Finding a therapist was never the problem. Mumbai has plenty. The problem is finding one who will not flinch when you say your mother still reads your messages, or that you are the only person in your family who knows you are queer, or that you and your husband have not had a real conversation since the wedding, or that the job everyone congratulated you on is making you ill.

You want the real training. The degrees, the hospital years, the research. And you want someone who understands, without a footnote, why you still go home for Diwali. Usually you get one or the other. The serious one who treats your family like a symptom. Or the warm one who thinks everything is a boundary.

Hi. I am Priyanka Kartari. I started The Thought Co. in 2014 because I did not think you should have to choose.

The training, since you asked. Two Master's degrees, Clinical Psychology and Counselling Psychotherapy. Years as a consulting psychologist at Holy Family Hospital and Global Hospital in Mumbai. Gottman Method for couples. Trained in Queer Affirmative Counselling Practice. POSH certified, which sounds like paperwork until you notice how much of what walks into my room started at a desk.

Of the thirty people in my graduating class, four of us still practise. I think about that more than I should.

I lead the team at The Thought Co. now, so fewer hours in the room and more spent making sure the people in it are good. What I still do is sit with adults in the middle of something. A career that stopped making sense. A marriage quieter than it used to be. An identity you have carried like a bag nobody offered to hold. I am reflective, curious, and now and then blunt. I will show you the research. I will not tell you everything will be fine. It might. That is not my line to say.

The first session is mostly you deciding whether you can stand me. Fair question.

I co-authored State of Mind, a 2026 survey of 823 people in India's startup ecosystem. I have written for The Swaddle, and been quoted in The Economic Times, HT Brunch, The Better India, Mid-day, The Times of India and News18. The full list is on the Quoted in, written for page.