How and why I started On the Safer Side.

My dad has been a patient of chronic anxiety from the past two and a half decades while one of my cousins is autistic. Many people in my friends and family have dealt with serious psychological ailments, a few of them have even lost their loved ones to suicide and depression, as a direct result of maladjustment. Over time I kept witnessing the far-reaching impacts of Mental Health-related issues in our communities. 

All of this prompted me to think of a way to live life. Growing up I read a lot of western and eastern Philosophy among other things which heavily influenced and helped shape my thinking. And I started with 'How good would it be if we had a universal benchmark of what a mentally healthy person should be like?' One thing lead to another until I finally started my journey into Psychology.

I was a typical teenager with angst and anxiety growing up and have been in and out of counselling sessions throughout my intermediate. And all of that pushed me to take up Psychology as one of my majors in during my bachelors and finally as the subject of my specialisation now in my masters. I also worked for close to 9 months under Dr Rashmi, a prominent Psychologist in twin cities, as an intern and then as her Psychology Assistant. Apart from this I was born and brought up in UAE before I shifted back to India for high school, which exposed me to people from a lot of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

I kept thinking along the lines of having a platform where I could reach out to people with ways and access to a better way of life. Probably through personal examples or other media in which I can showcase what it means to live healthily. and all of that kind of started crystalising when someone I know had to start medication for a hormonal issue and the doctors kept suggesting something very strange. 'A change in lifestyle' as they said it. Until then, me being me, 22 still depending on parents and such, I didn't even know there was a concept of Lifestyle. It has been 13 months to that day and each day I'm reminded of how dearly our lifestyle impacts our way of life and our life itself in general. Since this pandemic, I've realised even more clearly how our lifestyle impacts not only our life but of those around us and the planet too at large.

For these reasons, I've been actively researching into ways and steps in which, how our tiny decisions impact our planet and our ecosystems etc... How much more careful we need to be in how we commute, what equipments we use, what things we rely upon and so on.

Earlier last month, Rushna, my classmate from PG, asked me if I'd be interested in doing a live session during the mental health awareness month. Right after that though, IRL issues happened and we couldn't get in touch for a few days. In this time Chandana another classmate of mine got me in touch with Ms Srini N. for season one of her Lives for Lives initiative. Soon after that, I went Live with Srini for the first time on Instagram and that helped me realise how powerful and engaging a live session could be first hand.

I then reconnected with Rushna and got in talks with her on a project that could help discover a healthier lifestyle for people, psychologically speaking. We started discussing itty bitty details of the initiative until we had to get Apurva, whom I know from my gig at Dr Rashmi's internship, on board. Apurva being Apurva helped us sift through and sort out all the cracks in my short-sighted vision and Rushna's longterm plans. Thank God for Apurva.

The entire development process took a week immediately after which Apurva and I went Live, albeit with a few glitches here and there. And before we knew it we had our first guest speaker, our first guest writer, our first proper mentor, our first interview, the first addition to the team, our first blog post and everything else just kept falling into place, as if it was all meant to happen exactly like that!

All of this reminds me of a saying I read in a textbook of mine from graduation. "Psychology has a long past but only a short history." (Ebbinghaus, 1908). Seems very relatable to more or less what went down with us too @onthesaferside.

See you next time,

On the Safer Side.

Mudassir M. Jowher