There is nothing noble about suffering in silence: Rajivi Rao

By profession, Rajivi Rao is a 34-year-old multiple international award-winning copywriter. But by purpose and passion, she’s a full-time HAPPYness Addict, a renowned author for whom writing is the chief bliss. A strong mental health advocate, she offers HAPPYness Tools and Spiritual Art to several people. She has battled challenges and has finally been able to combat them successfully. Here are the excerpts from her conversation with The Hans India, which certainly give a tremendous amount of motivation to people afflicted with adversities.

What inspired you to start writing?

I think it’s more ‘who’ inspired me to write than ‘what’. I’m 34 now, but I wrote my book for my 22-year-old self, who was neck-deep in chronic depression and near suicidal. Self-harm, too, had happened.

Over 20 years of abuse in all forms - be it mental, sexual or physical - had driven me at that time to wonder what the point of life was.

It’s only after my healing journey began, during which I learnt and deployed some simple but effective tools that I realised my purpose in life was to serve. To speak my truth without fear and help whoever I could on their healing journey.

Sometimes, my book wrote itself through me. It’s something much bigger than me. Much more noble than me. And has less to do with me, and more to do with touching others’ lives.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

I’ve always loved writing, but I never thought I’d be able to write a book which would be received with such great enthusiasm by my readers.

And not one with HAPPYness Tools to help people feel better and witness miracles.

For most of my life, I’ve struggled with mental health myself, so when I realised that my desire to serve was more significant than my fear of sharing vulnerable, painful parts of my life, I surrendered to my purpose and wrote this book.

When you realise that intention and purpose are everything, fear becomes love and guidance.

How and where did you find these HAPPYness Tools? What are they exactly?

The tools found me! At my darkest, most hopeless moments, one by one, these 22 tools found me. I was introduced to alternate healing modalities like Theta Healing, Access Consciousness, Emotional Freedom Technique, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, etc.

At different phases of my battles with mental health, they gave me new perspectives and, more importantly, relief. And answers.

A miracle is nothing but a shift in perspective.

So, over a decade of finding myself in depression at various times, I came across spiritual teachers and devoted therapists who taught me multiple tools to use precisely when I was in crisis mode. The point, I learnt, was not never to get depressed; it was to find ways to get back to love, to life, and to live. These tools, which I call HAPPYness Tools, are meant to take your nervous system out of sympathetic mode (which causes anxiety and fear) and into parasympathetic mode (calm and relief). But, these HAPPYness Tools help you feel better when you need to the most, but also help you delve deeper into your triggers and resolve them.

What would be your immediate advice to someone struggling with their mental health?

Get help without any fear of being judged. There is nothing noble about suffering in silence. That is a disservice to yourself. Even at this time, I’m on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication, and that is the best decision I’ve ever made.

There is such shame attached to getting help. As if taking medication is a step backwards when, in fact, it’s the opposite. If your mental health requires medication, then take it under strict medical supervision.

It will help your nervous system calm down, enabling you to be more present and more receptive to help so that you can heal.

Initially, my family didn’t accept it, but seeing how much it helped me, they eventually came around.

Are you on social media, and can your readers interact with you?

Absolutely! My Instagram handle is @TheHAPPYnessAddict, and it has a lot of HAPPYness content on it.

How did you come up with your book title?

One day, I was hearing a spiritual discourse by Gabrielle Bernstein (my favourite spiritual teacher), and she was saying something she always does: that being happy all the time isn’t possible.

All we can aim for is more happy moments than unhappy ones on a daily basis.

And that’s when it came to me that the point wasn’t to be completely happy each day; it was just to be more happy than unhappy on any given day, i.e. to be ‘mostly happy’ each day.

Which these HAPPYness tools will help you become.

And once you have more days where you’re ‘mostly happy’ than unhappy, you’ll reach the more than ‘mostly happy’ phase, essentially the path to even greater healing and miracles.

It’s a process and a beautiful one at that.