Introduction
On October 5, 2024, I attempted suicide. That night, I overdosed on my psychiatric medications along with alcohol, teetering on the edge of life and death. It was the kind of decision that felt irreversible—until it wasn't. Saved by the quick intervention of friends, I was rushed to the hospital. I regained consciousness many hours later to find my limbs pinned down, tubes running through my body, and a world I thought I had left behind waiting for me to return.
In the weeks that followed, I took a step I had long resisted: I admitted myself to NIMHANS (National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences), India's apex centre for mental health. For over two months, I lived within its walls, surrounded by a system that promised healing but also demanded I confront parts of myself I had buried deeply. I don't know what I sought when I went in, but the answers I got were around bipolar disorder, emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD), and obsessive-compulsive personality traits. And so I wanted to understand why my mind worked the way it did, to find tools to live with rather than within the chaos inside me. But what I hadn't expected was the relentless focus on my CSA history, a narrative I had long dismissed as peripheral to my struggles.
This blog isn't just about my time at NIMHANS. It's about the layers of realizations that surfaced there—about trauma, family, and how we protect ourselves from truths we're not ready to face. It's about the delicate intersection of mental disability, identity, and healing, told through the lens of an Indian, Muslim, and queer feminist. Most importantly, it's about untangling the web of self-blame and finding a way to exist without echoing constant apologies.
Initial Resistance
From the moment I stepped into NIMHANS, the past began to press against me like an unwelcome guest. The intake process was exhaustive; a dissection of my life's history laid bare for psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers to analyze. Over and over, the questions circled back to CSA: how it happened, how I felt, how my family reacted. My frustration burned. "Why does it always have to come back to this?" I thought. I wanted to talk about my bipolar disorder, my self-harm, my suicidality, and my identity crises—the things I believed were my "real" problems. But then, the narrative kept looping back to an origin I had spent years detaching from.
I had perfected the art of dismissal. "Yes, I went through CSA. No, it doesn't define me," I would say, trying to steer conversations toward the more pressing issues. I'd grown weary of the pity that often followed the disclosures of abuse, the careful "I'm sorry" or the unsolicited advice on how to heal. Changing the vocabulary from "victim" to "survivor" didn't help either; it was still a label I didn't want.
The professionals at NIMHANS didn't give up that easily. Their questions pushed at my defences, asking not just about the incidents but also about how they shaped my interactions, my relationships, and even my relationship with myself. I was not too fond of the implication that specific struggles of mine could be traced back to CSA. It felt reductive, like they were trying to shrink the vast complexity of my mind into a single chapter of my life. I bristled against their insistence, muttering under my breath, "Can we focus on my bipolar instead?"
What I didn't realize then was that my resistance wasn't strength—it was fear. It was easier to claim detachment than to look closely at the ways CSA had seeped into my bones, shaping the contours of my identity in ways I couldn't yet admit. The anger, the frustration, the exhaustion—all of it masked an unwillingness to confront a truth I had long buried: that the past doesn't stay in the past, no matter how tightly you shut the door on it.
The Turning Point
There wasn't anything like a single moment of epiphany—no dramatic breakthrough where everything suddenly made sense. The realization crept in slowly, almost imperceptibly, over my two months at NIMHANS.
The intake process was meticulous; each aspect of my life was dissected and examined. My psychiatric struggles, my family dynamics, my childhood—they were all parsed into fragments and analyzed. However, the CSA incidents always seemed to take centre stage. Every psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker I interacted with placed a quiet but deliberate emphasis on it. It wasn't new—this fixation had followed me from one therapist's office to another. But at NIMHANS, the difference was that I wasn't navigating this alone. For the first time, my family was part of the process.
My parents and siblings were interviewed separately, a parallel thread of inquiry that I could only imagine but not witness. The psychiatric social worker assigned to my case first had a long conversation (it lasted for an hour or two) with my family, and then she called me up to ask what shouldn't be discussed in the upcoming sessions. I was quick to answer: "Don't tell them that I drink, that I have tattoos, that I am polyamorous. Also, don't delve too much into my sexuality and my CSA history…" I balked at the thought of any conversations around CSA. What could they possibly say? How could they justify their victim-blaming, their silence, their inability to hold anyone accountable?
But the deeper I thought about it, the more guilty I felt. What if they were criticized? What if the professionals uncovered flaws that would make my family feel shame or blame themselves? The weight of those possibilities pressed on me, suffocating. I wanted to shield them, to protect them from the consequences of choices they had made years ago—choices that had shaped my pain.
It was amid this guilt that the first threads of realization began to unravel. Why was I so concerned about their discomfort? Why did I feel responsible for their feelings, even when I had spent years carrying the fallout of their decisions? These questions gnawed at me, forcing me to confront the self-blame that had become a part of my fundamental nature. For the first time, I began to understand that my struggles weren't just a result of the CSA itself but of the tangled web of reactions, coping mechanisms, and silences that followed it.
From Denial to Awareness
I clung to a narrative that protected me for the longest time: "The CSA didn't affect me that much." It wasn't denial in the traditional sense—I acknowledged that it had happened, but I didn't see it as a defining part of my story. I convinced myself I had moved past it, compartmentalizing the experiences and locking them away in a box labelled "irrelevant." This belief gave me a sense of control, a way to focus on what I thought were my real problems: my mental health diagnoses, my self-harm, and my identity crises. The CSA was just a detail—a footnote, not the plot.
But NIMHANS forced me to reexamine this story. I was no longer just narrating my experiences to a therapist. Instead, I witnessed a comprehensive process that included my family, their reactions, and the ripples of those early events. As I was talking to the psychiatric social worker, questions about how my family responded to the CSA began to surface: their victim-blaming, their silence, their refusal to hold the perpetrators accountable. I had avoided unpacking these things, telling myself it was unnecessary because I had "moved on."
What started to unravel at NIMHANS wasn't just my detachment from the CSA but also the detachment from my pain. I began to notice the threads connecting the past to my present. The overwhelming self-blame I carried wasn't just a symptom of EUPD; it was a coping mechanism I had learned as a child. My perfectionism, my obsessive need for control, my fractured sense of self—they weren't random traits. They were survival strategies, born from years of trying to make sense of a world where the people I trusted failed to protect me.
The shift wasn't dramatic—it was slow, layered, and uncomfortable. I resisted it at every turn, frustrated by what felt like a reductive focus on the CSA. But as the sessions went on, I began to see that my resistance was part of the problem. My detachment wasn't strength; it was fear. Fear of confronting the ways I had been shaped by trauma, fear of admitting that I was still carrying its weight, fear of letting go of a narrative that had allowed me to feel in control. The journey from "It didn't affect me" to "This has shaped me" wasn't a straight line. It was a messy, winding path, full of grief for the person I might have been if things had been different.
The Impact of CSA on Mental Health
The impact of CSA on my mental health wasn't something I had acknowledged before NIMHANS. I had always compartmentalized the experiences, filing them away as an unfortunate part of my past that didn't deserve the spotlight. But as I began connecting the dots, I realized how deeply they had shaped me.
One of the most apparent manifestations was self-blame. When the abuse happened, my family's reaction was not one of comfort or accountability. Instead, I was met with blame—my mother's voice echoing in my mind, suggesting that I was at fault. As a child, I internalized those messages, turning them inward until they became a relentless, unyielding refrain. "Why do I even exist?" I would ask myself, believing that my very being was the root of the problem. That line of thinking didn't fade with time—it calcified, embedding itself into the core of my personality. It became the foundation for a lifetime of guilt, perfectionism, and a desperate need to apologize for my existence.
This self-blame spilled into every facet of my life. It was present in how I detached from my body, seeing it not as my own but as something separate, something to be punished. It was there in my cycles of self-harm and my inability to let myself rest or be less than perfect. It was the reason I struggled to trust relationships and veered between intense closeness and pushing people away. The abuse itself may have been momentary, but its echoes rippled outward, affecting everything I touched.
Perhaps most painfully, I saw these patterns mirrored in my diagnoses. Borderline personality disorder, with its intense emotional swings and fear of abandonment, was a direct reflection of my fractured sense of self. My obsessive-compulsive tendencies—the need for control and perfectionism—were survival strategies I had adopted to shield myself from the chaos I couldn't predict or prevent. Even my bipolar disorder, with its dizzying highs and devastating lows, felt like a physical manifestation of the instability that had defined my life.
NIMHANS didn't just make me see these connections—it forced me to sit with them. To acknowledge that healing wasn't just about addressing my diagnoses but also about untangling the threads of trauma that ran through them. It was painful, yes, but it was also the first step toward understanding myself in a way I hadn't allowed before.
Healing and Family Dynamics
Healing isn't a straight road. It's a tangled, uneven process that often feels like taking one step forward and two steps back. And particularly so, healing within the context of family is a delicate, messy process. NIMHANS was the beginning of that process, not its conclusion.
For years, I avoided addressing the ways my family had failed me after the CSA incidents. It wasn't just avoidance—it was protection. I shielded them from the weight of my pain, convincing myself that silence was kindness. I told myself that revisiting those memories would only hurt them and that their guilt, shame, or sorrow weren't worth my discomfort. But at NIMHANS, I couldn't escape these conversations.
Honestly, one of the hardest parts of my stay at NIMHANS was seeing my family brought into the process. For years, I had protected them from the full weight of my pain. I didn't talk about the CSA openly in my family, not because I was ashamed of it but because I felt guilty. I thought my trauma would only bring them sorrow or shame, and I wanted to spare them that. But at NIMHANS, I couldn't avoid the conversations. The psychiatric social worker assigned to my case worked closely with my family, delving into topics I had kept off-limits for years. How had they handled the CSA? What role did their reactions play in my current struggles? These were questions I had never asked them—questions I had never allowed myself to ask. Watching these conversations unfold brought up an intense mix of emotions: guilt, anger, sadness, and, at times, relief.
At first, I felt consumed by guilt. I found myself worrying more about my family's feelings than my own. I didn't want them to feel judged or criticized. I didn't want them to see themselves as failures. The self-blame that had become my second nature resurfaced in full force. If only I had kept quiet, I thought. If only I hadn't let this come up. But beneath that guilt was a simmering anger that I couldn't ignore. Anger at their victim-blaming, their silence, their refusal to hold the perpetrators accountable. Anger at the years I spent carrying the burden of their inaction. Anger at how their choices had left scars, I was still struggling to heal. And as the sessions progressed, something shifted. I began to see that shielding my family from the truth wasn't protecting them—it was protecting the silence that had harmed us all.
I started to assert myself in ways I hadn't before. I stopped brushing things under the rug for the sake of peace. I let myself feel anger—not just at the perpetrators but at the ways my family had handled the aftermath. Their victim-blaming, their inability to provide support, their refusal to confront the truth—it had all played a role in the patterns I carried into adulthood. For the first time, I allowed myself to hold them accountable, not out of spite but out of a need to reclaim my voice.
Healing in the context of family isn't about assigning blame or demanding apologies. It's about creating space for truth, even messy or painful. It's about allowing myself to feel anger and grief without letting them consume me. It's about recognizing that love and hurt can coexist. My family loves me in their way, but they have also failed me. Both things can be true.
Since leaving NIMHANS, our dynamics have shifted. There's a new layer of awareness in how we interact. I no longer feel the need to apologize for my pain or shield them from its reality. The guilt that used to accompany my every thought about them has begun to loosen its grip. The volume of self-blame I carry has lessened, though it hasn't disappeared entirely. Healing is a slow, nonlinear process--some days, it feels like I've moved mountains; others, it feels like I'm stuck in the same place. But for the first time, I feel like I'm moving in the right direction. I'm learning to navigate the complexities of family, to untangle the threads of guilt and love that bind us, and to rebuild our relationships on a foundation of honesty rather than silence, however uncomfortable that might be.
Conclusion
Healing is not a destination. It's more of a paradox. It's not a straight line or a series of milestones to be checked off. It's messy, cyclical, and often excruciatingly slow. It's filled with moments that almost feel like regression. And at the end of it, it doesn't lead to some perfect state of being.
My time at NIMHANS was not the end of my journey but the beginning of a deeper, more intentional one. It taught me that healing isn't about erasing the past or fixing what's broken—it's about learning to live with the pieces of yourself that trauma has reshaped, finding ways to hold them without letting them define you entirely. It forced me to confront truths I had buried for years: that the CSA incidents were not just a footnote in my story but a thread that wove through multiple aspects of my mental health, my identity, and my relationships.
For years, I believed that strength meant detachment. I thought moving on was about silencing the echoes of pain, about insisting what happened to me didn't shape me. But I've come to realize healing isn't about forgetting or erasing the past—it's about understanding its impact, untangling its grip, and finding ways to move forward without being weighed down by it; it's about understanding how deeply it has woven itself into the fabric of who you are. It's about untangling those threads—not to erase them but to give yourself room to weave something new. It's about allowing myself to hold conflicting truths: that my family failed me, and yet I still love them; that I've been hurt deeply, and yet I'm still capable of growth.
The process of healing has also taught me to extend compassion to myself. For years, I carried the weight of self-blame, convinced that my pain was a burden to others and that my very existence needed justification. Slowly, I'm learning to let go of that narrative. I'm beginning to believe that I don't need to apologize for my pain, that I deserve space to heal, and that my story matters—not because of what happened to me but because of how I'm choosing to reclaim it.
This journey has been as much about confronting the weight of my family's silence as it has been about confronting my own. Acknowledging how their actions—or inactions—shaped me was painful, but it was also liberating. It allowed me to see that healing isn't just about self-compassion; it's about recalibrating relationships, holding space for accountability, and, when possible, finding a path forward that embraces both love and truth.
This journey is ongoing, and I know it will never be perfect. But that's the thing about healing—it doesn't have to be. It's in the small steps, the moments of clarity, the willingness to sit with discomfort. It's the choice to keep going, even when the path feels uncertain. And perhaps most importantly, it's in the realization that healing isn't about fixing yourself—it's about learning to live with your scars and finding beauty in the strength they represent."
