Kalki Koechlin has consistently advocated for mental health awareness, often drawing from her own life experiences. In a recent interview, the actor spoke candidly about her equation with ex-husband Anurag Kashyap, and the effort it took to rebuild a healthier dynamic after their separation. For those not in the know, Kalki and Anurag Kashyap got married in 2011 and got divorced in 2015.Kalki acknowledged that the process of healing was neither quick nor easy, and involved years of work, including therapy. However, she said that therapy isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. She said in an interview with NDTV, “I don’t think therapy alone helps. Firstly, when you’re going through a lot of grief, it’s sometimes even hard to do therapy because you need to feel your grief for some time. Therapy helps in the long term, and I highly recommend it.”
She went on to explain how therapy can aid in processing emotions over time, especially when it comes to letting go of resentment. “In the long term, if you don’t want to hold grudges against some people who’ve hurt you, it’s a wonderful tool to go back way in the past and to cope with the future because people are going to hurt you all the time. So to cope with that, it’s a great mechanism over the long term. But I think in that time when it’s really raw, when you’ve really hurt each other, it’s very important to have a period of non-communication.”Kalki also highlighted the importance of creating distance after a breakup, sharing a guideline she personally finds useful. “They say if you’ve been in a relationship for however long you’ve been in the relationship for, you should spend half that time being away from each other. If you’ve been together for six months, three months, you don’t communicate. I think it’s quite a nice measurement. I don’t know who came up with it, but I think it makes logical sense. You need that much time.”Emphasising emotional processing, she noted that it’s healthier to vent feelings to trusted friends or family rather than directing them at the person involved. “That’s not everything that they are. And then you start to remember the good things you had. And that’s when you have a clue. Once you start remembering the good memories from your relationship, that’s when you’re like, okay, I might be ready to meet this person again.”
