Thoughts — Emotions

If you’ve been active on any form of social media or your phones, you have most probably seen a photo of someone, clad in winter clothes, posing in front of snow-capped mountains in Leh, Manali or Switzerland. Or you have seen someone rafting in a river, trekking in the mountains, dancing to a TikTok song in front of a monument, brunching or munching on street food in any place that’s not the city they were stuck in for the past 4 months.  I saw it too and it made me pick up my phone and make plans with everyone I...

As someone who has been a chubby child and has been constantly told how “golu” she was, talking about ‘health’ was always stressful for me. Add PCOS with a lot of anxious thoughts to that mix, and physical training becomes a nightmare!The gym was actually a space of extreme stress and restlessness for me. I perpetually felt (or thought I felt) people’s eyes on me. And here’s the thing, I know our society is fat-phobic and I know the microaggressions that come with being fat in India, but seeing gym trainers have the same perception toward me as society did...

Vicarious trauma is defined as indirect trauma that can occur when we are exposed to difficult or disturbing images and stories second-hand. Usually seen among professions like the police force, fire-fighters, mental health workers, or doctors and nurses, this secondary trauma occurs after listening or being exposed to traumatic stories of other people, or even looking at disturbing images. During the pandemic, various health professionals – nurses, doctors, mental health professionals, physiotherapists, all showed signs of vicarious trauma. Among psychotherapists, research showed that professionals who were younger, had less professional experience, and had negative online treatment experiences were more likely...

The mind and the heart have been at war since the beginning of time. Their conflict is at the crux of human decision making. Each constantly struggles to overcome the other. When we think about the idea of our emotions getting to us, we are most likely to think of an emotional breakdown, maybe an episode of crying publicly or a bout of uncontrollable anger. We can never accurately judge how strong a hold emotions have over our actions. The following excerpt from Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence (1995) proves to us how dire situations can become when emotions get...