Ira Khan posted this image. (courtesy: khan.ira)
Aamir Khan and Reena Dutta's daughter Ira Khan, in a recent interview with ETimes, opened up on her ordeal with depression and how she battled it with the help of therapy and support from her family. Ira Khan recalled, "While growing up my mind decided that to be loved, I need to be a slightly broken person. I made this perception by watching a lot of movies. I remember being as young as 8 or 10 years old and telling myself to fake a smile, to repress my feelings... So that I grew up being slightly broken because I believed that only then people will love me. So, I systematically made sure that I turned out to be a depressed person."
Ira Khan called her depression "partly genetic" and told ETimes, "Depression is a little complicated. It is partly genetic, partly psychological, and social. In my case, it is partly genetic. There is a history of mental health issues in my family on my mom and dad's side."
Ira added that her therapist told her that her parents Aamir Khan and Reena Dutta's divorce was "one of the trigger points." My therapist said that one of the trigger points was my parents, who handled their divorce as well as they could at that point. It was amicable. I am not blaming them but what they didn't realise is that because they made it seem like divorce was not a big deal, there was a perception my mind created of the situation. We create perceptions and we don't necessarily communicate to people about those," Ira added.
Ira explained that she doesn't blame her parents for her depression and she added, "So I blame myself for my depression. I spent 20 years thinking that you have to be sad for people to love you. But now how do I go back. I want to be happy. So now I have to systematically undo everything that I have done."
Ira Khan added that she has come a long way since then. Thanking her parents Aamir Khan and Reena Dutta, filmmaker Kiran Rao (Aamir Khan's ex-wife) and her fiance Nupur Shikhare, Ira said, "I reach out to both my parents for help. I also turn to Kiran aunty, In fact I have made a phone chat group with all three of them. And when it comes to Popeye (Nupur Shikhare), he has the emotional bandwidth to spend time with me. Being there for someone takes time and energy. It takes a certain level of commitment."