Therapy Notes

    In life, we search for peace and harmony.  But, most often we have the opposite of that. We feel unsettled, unhappy and don't understand why it is happening to us. Sometimes, we blame fate. Other times, the people around us - our families, friends, work colleagues. Our mental and physical health suffers.  At times, we are not sure what is wrong. We feel 'out of sorts'. One word to describe this feeling is 'unwholesome'. Is it possible to create an atmosphere of 'wholesomeness' in our lives?  And, what is wholesomeness? The Venerable Tenzin Palmo, the Buddhist Bikkhuni, writes:  Wholesomeness is a state of mind - such as understanding, love, generosity and openness of heart - which creates within and around us a state of harmony and peace.  To achieve Wholesomeness, Palmo suggests the Four Right Efforts. These are: 1.  Effort to prevent the unwholesome from arising. 2. Effort to discard that unwholesomeness which has already arisen. 3. Eff...

  What is mental health? According to the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency responsible for leadership and guidance on health-related issues globally, mental health is a state of mental well-being and the foundation of our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in. It is crucial to personal, community and socio-economic development. In my therapy practice, most clients’ issues can be traced back to lack of attention to their mental health as they were growing. Parents either have little or no information about the psychological needs of infants and this continues, as they grow, into adolescence and adulthood - in schools, institutions of higher learning and eventually, workplaces. It is only recently that schools and workplaces have begun to see the need to hire counsellors. How bad is the mental health picture?   Worldwide, a round 20 percent of the world’s children and adolescents ha...

In my therapy work, I find patients struggling with pressures in their lives – in families, workplace, socially. They are overwhelmed with tasks, challenges, decisions that never seem to end. They feel frazzled and anxious. We find it difficult to discern what is important to us, at any given time. This, in some ways, is the essence of therapy – finding our authentic selves – in the hope that our lives will be easier, and we will be more peaceful, happy and content. What does it mean to be authentic to ourselves?  For a start, it means being true to ourselves. Very often we think, do or say what is expected of us. Because we don’t want others to think poorly of us or disappoint them, we are untrue to ourselves. We operate out of obligation. We feel guilt, shame, and begin to suffer from low self-esteem. This makes us unhappy. Every time we do this, we make ourselves more unhappy. When we were children and dependent on our parents and caretakers, we were told what to do, think...

  A few weeks ago, my patient based in India was travelling in Europe for a wedding. Between cities, the airlines misplaced his baggage. We had an online session on the fourth day of the lost baggage. My patient was agitated and admitted he was obsessively checking online to locate his bags. He said he had bought a few essentials. Was there anything valuable in your bag, I asked. No, he said. He said he lived frugally but had a good pair of shoes. In this way, an unplanned session on loss unfolded. What else have you lost in life, I asked. He thought and said not very much. I probed and asked him to think about loss of youth, loss of faith (in others), loss of love, trust, and so on and so forth. He was struggling with these losses, but didn’t see them as such. The nature of loss was revealed to me in an article I read several years ago. A man lost his keys and was upset. His wife reminded him that he lost things very often, almost every day. But he didn’t think so. The art...

      Photo Credit: Ted Talks We are in relationships all our lives. From the time we are born till the day we die, we are in relationships. A relationship is a connection between people. It involves physical and/or emotional intimacy. Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it doesn’t have to be. It can be a non-sexual relationship involving family, friends, or acquaintances. How do we learn to be in relationships? The family is the first institution we encounter, so our first role models are our parents. How we see our parents relate to each other and to us, as children, shapes our notions of the nature of relationships.   This extends to our siblings if there are any. And, if we grow up in joint families, we have grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins in proximity, who we interact with. And these adults interact with each other. As we grow, we enter the institutions of schools, religion, colleges and the workforce. We make f...

  Feeling overwhelmed by a breakup? Can’t stop crying? The more you try to put it out of your head, the worse it gets. You’re hurting, and you don’t know how to stop it. What you’re feeling is quite natural. We all hurt. The range of emotions – love, anger, hatred, fear, jealousy, sadness, loneliness, surprise and more – are all normal. The ones that make us feel good are not the ones we worry about.   It’s the ones that trouble us. Because of the pain we feel, we often try to suppress these emotions. However, the more we suppress emotions, or tell ourselves they don’t matter, the more we will hurt. If an emotion troubles us, the first reaction may be to ignore it or pretend it isn’t there. For example, if we like someone, and they don’t reciprocate, we’ll sometimes pretend we don’t care. If we are jealous of a friend, partner or a person or situation in which we are not getting the attention we feel we deserve, we suffer. We hurt. We pretend it doesn’t matter. But it does...