and Engineering from the National Institute Of Technology(NIT), Rourkela.
Adarsh was born into a traditional Indian joint family of seven in Odisha. He explains that parents are spiritual and vigilantly believe in their values and rules. Due to this, until 7th grade, Adarsh and his siblings studied in the local school aligned with their values.
Only in 8th grade did Adarsh transfer to an English-medium school in the urban part of his hometown, where he started getting the exposure he needed.
Adarsh adds that he was close to his mom before he changed schools, as she used to help with assignments and competitions. However, as his curriculum changed and he reached adolescence, he became closer to his friends than anyone in his family.
He explains that even personality-wise, he changed a lot. Until his 8th grade, Adarsh was a naughty kid who played a lot, but suddenly, due to a personal incident in school, he felt the need to focus on his studies. He started being studious and gave his complete attention to education.
“My hard work paid off, and I scored good marks in the 12th board exams, making me popular in my hometown. It made me more confident, and I felt daring towards life.”
Due to his academic progress, Adarsh entered the top universities and started pursuing his undergraduate studies at NIT Rourkela. As the days passed, Adarsh pondered a question in his syllabus towards his third year of college. This eventually led him to question all of his values and ideologies.
“I used to be an overthinker. I started with simple questions in my subjects, went too philosophical, and started questioning my life purpose and identity. These weren’t answerable, and it created chaos in my head.”
Adarsh elaborates that, unable to solve these thoughts and find answers, his confidence and beliefs started to break. He tried sharing with the people around him, but they didn’t understand where he was coming from and discarded his issues.
He remembered his college’s Institution Counseling Service (ICS). He immediately went to their portal and researched his options. He became aware of the online counseling sessions available through the YourDOST platform. Adarsh decided to connect with the experts there as he could choose the psychologists and the time slots.
“I was nervous for the first session as I was sceptical about therapy, and of course, we grow up with a lot of stigmas about mental health, but I knew if I didn’t get the help, I would be stuck in my mind for a longer time.”
Adarsh explains that he tried hard and kept an open mind to just telling the counselor everything he was going through over the voice session, and depending on their response, he would move forward.
As he gained hope in the session, he told the counselor that he couldn’t focus on his life due to these issues, and despite researching various solutions on the Internet, he couldn’t solve the problem. Adarsh expressed to her that he felt helpless and sad about it.
“The counselor let me speak about my issues thoroughly in the sessions without any disruption, and they never made me feel like something was wrong with me. These qualities allowed me to trust the process.”
Adarsh says for every approach the counselor gave, he used to ask questions as to why it would work for him, and the counselor always explained them to him patiently. This made him feel the sessions were interactive, and they also gave him tasks or assignments to follow after every session.
The counselor suggested he write down his thoughts, questions, and emotions to understand what goes on in his mind. This helped Adarsh gain insights into his thought patterns.
“I would say the sessions were a solid 9 out of 10 because the stepwise tasks helped me feel that we were not dealing with a bigger enemy but rather the smaller ones, which were meant to target the bigger one.”
Eventually, Adarsh felt better and was ready to move on from his spiral thoughts. During the same phase, Adarsh also experienced some other issues. He had problems with mild Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), where he used to wash his hands frequently and be constantly afraid of contamination. Since he had the problem for almost three years, he decided to continue the session to discuss these issues as well.
The counselor gave him various techniques such as making a list of things that he felt would lead to contamination and then rating the top ten from highest to lowest rank of contamination levels. Then, they eventually started working on each one of them and helped Adarsh improve.
As the sessions progressed, Adarsh adds that he regained his confidence and worked on every aspect of his issues. He thanks his counselor for showing him the path to recovery and progress.
As he rates himself 4 out of 5, he works every day to understand himself a little better and improve. We are happy that Adarsh got his answers and wish him all the best for his future.
Adarsh’s Warrior Tips:
1.“Believe in yourself, and you will get where you want to be.”
2.“Every problem has a solution; just give it some time.”
3.“Trust the process of therapy and follow the guidance of the counselors throughout.”
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