-
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the way “I’m fine” almost always arrives with a second sentence trailing behind it. “I’m fine. I just… I don’t know, I’ve been kind of tired lately.” The tired is the door. “Fine” was the doorbell. Several readers wrote back about that saying they’d noticed themselves doing it.…
-
There’s a specific feeling that arrives, for many people, somewhere between three and five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. It isn’t sadness exactly. It isn’t dread, not in the dramatic sense. It’s quieter than that. Something in the body starts to brace. A small heaviness in the chest. A reluctance to commit fully to whatever…
-
There’s a particular kind of arrival I notice in my work, more often than any other. A new client sits down composed, articulate, a little apologetic for taking the time and within the first few minutes, says some version of: “I’m actually fine. Things are okay. I just thought I should probably talk to someone.”…
-
By Manasi | Monday: Research Reads Reading time: approx. 6 minutes Mindfulness has had an unusual journey. It began as a contemplative practice rooted in Buddhist tradition, entered Western clinical psychology in the late 1970s through Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work on stress reduction, accumulated an impressive body of research evidence, became widely recommended by clinicians and…
-
By Manasi | Saturday: Wellbeing Toolkit Reading time: approx. 6 minutes Deciding to seek therapy is one thing. Finding the right therapist is another and for many people, it is where the process stalls. “Boundaries” has become one of the most used and most misunderstood words in contemporary mental health conversation. On one end, it…
-
By Manasi | Monday: Research Reads Reading time: approx. 6 minutes If you have ever frozen when you wanted to speak up, appeased someone when you wanted to say no, or found yourself unable to move in the face of something frightening you have experienced a trauma response in action. These responses have become more…
-
One of the most common things I hear from people who eventually seek psychological support is some version of this: I didn’t think I was struggling enough to deserve help. They had been managing. Getting through the days. Functioning, by most external measures. But something was not right had not been right for a while…
-
By Manasi | Saturday: Wellbeing Toolkit Reading time: approx. 6 minutes Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people seek psychological support and also one of the most misunderstood experiences in everyday life. If you have ever been told to “just calm down,” to “think positively,” or to breathe into a paper bag, you…
-
You have probably heard someone described as “resilient.” This person seems to bounce back from difficulty without missing a beat. Maybe you have wondered whether you have it, or whether it is something only certain people are born with. As a psychologist, I hear this question often. And the research has a more nuanced and…
-
Most of the conversations we have in a day are not with other people. They happen silently, inside our minds. You might wake up thinking about everything you need to do. On your way to work, you replay something someone said yesterday. At night, you might question whether you handled a situation the right way.…