‘Postpartum is as real as pregnancy’: Zara Noor Abbas on learning a whole new way of life after giving birth
The actor spoke about how empowering yet overwhelming it can be to have just 40 days to adjust to the role of motherhood.
Actor Zara Noor Abbas believes getting out and doing something physically is one of the keys to better mental health.
The star posted a video on Instagram from the gym on Wednesday with a caption asking viewers whether they would choose “familiarity or evolution”.
In the clip, Abbas talked about her own mental health struggles, saying, “For the longest time, I didn’t know how to validate my feelings.” She said therapy works when it comes to that, but there was more that kept her going.
“I was working out at the gym and I realised, what is this thing that makes me feel happy, and that makes me feel validated,” the actor told her fans.
She said she was feeling particularly good and wanted to share the “kick” she gets from “moving”.
Abbas was quick to point out that moving did not just mean mundane household chores you would ordinarily be doing in your life like “driving a car [or] cooking food”.
Instead, what she meant by “movement” involved going out to a “designated place”.
The actor also said, “You never really get out of depression.” Instead, she contended, you learn to “understand it [and] work on it”.
Abbas said the idea was to understand how to “control your anxiety and your triggers” and to keep doing that.
She said there were a number of ways to do this, like “watching a good movie” or “talking to a good friend”.
She said that if even one person in her audience could connect to what she said in the video, that’s her good deed done for the day.
The actor has earlier been a strong voice on a number of mental health issues. She has talked about her own struggles with anxiety, spirituality and postpartum depression. She’s also urged women not to hurt themselves in attempts to look younger.