Every type of illness needs timely treatment. More so with mental illness. Once we see our symptoms, we often deny any kind of requirement for a doctor or medicines. When we finally face our illness head on, that’s when we begin the process of treatment – a therapist, a psychiatrist, taking medical help, having regular medicines. Just like physical illnesses, mental illness too can be cured with medication and through regular visits with doctors. Let’s take that first critical step, today!
Dr Nivedita Challil is a counsellor and Arts based therapist. She is also the founder of Arth, a mental health centre in Mumbai and a teacher of Buddhist psychology. We were fortunate to have an online session with her during the Covid lockdown on the topic ‘How to take care of your Mind’
Dr Nivedita started off the session with a concept known as the Emotion Wheel that displays the whole spectrum of emotions we experience in our lives.
The innermost circle has 6 primary emotions: Fear, Anger, Sadness, Surprise, Joy and Love. Most of us wake up every morning and we would naturally want to be in the Joy space or the Love space. Nobody would like to wake up to be in the Sadness or Fearful space. But what often happens is that while we try to be in the Joy or Love space, the way we go about it is in a manner that aggravates or triggers the other emotions. The wheel starts spinning faster and faster in our heads and we experience mood swings, anger or frustration. If we really want to stay a little stable or stay within the joy or love space (green or yellow zone), we need to control few factors that will allow us to stay there.
These 6 emotions are known as root emotions and each of these emotions have certain nuanced emotions. For instance, if you feel fear, you could be feeling scared, terrified, insecure, nervous or horrified, that is, different degrees or shades of that root emotion. You could also have someone going upto panic, for instance which would be another level or nuance of the secondary emotion of terror. If someone is nervous, they could be feeling the next degree of emotion that would be anxiety or worry. We want to be able to control and move past all of this so that we can reach contentment or more happy or enthusiastic spaces in the emotion wheel. But how does one do that in our stressful lives is the obvious question.
(The wheel of Emotions has been created by Robert Plutchik)
We need to recognise that our minds tend to create its own dramas. For example, when we spend hours on social media, we tend to get stressed if we don’t get enough validation on our posts. We look at happy pictures of friends going to different places, having fun and we feel inferior about how we are leading our own lives. The idea of missing out on what others are doing and not being able to push ourselves to do the same spins our emotion wheel to emotions that are not helpful. Part of the reason we go through these emotions is simply in our mind. We need to be able to learn to control it so that we are moving towards joy.
Nivedita introduced a metaphorical concept from Buddhist psychology – that of a clap. Whenever there is a difficult situation, for example, a loved one is upset and not talking to you, you are suffering in that moment. But when you look at why you are suffering, the first thought that comes to mind is that this person is not speaking to me or they are causing me stress. So our focus is always on the outside – what the other person did or didn’t do, what he said, and so on. These are external factors. But this external factor is not operating in isolation. It is operating in combination with something else. The clap in question does not create the sound on its own. When the external factor meets the internal factor of the mind and what we think we need at a particular time, that’s when we have an emotional response that kicks in. But we have the power to change the internal factor of our mind. We determine how we respond to any situation.
It is not always that the problem may be internal to our mind. There may be multiple external issues that need to be changed, e.g. larger societal issues like domestic violence, rape, abuse, etc. But by and large many other things are a product of our mind.
A wise scholar once said, “Where will we find enough leather to cover the world? Would it not be wiser to cover our own two feet instead?” The idea is that outside problems are infinite. We cannot control all of them. So what can we control? Our own actions and our own emotional responses so that we can be alright in situations that are not in our control.
Whenever there is a situation that is generating an emotional response in you, recognise and watch the first thought coming in your mind. Suppose someone didn’t respond to your message. That is an external factor. But that has met an internal factor, your current mental state, which is the internal factor that is causing you stress. So you need to learn to change your thoughts and responses to that situation to prevent that stress.
While we usually all agree that change should happen, it is not easy to bring that change within ourself.
The idea is to come into a space where we are more self-reflective, where we are thinking about what kind of internal factors are affecting us and what kind of factors repeat in different situations. But we cannot start this exercise by being critical or harsh to ourselves. We cannot look at our thoughts and label them as good or bad. We have to be non judgemental about ourselves. We can classify our thoughts as helpful or not helpful to avoid being judgemental. The more we judge ourselves the more our self reflection is likely to fail. Our goal in identifying and classifying our thoughts is simply to recognise our patterns and to avoid the non helpful thought patterns so that we can eventually reach the goal of being happy. This self reflection has to be done from a position of self-compassion. It has to be done at a time when we are reasonably calm. We should not do it on a day when we are feeling angry or upset.
(The above cartoon is based on a meme created by Brazilian webcomic artist Lut)
When you have an argument with someone and are feeling anger towards that person, you may reach a stage where you learn to control your anger and don’t react. But it may happen that the latent anger may still remain in your mind and it can create a loop of negative thoughts that can eventually turn into an anger outburst at some point that may end up damaging the relationship with that person. To avoid this, we need to replace the thoughts of anger with something positive. Try instead to think of the positive characteristics of that person and how he/she may have helped you in some manner or done good things for you in the past. That will help you to look beyond the feeling of anger.
There is no right or wrong way of self reflection. The goal is to identify the internal factors when they kick in and how to avoid getting into a loop of negative thoughts so that you can steer your mind away from non-helpful thoughts to helpful ones. Those external factors that can be changed, an attempt should be made to change them but those that cannot be changed must not be wrestled with. Instead we need to learn to work to change our own internal factors. And the way to do that is self-reflection and the first step towards self reflection is self compassion.
The idea of compassion is being able to accept ourselves, not because we are super human but because we are alright and we are enough and we can look at ourselves with kindness. Imagine someone you love dearly is in pain and they are limping towards you. Wouldn’t you feel great compassion towards them and want to help them? Why can we have this warm-heartedness to others and not to oneself? We need to bring this compassion to self as part of our daily practice and learn to say “I’m alright”!
We can use mindfulness to distance ourselves from our thoughts that are not helpful. Learn to observe your mind as if you are viewing it from a distance, from a neutral compassionate space. If your mind is getting a thought that you are not good enough, it could become a part of your belief system. But with mindfulness you are observing a mind that is saying it’s not good enough. And there is a world of difference between the two. A belief when entrenched in the mind can have a control over us. With mindfulness, you are able to loosen that control. You are recognising that the mind is saying it is not good enough and that does not necessarily mean it’s true. It is simply a thought that occurred at a vulnerable time. We need to use mindfulness to recognise that we start spewing unhelpful thoughts, start believing them and our wheel of emotion continues to spin. But if we are able to step away from it, we realise that we don’t necessarily have to be caught up in that belief system and there is a way to step out of it.
Highlights from the Q&A session:
Q. How to come out of a breakup to practice self-compassion?
The practice of self compassion and self reflection has to be done when we are calm. But when things are very intense, the mind itself is hurt and is not in a position to heal itself at that time. At such a time, it is recommended to get help from a professional.
Q. Even when we realise that we need to change, the fear of failure causes procrastination. How to overcome that?
Treat your life as a small experiment. Don’t take things too seriously. If you look at your life as an experience in learning more and more, whether you fail or succeed doesn’t matter as long as you have learnt something, improved and had fun along the way. Because we have fixed self beliefs about failure, it feels like a big thing. But failure and success are both transient.
This session gave us a unique insight into Buddhist philosophy and psychology and ways to control the spinning emotion wheel in our minds. Dr Nivedita conducts a more detailed course in applied Buddhist psychology and those willing to know more about it can contact her via Arth, her mental health institute in Mumbai or by contacting Hugging Club of India.
– Written by Amit Rai
– Compiled by Amol More
– Edited and uploaded by Mahrukh
Being diagnosed with Bi-polar disorder is not a life sentence. You can get treated, stay cured and move on. Your life awaits you. Don’t get shy about meeting a psychiatrist and taking medicines. There is a cure for this. Stay happy and healthy – it’s your right!
“The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.” – Thomas Crum, author, and presenter in the fields of conflict resolution, peak performance, and stress management.
This is the quote with which our guest speaker Kamlesh Sonawane started the session with us. Kamlesh is an accomplished and experienced psychologist based in Pune. He took an online session for HCI on 2nd August, 2023 on the topic – ‘Decoding Anxiety, Stress and Depression’.
Acknowledging the fact that you have certain issues is the point where the self-improvement journey begins, according to Kamlesh. Whenever there is a conflict between two parties and if someone enquires about it from one of them, a commonly heard reply is “I told him so many times, but he was not ready to understand!”. The solution to the issue is hidden within this statement. That’s where the journey of knowing ourselves begins.
A research study says that climate change could wipe out life on earth in the next 100 years. Because of this there is so much stress and anxiety in humans that we will ensure our species gets extinct within 20 years! This is the extent to which stress and anxiety can affect us.
Imagine yourself as an onion that has layers within. Our first layer is how we are visible or how we portray ourself to the society in general, to those people who don’t know us. Now let’s peel off this layer and come to the second layer, which is how our family and friends perceive us or how we portray ourselves to them. Let’s peel off this second layer too. We reach a third layer, probably the most important one – our inner self. Think about how we perceive our own self. We now have 3 answers for each of the 3 layers. Majority of the times all the 3 descriptions will be different. How we view ourselves is usually not the same as how our friends and family or strangers perceive us. This is the origin of our stress, anxieties and depression. ‘Know yourself” is the first step to resolving issues related to mental health issues. Self-study and study of the self is how Kamlesh put it very simply.
When you visit a mental health professional, they will simply build up your coping skills to allow you to deal with any issues. They will not treat you forever. Once you have developed coping skills, you will have the ability to deal with further issues on you own.
Depression is more dangerous than cancer, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is a silent pandemic and people need to be aware of this so that they talk about it and do not avoid approaching a mental health professional when required. India has the largest number of clinical depression cases in the world, as per statistics available. Every 1 in 20 persons in India is going through depression. The number of such people in India would be equal to the population of a European country. That is the extent to which this issue has spread. From 2021 to 2030, the world economy will lose about $3 trillion just because of productivity lost due to mental health issues. This is approximately the entire GDP of India.
Anxiety and depression get classified under mental illnesses, whereas stress is some sort of mental pressure that affects us in our day to day lives.
Stress happens due to our present conditions. Indicators of stress are: unable to concentrate, get frustrated, etc.
Anxiety is something that happens frequently. Reason for anxiety is usually unknown and that is what triggers the anxiety. The person would know he is not feeling well but would not know the exact reason. For example, someone could get anxious in the dark without knowing why. Going to a particular place or being in a particular situation or condition may create an anxiety without any evident reason. Phobias also develop due to anxiety. Indicators of anxiety are muscle tension, shortness of breath, abnormal heart beats, a fear of unknown and irritability.
Depression is majorly linked to the past. Some events or circumstances from our past trouble us and keep coming back to us. This could lead to depression. An important indicator of depression is irregular sleep patterns even while following regular daily patterns. Loss of appetite is also an indicator of depression.
Kamlesh shared a heart breaking story of a friend who died by suicide. He made a very thought-provoking comment that the thought of suicide appears for a few moments and if we can overcome those few moments, we have the ability to get out of that impulse. Unfortunately, it is in those few moments that his friend was taken away. We need to take an effort to listen to people who express any suicidal feelings and if there is any such thought expressed even once, it should not be taken lightly. Ask the person about his issues, listen to him intently, show genuine concern and guide the person to take professional help. When someone really ‘listens’, the healing process automatically begins.
The session was followed by a question and answer session where participants were forthcoming about their issues and Kamlesh was very empathetic, patient and motivating. His insights to the issues were helpful and he guided the participants to explore possible solutions.
– Written by Amit Rai
– Compiled by Amol More
– Edited and Updated by Mahrukh
My dad was Bipolar. I used to take him to the psychiatrist for consultation and follow-up. Just the way you will take your dad if he were Diabetic or Asthmatic.
How about openly talking about mental illnesses? How about encouraging your loved ones to ask for help? As my dad used to say – don’t hide and suffer. Go to a doctor.
If you feel you need help to visit a psychiatrist or counsellor, I will be more than happy to accompany you. Hugs !
– Umang Sheth, Founder Hugging Club of India
We were fortunate to have a special guest Ms. Mimansa Popat, a distinguished authority on integral somatic psychology, who took time out from her busy schedule to share her expertise on an online session. Ms. Mimonsa has 25 years of experience as a remedial educator. She conducted the session on the topic of ‘Emotional Regulation’ on 19th July 2023 for Hugging Club of India.
Ms. Mimonsa delved straight into a mindfulness breathing exercise with the participants joining in. She then asked us to imagine a peaceful, serene environment while breathing to create a distinction between simply breathing and a scenario where peaceful environs was also created in the mind.
Next, she asked us to imagine a contrasting scenario where someone has compelled us strictly to come to this session and we have braved rain and muddy water to reach the destination. This would naturally make us anxious and we would want to make sure we do not disappoint anyone and reach on time. Our body may get constricted, the heart may beat a bit faster or slower than normal and our normal breathing rhythm may change. This means our emotions are affecting the physiological reactions in the body. We would do any of these two things in such a scenario:
1. withdraw (feel demotivated, don’t want to work, don’t want to engage with people), or
2. retaliate (feel angry, hyper-active, over think, over-react, get aggressive)
Our reactions can vary between the two in various situations. So we go into a concurrent pattern, either we withdraw in some stressful situations or we sometimes retaliate. When this happens, people around us begin to judge us as moody or even fear us. We would come across to them as unreliable, as there is no consistency or continuity in our moods. It swings between the two extremes. But what is actually happening is that we are simply displaying physiological reactions to difficult or stressful emotions.
The emotions that cause our body to react can either be something we are presently experiencing or something that has occurred in our past. For example, when a child is walking with his mother and slips on a puddle of water, he gets hurt. The child would naturally expect his mother to comfort him and hug him. But instead the mother gets angry and scolds him for not being careful and not listening to her and may even spank the child. The child may then begin to realise that he cannot expect his parent to be there for him in case something bad were to happen. He becomes, what is known as, a precocious child. Slowly as his age progresses, he may stop taking risks because he sub consciously fears the outcome, in case he fails. For example, if in his young age, he develops good skills at designing presentations and he is requested to present on a topic, he would try to avoid doing the presentation and instead give it to a colleague or friend to do it on his behalf. This is to avoid a scene where he may be critiqued or told off on the task. Subconsciously, he is still operating from his childhood hurt and his personality therefore becomes a precocious personality and low on self-confidence. He is portraying a person that he may not actually be, had it not been for that experience in childhood. The takeaway here is that we should be aware of why we may be behaving the way we do to avoid being hijacked by our emotions.
We need to acknowledge our emotions and feelings, instead of either repressing them or behaving as if it was not a big deal. For example, the emotion of fear is not necessarily in the heart. It can be in the head or in the knees. Notice how the fear is playing out in the physiology and then sit with that fear long enough and allow it to expand to other parts of the body. This is done to spread the emotion across to allow the body’s physiology the capacity to deal with that fear. In case the fear does not spread, there are mindful touching techniques to allow the fear to expand elsewhere. The point is that our mind and body are elastic. When the emotion of fear is spread out, we are thinning it out, so we can negotiate that fear and deal with it.
Suppose someone has insulted you and you are feeling angry. A therapist would explore beyond the primary emotion of anger to reach the root case of whether the anger comes from secondary emotions like hurt, shame, feeling of inadequacy or helplessness. The therapist would try to expand these secondary emotions in the body so that the affected person feels it easier to deal with these emotions. Over time when this is practiced, the person develops a capacity to function even while dealing with these emotions. When emotions are expanded, we do not allow them to be entrenched within ourselves.
Setting boundaries for others to avoid invasion of your personal space was also an important concept explored in the session with a couple of examples.
How do we get over other’s perception of you as a people pleaser? The simple response was to stop being a people pleaser. Further, ask yourself why you are a people pleaser. Is it because you want affection or is it because you don’t feel loved enough? If we don’t feel loved, it could be because people who were supposed to take care of us did not do so as per our expectations in our early years.
Mimansa shared her own experiences as a child, which was very inspiring. She had learning difficulties (dyslexia) but her father was very accepting of it and supported her. She was mischievous and had to change 5 schools because of it. But she eventually found a mentor who was able to channelise her overactive energy in sports to bring it down to a lower level and due to that she was able to focus on her studies as well. She explained it beautifully when she said we need to look at special children as a glass where the Lord has put a drop of water. That drop itself means there is a potential to grow a seed there. Don’t look at the almost empty glass. Realise that potential. It was a very touching metaphor.
It is only recently that people have begun accepting that emotional dysregulation causes learning disabilities. Earlier it was only regarded as a neurological dysfunction. But even if it is considered a neurological dysfunction, the neurology is known to work with chemicals and how do we get chemical changes in our body? The answer is simple – by emotions. So, if our emotions are regulated, then the chemical imbalance will be less. The neurological dysfunction will still manifest, but at a much lesser and manageable level. This was profoundly insightful.
Mimamsa also emphasised the need to drink a lot of water as the energy within our body moves with water.
The latter part of the session was the audience questions which Mimansa responded to and her direct replies peppered with appropriate examples reflected the depth of her experience.
In the end it was an insightful, thought-provoking and educative session and we would be glad to have Mimansa back to gain more from her wealth of knowledge about her subject.
– Written by Amit Rai
– Compiled by Amol More
– Edited and uploaded by Mahrukh
By sharing your life stories you can inspire someone to open up and share their problems as well.
Take that first step today, speak out your heart. Reach out to others and you will find that you have encouraged others like you to communicate and step out of their comfort zone.
Be that leader who can motivate others, be inspiring and get inspired in turn.
Mental health consists of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It is about enhancing competencies of individuals and communities and enabling them to achieve their determined goals. It is more than the mere lack of mental disorders. It has also been defined as a state of well-being whereby individuals recognise the abilities, are able to cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully and contribute to their communities.
Shruti Padhye is a Mumbai based psychologist and psychotherapist with over 5 years of experience and she is also certified in LGBTQ+ therapeutic support. She is associated with Mpower as well. She was kind enough to take time out and join us in an online session on 26th July, 2023.
Here are some of the highlights of her session:
Counselling v/s Therapy:
Counselling is for surface level issues (e.g. to discuss a life issue on which you need clarity), whereas therapy is for something more deeper, like an emotional trauma. Therapy is a two-way process. Issues are analysed at the root level and there are suggestions where possible solutions are explored. Therapy is to make one self-aware. The therapist makes you more aware of your traumas, e.g. the relationship that you shared with your parents, how your environment was when you grew up, whether you were given attention or if you grew up on your own and ended up parenting your parents, etc.
Myths about Mental Health and Therapy
1. A myth about therapy is that you explain the problems and the therapist will tick mark the solutions one by one and give it to you, but that’s not how it works. It is a two-way process. They help and guide you and give you a non-judgemental, therapeutic space full of empathy. They allow you to explore yourself more. As a patient, you will also need to make an effort, give time and patience to the process to learn about your behaviour patterns. A therapist focusses on making us aware of 4 things primarily: Behaviour, Thinking, Emotion and any distress/problem in day-to-day life. Change is not the major focus of a therapist, but awareness and acceptance of the causes or unhealthy patterns in emotions or behaviour is the focus. Analysing one’s own emotions or behaviour patterns is not easy and the therapist helps with that. Once the person becomes aware and accepts the unhealthy behaviour or thought patterns, he can bring about changes himself, maybe through better life choices. Change is simply the outcome. But the focus is on the process. A therapist does not give you direct answers because then you will not learn and the pattern may repeat in future. A therapist can bring about a change of perspective when looking at an issue.
2. Mental health disorders are caused by black magic, evil nazar or past life karma: This is completely unscientific and untrue, but is unfortunately believed by many due to lack of awareness.
3. Some people believe that they can never get any mental health problems but it is quite usual to face such concerns in life and therapy / treatment is encouraged.
4. People with mental health illnesses cannot be helped: If someone does get any mental health disorder, they believe that it is life long and cannot be cured, but this mindset is incorrect. There are diagnosis available and mental health illnesses can be treated with medicines and therapy. Medicines control your physiology, that is, the chemicals in our body and therapy helps with our emotions, behaviour and thinking. The combination of medicines and therapy is important.
5. People with mental health problems are violent: Not applicable in a wide majority of situations.
6. Mental health problems will go away on their own: Some believe that you can sleep over a stressful situation or go to parties, have alcohol, etc and you will get over the stressful situation but these need to be addressed or the underlying problems may not go away on their own.
Barriers to Help seeking / Why it is difficult for some to seek Therapy:
1. Thinking that the person may think badly of them
2. Lack of awareness
3. Lack of resources
4. Feeling embarrassed or shy
5. Thinking that nothing can help
6. Assuming it’s a ‘passing phase’
Common Mental Health Concerns
1. Depression
2. Anxiety
3. Substance Use Disorder / Addiction
Some Symptoms of Depression:
– An unusually sad, irritable mood that does not go away
– Loss of interest in activities that used to be enjoyable
– Lack of energy and tiredness
– Feeling worthless/guilty when they are not at fault
– Thinking a lot about death or wishing they were dead
– Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
– Having sleep difficulties or sleeping too much
– Moving slowly or feeling agitated or unable to settle
– Loss of interest in food or appetite
Some Symptoms of Anxiety:
| PHYSICAL | PSYCHOLOGICAL | BEHAVIOURAL |
| Tight Chest | Intrusive thinking | Avoidance of situations |
| Shallow breathing | Ruminating thoughts | Isolation, withdrawal |
| Racing heart | Feeling sense of impending doom | Restlessness, agitation |
| Difficulty sleeping | Constant comparison | Irritability |
| Trembling | Indecisiveness | Easily startled |
| Sweating | Difficulty concentrating | Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviour |
| Muscle knots | Confusion | |
| Nausea, dizziness | ||
| Headaches | ||
| Diarrhoea, stomach aches |
Substance Use Disorder
– A pattern of use of a drug in which a person consumes the substance in amounts or through methods that are harmful to themselves or others
– Substance abuse can lead to substance dependence
– Substance abuse may indicate an underlying mental health concern
Signs of Substance Use Disorder:
– Cravings to use the substance
– Wanting to cut down or stop, but not managing to
– Taking the substance in larger amounts or for longer duration than you are meant to
– Neglecting other parts of your life e.g. work/school, relationships, friend circle, responsibilities
– Continuing to use substances even when it causes problems in relationships
– Using substances even when it puts you in danger
– Promising to quit but cannot
Treatment Methods
– Medication / Psychotherapy
– Support groups / Group Therapy
– Allied Therapy / Psychiatric Hospitalisation
Shruti was patient enough to give sufficient time to address all queries from the participants and we are grateful for her valuable insights. Shruti is closely associated with us and can be reached for a professional session. Anyone who needs helps should feel free to reach out to Hugging Club of India.
– Written by Amit Rai
– Compiled by Amol More
– Edited and uploaded by Mahrukh
The Hugging Club Of India is a safe space where people openly share their stories, challenges, feelings without the fear of being judged.
We have been meeting on Wednesdays & Sundays for over 5 years
HCI conducted an interesting interactive session with Ms. Monica K., who is a spirituality mentor and therapist, a mindfulness expert and a successful author. She has a wide experience of 15 years in the field of mental wellness. The session was held at Bibvewadi, Pune on 23rd July, 2023.
The topic of discussion for the day was ‘From Chaos to Inner Calm – Using the Power of Thought’. Chaos here refers to the chaos that happens in our minds. Monica went through her personal struggles and one day she decided that she wanted to change her life and move ahead. She describes herself as a non-conformist, not a sticker for rules, an out-of-box thinker and a rebel against social norms and conditioning.
Monica believes that our thoughts are the source of our mental health issues. We stay with ourselves and our thoughts throughout the day. For example, if your parents or caregivers were very critical of you in your formative years, you carry those thoughts with you as you grow up. But how you deal with those thoughts or self-talk defines your outlook. Suppose you make a big blunder in your office. Immediately a plethora of thoughts attack your mind one by one: “How could I do this?”, “How can I be so stupid?”, “How do I fix this?” and so on.
Often, it becomes a record that starts playing on loop in your head and that repetitive thought process can remain with you for a day, a week or maybe 10 days. Such thoughts will drain your energy. When you go to sleep that night, these thoughts would still at the back of your mind. When you wake up next morning, your mind will immediately go back to that event and you will feel a burden that you have to somehow face and fix that problem. We need to avoid being pulled into such a vortex of negative, repetitive, energy draining thought process or else they develop into belief patterns that get stuck. Gain control of your mind and don’t listen to it when such thoughts develop. Monica made a profound statement when she said, “Please give a thought to your thoughts because your thoughts are what moves your lives”.
For example, if a teacher continuously tells a student that he is no good, over a period of time, such repetitive thought process in the student’s mind becomes a pattern and the student begins to stop putting efforts into studies, even though he may have been intelligent to begin with and the teacher’s assessment about him was incorrect.
Awareness is the most important tool you have in the process to control your thoughts. That is the first step to mental wellness and healing process. You need to be aware of your energy draining thoughts. One needs to simply practice sitting with one’s thoughts and be aware of what thoughts are coming in the mind. Unless we are aware of what thoughts are repetitively appearing, we will be leading robotic, routine, mundane lives without reaching anywhere. It’s like running on a tread mill that never has a destination. In fact, we will get tired at the end of it. Once you gain awareness of your thoughts, this is what spirituality essentially means. Spirituality is simply your connection with your inner self. Everyone’s inner self has a guiding voice. But most of us haven’t developed the habit to listen to it because there is always a chaos of thoughts present in our mind. In order to listen to the inner voice, we need to first arrive at a state of calmness. Some call this inner voice as an intuition or a gut feeling. Let’s suppose you get 2 similar job offers with similar salary and benefits. How do you choose one? There is something inside us that makes us take that choice. That is our inner voice talking to us.
Our mind is an input and output machine. Whatever we input in it, that is processed and the output is our thoughts. Throughout the day if we are exposed to negative incidents like watching news about disasters, accidents, an argument with someone, a neighbour coming to your house and telling about his unfortunate incident, all this is getting absorbed in the mind. When we go to sleep at the end of the day, all these incidents have been absorbed and we keep thinking about it. But what is the positive stuff we are inputting in our minds to counteract or balance all this negative inputs? We need to have a “go-to-goodness” stimuli that we input every day in our minds. Some could read a book that they enjoy, others listen to a spiritual leader, maybe go to YouTube and watch a calmness or a meditation video. Do any such positive thing for 15 minutes. We need to allow our minds to absorb this positive stuff so that negativity is not the only input for the brain throughout the day. Imagine if every day we are bombarded with negative news or images and we do not take the effort to seek out even a single positive thought, negativity is all that the mind will ever absorb.
Positive thoughts clean out the negativity and give us a fresh start. Every day we take a bath in the morning to clean our body. But just because we cannot see the mind, most of us don’t take an effort to clean the mind.
Remember that each of us is different as an individual and we have our own unique journey. This practice may not work the same way for all of us. It may work for some but may not for others. And that’s totally okay. We need to take efforts and carve our own paths and explore what works for our mental wellness. There is no rush or competition with others. Your mental well-being is not a race. It’s a journey.
When you start living your life connected to yourself and your inner voice, your life begins to change. But the first thing we need to reach that objective is to clear the clutter in the brain. The first 30 minutes of your day decides the whole day for you. When you get up in the morning try the following: don’t touch your phone, make your daily cup of tea (if that is what you like) and sit near a window or your balcony and do nothing. Simply watch the nature. Appreciate and enjoy that moment. We are so robotic in our lives that we have forgotten to even notice what is around us anymore. But at a spiritual level, we are a soul that has taken a human form and it is the journey of the soul that we need to experience. We have over stressed and over stretched our brains to an unhealthy level and we need to take a step back to reconnect with our mind.
Sometimes we want certain things in our life. We may have thoughts about what we want to achieve, where we want to visit, etc. But at times life takes us elsewhere that is not as per our expectations. That is where our dissatisfaction, stresses, depression, and anxieties develop. But when you accept the truth that you are on a soul’s journey and what path you had decided for yourself is not the path of the soul, you won’t feel that way. Mental health issues are simply your mind’s coping mechanism, as you are not able to accept the reality of the path that life is taking you on. Try to say “It’s okay” with a smile on your face when things don’t go your way and soon you will begin to accept reality rather than fight with it or get sad about it. It makes you feel relieved. You are giving yourself validation when you say this. It is the power of the thought. If thoughts have the power to make you go low, they also have the power to bring you up. Your perspective of seeing the situation changes when you say “It’s okay”.
When our mind is consumed by repetitive negative thoughts we even tend to miss out on the challenges and opportunities that come our way as our mind is too pre-occupied.
Monica was very forthcoming when she openly confessed to having dealt with mental health issues herself so she has spoken frankly from her own experience.
The talk was followed by a lively question and answer session, where Monica answered queries based on her own life experiences. One of the many gems that came out of the discussion was when Monica said she believes in following her heart and she is constantly learning even after such a long and wide experience in the mental wellness arena. She believes in not judging anyone else and therefore applies the same logic to herself by not judging herself. Let’s believe that each one of us is an amazing human being and we need to reinforce that belief in ourselves. It was an eye-opening session for all of us and we would love to have Monica back to gain from her wealth of expertise.
