The Writings

Before you ask: questions about therapy, psychoanalysis and inner life, answered by Aanchal Bhatnagar

All writings by Aanchal Bhatnagar, newest first

1. Twelve Sessions (For a Life That Took Thirty Years) (post, October 2026; therapy, culture). Brevity sounds like a virtue, shorter treatment, quicker formulation, and an intervention that gets to the point. While, most of us come to therapy having spent thirty years avoiding the point.
2. Perfection is the enemy of Good Enough (post, October 2026; defences, psychoanalysis). To whoever needs to hear this, Perfection is the enemy of Good Enough.
3. What does Therapy Cost? (post, October 2026; therapy, the therapist). Perhaps what therapy costs can only be measured against everything we have already been paying.
4. One who cannot mourn their defeat will eventually turn them into somebody else’s crimes (reel, October 2026; culture, grief). One who cannot mourn their defeat will eventually turn them into somebody else’s crimes.
5. Fetishising the Patienthood for Content (post, October 2026; the therapist, culture). The patient’s life does not become ours to narrate simply because we have been entrusted with hearing it.
6. If self-help books worked as advertised, there wouldn’t be so many of them (post, September 2026; culture, humour). If self-help books worked as advertised, there wouldn’t be so many of them.
7. The Seduction of an ‘Understanding’ Therapist (post, September 2026; therapy, psychoanalysis). The wish to be understood is rarely only about being understood. To be understood is to be forgiven, relieved, untethered.
8. When does Therapy start Losing its Purpose? (post, September 2026; therapy, psychoanalysis). When the treatment becomes another place where we can remain exactly as we are… only with better reasons.
9. ‘Protecting my peace’ has come to be the unsaid equivalent of ‘taking my ball and going home’ (post, August 2026; defences, culture, humour). ‘Protecting my peace’ has come to be the unsaid equivalent of ‘taking my ball and going home’.
10. Every institution is eventually asked the same question every parent is (post, July 2026; culture, childhood). Every institution is eventually asked the same question every parent is, “can I depend on you when I am frightened?”
11. We can hold concern for human suffering without requiring ideological sameness (post, July 2026; culture). We can hold concern for human suffering without requiring ideological sameness.
12. On (Not) Being Found (post, July 2026; love, defences). A boundary comes to, ironically, be not a line, but a bridge between the lost, and the found.
13. “Boundaries” guard us less from the other person, than from our own wish for them (post, July 2026; love, defences). “Boundaries” guard us less from the other person, than from our own wish for them.
14. The wish to be told Who we are (post, June 2026; culture, therapy). The work of therapy is in moving from ‘the wish to be told who we are’ to ‘being able to bear who we are’.
15. “Moving on” is a deadline set almost exclusively by the spectator (post, June 2026; grief). “Moving on” is a deadline set almost exclusively by the spectator.
16. A surprising amount of the first session can be spent trying to be the sort of patient who requires the least therapy (post, June 2026; therapy, humour). A surprising amount of the first session can be spent trying to be the sort of patient who requires the least therapy.
17. Is Managing Your Life Enough? (post, May 2026; therapy, defences). The difference between managing and healing is often, the willingness to ask one more question.
18. Doer- Done to: Notes on Bullying (essay, May 2026; childhood, feelings, culture). Just when I thought all that had to be said about bullying had been said, I met my loss of reflections around it, marking its territory in unavoidably stinky ways.
19. Behind the ‘Sliding Scale’ (essay, May 2026; therapy, culture). Imagine taking a luxurious catnap on a freshly ironed piece of clothing, a cliché cardigan, if you may, only to wake up and realize that while your inner world is rich, your bank account might be echoing with emptiness.
20. Thumb Tired Yet? (essay, May 2026; culture, humour). Dear Hooman, It’s me again, Anar Dana, your favourite, basically only, feline philosopher.
21. The Epidemic of Loneliness (essay, May 2026; feelings, culture, humour). Now, as a cat, solitude is my preferred state of being. I bask in it.
22. Confusions 101 (essay, May 2026; psychoanalysis, humour). Can you imagine me staring at a corner of the room, as if it contains the secrets of the universe? Just an uninterrupted gaze into nothingness. That, my friend, is the face of true contemplation.
23. Where Rage Goes to Hide (essay, May 2026; feelings, defences). Some days are hard. Not in any character building, retrospectively grateful, this will make a great story someday kind of way.
24. Your anger is not the problem. It’s the solution you found, before you found better ones (post, May 2026; feelings, defences). Your anger is not the problem. It’s the solution you found, before you found better ones.
25. Beneath that ‘tantrum’, that drama, that repetition is how far the mind would go to feel loved (post, May 2026; love, childhood). Beneath that ‘tantrum’, that drama, that repetition is how far the mind would go to feel loved.
26. To My Patients who Found ‘Someone Better’ (post, May 2026; therapy, humour, the therapist). To my patients who found ‘someone better’… two people sat together faithfully inside the mess of a life, and tried.
27. We can be loved, repeatedly, and still feel fundamentally unlovable (post, May 2026; love, childhood). Perhaps, we don’t always lack people who love us. But lack the internal conditions to believe them.
28. The Process of Analytic Writing (essay, May 2026; the therapist, psychoanalysis). On the psychoanalytic act of writing, silence, resistance, and the terrifying, necessary risk of putting thought into words.
29. Think ‘out of the box’, but stay ‘inside the lines’ (essay, May 2026; culture, humour). It’s appropriately windy outside & I’ve had my two breakfasts, along with four baths & one torn amazon box… all in all, it’s a good day to take matters into my own paws.
30. Let’s Talk Supervision! (essay, May 2026; the therapist). There’s something about the deadness of the night that allows you to touch your own psychic deadness.
31. “Play is the work of a child.” Maria Montessori (essay, May 2026; childhood, psychoanalysis). Shivoy is my two-year-old neighbour who often comes to my house to play.
32. The Material Heat and the Psychic Heat (essay, May 2026; culture, feelings). This has to be my first time speaking about the heat to everyone. This has to be the first time everyone has spoken about the heat to me.
33. Reading a novel without Curiosity (essay, May 2026; psychoanalysis, childhood). What is this title, you might ask.. I know, but don’t know either. (that’s basically what you can say about anything in Psychoanalysis to sound bougie)
34. Rhythms of the Unconscious (essay, May 2026; psychoanalysis, work). Do you like Pages better or Word? What a random question, right..
35. Not everything is a “Trigger”, and yet… (essay, May 2026; culture, feelings, humour). Anar Dana here, your ever-observant feline philosopher, currently stretched across my favourite spot right in front of the AC, pondering your curious preoccupation with triggers.
36. New Year starts in Feb. (essay, May 2026; feelings). The kind of while that stretches in memory, layered with all the things unsaid and the silence that wasn’t quite contemplative.
37. Not everyone finds motherhood inspiring, including some mothers (post, April 2026; women, childhood). Not everyone finds motherhood inspiring, including some mothers.
38. Letting go is an act of care (post, April 2026; love, the therapist). Letting go is an act of care.
39. Born to ask “Then what happened?” Made to ask “we have two minutes left…” (post, April 2026; the therapist, humour). Born to ask “Then what happened?” Made to ask “we have two minutes left, and I notice you brought this up now.”
40. When someone else’s happiness made you feel worse (post, April 2026; feelings, psychoanalysis). Envy is not about wanting more. It is about not being able to bear that something good exists outside us.
41. How Psychoanalysis Listens (post, March 2026; psychoanalysis, therapy). The goal of psychoanalytic listening is not to decode. It is to create the conditions in which we can hear ourselves.
42. Therapists in the Wild (aka social settings) (post, February 2026; the therapist, humour). Therapists at parties are like subtitles at a concert. We know too much, but none of it is useful here.
43. What does it mean to have a Reliable Home? (post, February 2026; childhood, love). When we don’t, the mind keeps making attempts at building a reliable home, an internal one, the one nobody can repossess.
44. Psychoanalysis, the new ‘Organic’ (post, February 2026; the therapist, psychoanalysis, culture). In a field that’s expensive, often gatekeeping and rarely institutionalised, reading, thinking, self-work is an act of care.
45. Is Everything Internal? (post, January 2026; psychoanalysis, culture). Psychoanalysis cannot undo the past or sanitise the world, but it can ask, how have we learnt to live through it?
46. When NOT to Seek Therapy (post, January 2026; therapy). Insight without integration becomes a shelter. An elusive language that only takes us farther from our selves.
47. The Unsolicited Advice (from one therapist to another) (post, January 2026; the therapist). Being impressive in a room is different from being useful in one.
48. Dr Claudia Sheftel-Luiz: From Freudian Psychoanalysis to Modern Psychoanalysis (essay, January 2026; psychoanalysis, the therapist). Let’s start from the beginning, Claudia!
49. The Impossible task called ‘Writing’! (essay, January 2026; the therapist). It’s 5:03 am, I’m sitting with an espresso, my cats sleeping in their usual spots, still dark outside.
50. Demystifying ‘Dependency’ in Relationships (essay, January 2026; love, childhood). Notes using attachment theory & contemporary psychoanalysis.
51. “I give interpretations for two reasons, to let the patient know I’m awake and to show the patient I can be wrong” (reel, January 2026; psychoanalysis, the therapist). “I give interpretations for two reasons, to let the patient know I’m awake and to show the patient I can be wrong.”
52. In Psychoanalytic Couple’s Therapy… (post, January 2026; love, therapy). The problem isn’t what you’re fighting about. It’s what you’re fighting alone.
53. “In every consulting room, there ought to be two rather frightened people” (reel, January 2026; psychoanalysis, the therapist). “In every consulting room, there ought to be two rather frightened people, the patient and the psychoanalyst.”
54. Does Psychoanalysis ‘Work’?! (post, January 2026; psychoanalysis, therapy). Psychoanalysis doesn’t give us a new personality. It gives us back the one we abandoned to become acceptable.
55. One feels homeless when the space, real or internal, belongs more to someone else’s mind than their own (reel, December 2025; childhood). One feels homeless when the space, real or internal, belongs more to someone else’s mind than their own.
56. Therapy is when someone is less interested in what happened, than in how you’re telling it (reel, December 2025; therapy). Therapy is when someone is less interested in what happened, than in how you’re telling it.
57. Ways we respond to our therapist’s breaks… (post, December 2025; therapy, humour). Breaks do something important. They show us how we handle absence. How we love, wait and long.
58. The Therapist Urge to… (post, December 2025; the therapist, humour). …let the fellow therapist know that you’re doing just fine.
59. The Way We Talk About ‘Red Flags’ Is Making Us Forget That People Are… People (post, November 2025; love, culture). Perhaps, the unglamorous reality is, we don’t fall for people, any more than we fall into patterns.
60. Are you Really in Therapy? (post, October 2025; therapy, defences). Therapy that seems perfect is often a collusion with the defenses. One that will soothe, but not heal.
61. Do we Ever Fully Heal? (post, October 2025; therapy, grief). Perhaps, healing is just the ability to be hurt without collapsing. To be alone without feeling forgotten. To allow for the ‘goodness’ to stay.
62. We don’t become “new people” with Therapy (post, October 2025; therapy, psychoanalysis). We don’t become “new people” with therapy. But we do grow capacities that let life move.
63. Asking the ‘Wrong’ Questions in Therapy (post, October 2025; therapy). Some questions circle around solutions. The right ones open the wound, for tending and inquiry.
64. The therapist’s intelligence is in recognising the self’s quiet devotion to… (reel, September 2025; the therapist, psychoanalysis). In resisting the fantasies of ‘rescue’…
65. Notes on Self-Sabotage (post, September 2025; defences). We return to what hurt us. For repetition is how the psyche holds on. Not to the pain, but to the fantasy of repair.
66. Therapy at Different Moments in Life (post, September 2025; therapy). Therapy is not only for breakdowns. It is for the in-betweens, the quiet transitions, the half-formed selves waiting to be found.
67. When someone says ‘I don’t believe in therapy’ (post, September 2025; therapy, humour). Perhaps therapy isn’t scary because it’s not real. It’s scary because it’s too real.
68. There’s a difference between being seen and being explained (reel, August 2025; the therapist, psychoanalysis). There’s a difference between being seen and being explained.
69. What are you trying to escape? (post, August 2025; defences, feelings). The itch isn’t a symptom to get rid of. It’s a map of what’s been split off.
70. Things You Didn’t Know Therapy Could Help You With (post, August 2025; therapy, feelings). Some wounds don’t scream, they shape who we become. And therapy is where even the quietest of them find language & sukoon.
71. Being Empty or Feeling Empty (post, August 2025; feelings). Therapy allows the cloud of emptiness to be translated & reckoned as the unformulated experiences.
72. When Cruelty becomes Culture (post, August 2025; culture). If cruelty is the air, then staying human is an act of rebellion. The refusal to become what the world has made normal is rebellion.
73. Signs of ‘Progress’ in Therapy (post, August 2025; therapy). The first sign of progress? We stop pretending things don’t hurt. Which makes us feel like we’re hurting more.
74. Being a Therapist in a Family That Doesn’t Understand Therapy (post, August 2025; the therapist, humour, childhood). They don’t believe in therapy. But they do believe in horoscopes, and “What will people say?”
75. Why We Sabotage What We Want Most (post, August 2025; defences). We sabotage not because we’re scared of getting it, but perhaps because it might stay. And we’ll have to feel worthy every single day.
76. We’re never as Suspicious of anything as our own feelings (post, July 2025; feelings, childhood). Repeated invalidation erodes trust in others, and the self… And leaves a generation embedded in chronic self-editing.
77. The Wounded Healer Myth (post, July 2025; the therapist). The pain is allowed to exist. It’s just not allowed to run the session.
78. For childhood isn’t an excuse, but it is an explanation (reel, July 2025; childhood, psychoanalysis). For childhood isn’t an excuse, but it is an explanation.
79. Not Ready for Therapy yet (post, July 2025; therapy, defences). If I can explain it, I won’t need help. The omnipotent child creates meaning to survive the absence.
80. Therapists: After Break vs. Before Break (post, July 2025; the therapist, humour). After Break: “I just want to help people.” Before Break: “I just want them to cancel in advance.”
81. Confusing Trends for Therapy (post, July 2025; the therapist, culture). “Be the Therapist You Needed”. Translation: Let the wounded part of the self do the branding. Skip the analysis; sell the fantasy.
82. On why holding without interrupting, and listening without frustrating is not enough (reel, June 2025; psychoanalysis, therapy). On why holding without interrupting, and listening without frustrating is not enough.
83. Symptom to My Madness (post, June 2025; psychoanalysis). The Symptom is not the problem, but the form the problem has taken to become bearable.
84. Things I Believed Before I Started Practicing (post, June 2025; the therapist, humour, work). “I’ll master one modality.” We now practice an artisanal blend of ACT-IFS-dynamic-relational-trauma-anythingfancy.
85. The Two Unequal Halves of the Month (post, June 2025; women, feelings). But in the end, there’s no word, no diagnosis for the heartbreak of becoming unreliable to yourself.
86. Childhood- it must be an organising principle (reel, June 2025; childhood, psychoanalysis). Childhood- it must be an organising principle… For how else could we trace today’s ache to yesterday’s absence?
87. Are You Free This Weekend? The Trick Question (post, June 2025; feelings, love, humour). Beneath every hesitation is a history, of being punished for saying no, of being praised for saying yes, of being shaped to believe that love is something we earn through giving unrestricted access.
88. When Freud said the processes in the unconscious are not organised temporally (reel, June 2025; psychoanalysis). What does a calendar know?!
89. The Loneliest Decisions We Make (post, June 2025; childhood, love, feelings). Times we let our parents believe we’re still who they need us to be, for their (self) love depends on the version of us they can survive.
90. Therapy is a Safe Space. But also a structured space. (post, May 2025; therapy). Therapy doesn’t promise comfort. It offers containment. And the difference shows up when things get hard.
91. In a Room Full of Therapists… (post, May 2025; the therapist, humour). In a room full of therapists… someone always brings up Winnicott. Always.
92. The High of Being Useful (post, May 2025; love, defences). What would it mean to be loved, not for what you give, but for who you are when you give nothing? Can you bear that kind of love?
93. Content Is Labour (post, May 2025; the therapist, work, culture). Posting insights is not the same as metabolising them.
94. Are Training Institutes Helping or Hollowing Psychotherapists? (post, May 2025; the therapist, culture). Many leave training knowing the right language, but with no idea how to trust our own clinical instincts.
95. What They Think We Do vs What We Actually Do (therapist version) (post, May 2025; the therapist, humour). What we thought we’d do: Hold space. Be helpful. Wear cardigans. What we actually do: Mute ourselves diligently, worry about supervision & pray the WiFi doesn’t cut out today.
96. To all those mental arguments we hold in the Shower (post, May 2025; feelings, grief). Revenge is precise. Grief is messy. And it’s easier to plan the comeback than to sit with what will never come back.
97. When the Inner World goes Radio Silent (post, May 2025; feelings, defences). Silence is not the end of psychic life. It’s how the mind waits & preserves, until there’s someone who won’t interrupt, invalidate, or improve it.
98. To Grieve without Fear (post, April 2025; grief, culture). We shout in hate what we fear whispering in grief, for grief admits vulnerability, and hate pretends invincibility.
99. Why Therapists Make Difficult Patients?! (post, April 2025; the therapist, humour, therapy). For no amount of theory prepares us for what it feels like to need, out loud.
100. We all deserve to be Children at least once… (post, April 2025; childhood). So this is for the ones who became adults in children’s bodies. The ones who carried too much, for too long, and still haven’t put it down.
101. There is a kind of Homelessness that has nothing to do with walls (reel, April 2025; childhood, love). This homelessness is psychic, a sense of exile from the very beginning, when no mind arrived to receive your own.
102. Why Do They Bother Us More Than They Should? (post, April 2025; feelings, psychoanalysis). Alas, it’s not always about them. Sometimes, it’s about who they become inside us.
103. Get Polluted or Go Insane (post, April 2025; culture). We are over-pathologized and under-listened to. Treated, but not heard.
104. On Parents (reel, March 2025; childhood, grief). To love them now is to admit we both lost something in the making of each other.
105. Someone’s therapist knows all about you (post, March 2025; love, grief, therapy). Their therapist has never met you, but they know your impact.
106. We Become Therapists to Grieve (post, March 2025; the therapist, grief). We became therapists not to escape our grief, but to metabolize it.
107. They say “You’re too much” (reel, March 2025; feelings, childhood). “Too much” often translates to: I wasn’t met. Not in childhood, not in crisis, not in love.
108. I Was Today Years Old When I Realised… (Therapist Version) (post, March 2025; the therapist, grief). That guilt is often easier to carry than grief.
109. The Subtle Ways We Abandon Ourselves for Love (post, March 2025; love, defences). We call it love, but really, it is fear. Are you afraid of losing them, or afraid of what their absence might force you to face?
110. The People Who Raised You, and the People You Became… (post, March 2025; childhood). Maybe they failed you. Maybe they did their best. Maybe both are true at the same time.
111. For all the times Adults throw a Tantrum (post, March 2025; feelings, love, childhood). I don’t know how to say ‘I’m hurt’, so I’ll make you feel it instead.
112. Psychoanalysis is called the cure through love (reel, March 2025; psychoanalysis, love). To be analyzed is to be met where no one came before. To be held without being claimed, to be seen without vanishing into the gaze of another.
113. We Overthink Everything, except for the big things (reel, March 2025; the therapist, humour). We overthink everything except why the worry never goes away.
114. This is your Sign to Try Psychoanalysis (post, March 2025; therapy, psychoanalysis). This is your sign to try psychoanalysis, not because something is wrong with you… But because there’s more to your story than you’ve been able to say.
115. Are You Living Like Someone’s Watching? (post, March 2025; feelings, defences, childhood). When you brace for criticism in the silence of a pause, filling the gap with imagined disapproval. As if being corrected was the closest thing to being seen.
116. Feels Like Therapy, But Isn’t (post, February 2025; therapy, culture). It’s the quiet, unglamorous work of mourning, holding, reckoning & surviving that integrates therapy with life.
117. Therapist Life, Romanticized (post, February 2025; the therapist, humour). The Therapeutic Relationship: Half deep emotional work, and half: Pt: “I already know what you’re going to say.” Therapist: “…Okay, but let me say it anyway.”
118. Who Were You Before You Became So Responsible? (post, February 2025; childhood). Did you step into the role willingly, or was it the only way to feel safe, loved, or in control?
119. No one told us that the hardest thing would be patients who adore us (reel, February 2025; the therapist, psychoanalysis). It’s holding the weight of being important to someone, without becoming the person they lean on, inside or out.
120. Shades of a Lost Friendship (post, February 2025; love, grief). The Quiet Grief: Mourning a Friendship That Still Exists. When the rituals remain, but the warmth has gone.
121. How to Support a Friend in Therapy (post, February 2025; therapy, love). Be a support, not a substitute.
122. Who Benefits from You Not being in Therapy (post, February 2025; culture, therapy). The split part of the mind that has internalised the attacks & humiliation, and in-turn continues to attack any goodness coming our way.
123. You Can Get Bored With What You Love (post, February 2025; feelings, psychoanalysis, love). Boredom is integral to the process of taking one’s time. (Phillips)
124. Why Therapists need but lack Camaraderie (post, January 2025; the therapist, work). In the emotionally charged work that we do, exhaustion doesn’t manifest as a wish for a break, but acted-out as withdrawal.
125. Bots or Therapists (post, January 2025; culture, therapy). Bots give you what you’re looking for. Therapists: the work is often to figure out what you’re looking for.
126. Signs we are Fetishising Mental Health (post, January 2025; culture). Performative vulnerability: confusing aesthetic oversharing for awareness, without questioning, “who benefits from this”?
127. Once you’re a Therapist, You can Never… (post, January 2025; the therapist, humour). Once you’re a therapist, you can never… be sure of anything, yourself, what you know, your patients, your future, your interpretations, anything.
128. The Lesser Spoken Truths About Therapy (post, January 2025; therapy). Alas, it is not the work of therapy to make you happy. The work of therapy is to make you wiser & you can still choose to be unhappy.
129. What it means to Feel Contained (post, January 2025; psychoanalysis, therapy). What it really means to feel contained is the capacity to be alone, in the presence of the other.
130. Phases of a Therapist’s Life (post, November 2024; the therapist, humour). The “I Could Write a Book” Phase: …and say “who else gets to do that?”
131. For days you don’t want to be You (post, November 2024; feelings). For the pain is not in feeling “we’re bad”, it’s in no one coming along & telling us any different.
132. The kind of Therapist I’ve never met (post, October 2024; the therapist). The one who hasn’t disintegrated feeling the intense imposter syndrome.
133. Let’s Re-Write (post, October 2024; feelings, culture). Your discontent & grief do not require an extraordinary event to feel valid enough.
134. When Therapists take a Break (post, October 2024; the therapist). There’s a hope, always, that one wouldn’t have to take a break for a while now.
135. Why Psychoanalysis will always be Relevant (post, October 2024; psychoanalysis). Trauma is in being seen, heard & not held.
136. The Cultural Relevance of a Therapist in India (post, October 2024; the therapist, culture, humour). “So what kind of cases do you get?”
137. Ways Therapists (Unknowingly) Interfere with Healing (post, September 2024; the therapist, therapy). To acknowledge & live with one’s failures is an act of holding.
138. How Therapy makes you a Better Person? (post, September 2024; therapy). The parts you learn to accept within yourself, you accept in others too.
139. Why Therapists need Therapy? (post, September 2024; the therapist). To not mistake ourselves to be holier than thou.
140. Life Between Sessions (post, September 2024; the therapist). The shortest, fullest 10mins that are not recorded, analysed or felt.
141. How to introduce Therapy in the family? (post, August 2024; therapy, childhood). It may not change anyone’s mind about therapy, but it would mean not having to hide a part of yourself.
142. Shades of Grief (post, August 2024; grief). Our grief is not to master the loss, it’s the continuation of what’s been lost, within us.
143. Awards That Are Not Given (post, August 2024; therapy, humour). The Unclocked Crown: a pat of solidarity to those who don’t fall into the trap of ‘get over it’… who are ready to give their grief the time it needs.
144. Your Politics is F*cked Up If (post, August 2024; culture). You think religion, caste & politics are separate.
145. Mistakes I’ve Made as a Therapist (post, August 2024; the therapist). Confused soothing with holding.
146. Words Therapists Hang On To (post, August 2024; psychoanalysis, the therapist). Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anaesthetize themselves. (Phillips)
147. How to Identify an Analyst (post, August 2024; psychoanalysis, the therapist, humour). Psychoanalysis is not about listening, but listening to one’s listening.
148. The (Truer) Clichés about Therapists (post, August 2024; the therapist, humour). Every therapist has a therapist, and they have a therapist, & that’s an ecosystem in itself.
149. Why Therapy continues to be the Last Resort (post, July 2024; therapy, culture). Because somewhere along the lines, we’ve learnt that we cannot ask for help.
150. Therapists & Their Negated Burnout (post, July 2024; the therapist, work). Burnout in therapists is lived out as an identity state rather than an experience state, leaving a hollowed-out intra/intersubjective communication.
151. Subtly Concealed Patriarchy (post, July 2024; women, culture). Where individuation cannot be accommodated, it is turned to isolation.
152. Things Therapists Would do if they Could do (post, July 2024; the therapist, humour). Advice: Unpopular but true that we really don’t know what you should do about your life any better than you…
153. The (un)Easy Woman (post, July 2024; women, feelings). For she, desires but resists. Wants but denies. Feels but dissociates.
154. From the Therapist’s Diary (post, July 2024; the therapist, psychoanalysis). Patients come because they’re in pain, but not suffering.
155. On Being Childfree (post, July 2024; women). The need is to separate maternal from childrearing, ambivalence from pathology, childfree from psychic emptiness.
156. Why Therapy feels Expensive? (post, July 2024; therapy, culture). Money, as an emotional currency, becomes the bearer of our projected guilt, internalised deprivation & envy.
157. Terms to use in place of Self-Diagnosing (post, July 2024; culture, feelings). Self-diagnosis… hides the very vulnerabilities we wish be seen behind the jargon, because we feel no one would take note otherwise.
158. Stories Therapists tell themselves (reel, July 2024; the therapist). Alas, the work of the therapy is to bring up our own shoddiness, as a patient, but as much as a therapist.
159. What to expect from Therapy (in place of solutions) (post, June 2024; therapy). Being in therapy is about the capacity to wait, to be frustrated, to be relentless, to meet the impossibilities of life, to be anything but satisfied!
160. The Strange thing called Therapy (post, June 2024; therapy, humour). It’s harrowing that our therapist has other patients, and that we’re not the only ones occupying their minds.
161. The Privileged Language of Mental Health (post, June 2024; culture, feelings). Nobody, nobody gets to talk someone down for your mental health struggles.
162. The Good Patient (post, June 2024; therapy, psychoanalysis). To desire a compliant, grateful client is the therapist’s unconscious wish. To survive the ‘hating love-object’ patient is the therapist’s work.
163. Because Knowing is Not Enough (post, June 2024; therapy, psychoanalysis). Insight is not sufficient. Sure, we reach an understanding of our patterns… But conjoined thoughts don’t heal bruised feelings.
164. Please don’t be ‘Positive’ (post, June 2024; feelings, culture). Things one can say in place of ‘be positive’? Nothing. The need here is to be able to tolerate the impossibilities of life.
165. The Cringe Therapist (post, May 2024; the therapist, humour). Gratitude is often a form of reparation, a way of compensating for a psychological debt or guilt for what one has received from others.
166. Hurt people, hurt People (reel, May 2024; feelings, defences). Let’s just put it this way- the hurt self is the shamed self.
167. The Good (enough) Therapist (post, May 2024; the therapist, psychoanalysis). There are no ‘good’ therapists; they are good enough. And yet, that fits.
168. Children’s Books for The Child in Us (post, May 2024; childhood). “What is the bravest thing you’ve ever said?” asked the boy. ‘Help,’ said the horse.
169. To Suffer From Relationships (reel, May 2024; love). For we often confuse ‘love’ to be a singular thing.
170. Works I’ll be Thankful to Freud for (post, May 2024; psychoanalysis). What doesn’t get resolved, gets repeated.
171. Freud beyond Sexuality (reel, May 2024; psychoanalysis). Despite the crisis of Psychoanalysis, there are few things that will always make sense.
172. Introducing Psychoanalysis into the Clinic (reel, April 2024; psychoanalysis, the therapist). Transitioning into Psychoanalysis can look like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
173. Awards that aren’t given (post, April 2024; therapy, humour, women). For all the first ones in their families who choose to be in therapy & break the cycle of generational trauma.
174. (Belief) in the Process (reel, April 2024; therapy). You’re not a math problem that can be quickly ‘fixed’, or ‘solved’.
175. Why did you swipe? (post, April 2024; culture, therapy). You didn’t swipe for advice, you swiped for hope & connection. And that’s never the architecture of such ‘poster therapies’.
176. The Eeriness of Being in Therapy (reel, April 2024; therapy). No one should have to recover from their therapy; being in therapy is not all couches and catharsis!
177. Why Defence Mechanisms (should) Fail (post, April 2024; defences, psychoanalysis). The Collapse of the defence mechanisms is a sign of recovery.
178. On Psychoanalytic Training (reel, April 2024; psychoanalysis, the therapist). We are more attuned to what’s not coming in words- what’s forgotten, what’s evaded, what’s being enacted, what’s being evoked.
179. 9 Things I learnt reading Sigmund Freud (reel, March 2024; psychoanalysis). Freud is one of the most controversial names in history, and that’s what happens when you talk about things that no one wants to hear.
180. Quips I take to every session (post, March 2024; the therapist, psychoanalysis). Patients don’t come to us to get better, they come to us to feel better.
181. Deconstructing Clinical Supervision (post, March 2024; the therapist, work). It is in supervision, the therapist begins to survive the uncertain, scary, ambiguous profession; they begin to survive their errors.
182. The Whys & Why Nots of Cancellation Fee (post, March 2024; therapy, the therapist). This is not school, this is a relational space where you can still choose to do what you want, but it’s essential to reckon that what you do impacts the other.
183. Write Like no one’s Watching (post, February 2024; psychoanalysis, work). “Like dreaming, writing keeps me alive in my work as a psychoanalyst.” — Thomas Ogden
184. Burnout as a Therapist (post, February 2024; the therapist, work, women). There’s nothing as mandatory to ‘do’ as a therapist, as taking scheduled breaks is.
185. Why is Therapy Expensive? (post, February 2024; therapy). Because therapy can be comforting, not comfortable & this gives the chance to unravel one’s relationship with money.
186. Imposter Syndrome as a Therapist (post, February 2024; the therapist, work). Feeling like you have no idea what you’re doing. And fearing that someday your patients will see that too.
187. ‘Work’ as an Object (post, February 2024; work, psychoanalysis). Work is the new pacifier; the new instant gratification method that soothes the anxious self.
188. Why Therapists need a Sense of Humor (post, February 2024; the therapist, humour). To be able to laugh at our mistakes and (sometimes) with our patients.
189. The Degenerative part of Psychoanalysis (post, January 2024; psychoanalysis, culture). As Ogden says, if you’re not kind and accessible, you might be doing something but that’s not Psychoanalysis.
190. Minor Inconvenience (post, January 2024; feelings). Attend to them like you would to any papercut. It’s small but it demands to be felt.
191. How to Show Up for the Other (post, January 2024; feelings, love). It is not, never, the survivor’s duty to educate the obliviousness in us.
192. Is there more to Love…? (post, January 2024; love). To give language to an idea as discerning as love, is philosophy.
193. Feel your Feelings (post, January 2024; feelings). Saying ‘You hurt me’, instead of gaslighting oneself into believing that the hurt was your own fault.
194. Ask Your Therapist (post, January 2024; therapy, the therapist). I cannot stress enough the value of finding the ‘right fit’ as your therapist.
195. Normalising vs Romanticising (post, January 2024; culture, therapy). To normalise is to make it doable, real; to romanticise is to do the opposite- make it mysterious, untouchable.
196. Gift Guide: Mental Health Version (post, December 2023; love, feelings). To make love easy and tolerable is to heal.
197. Wrapped: Mental Health Version (post, December 2023; grief, feelings, psychoanalysis). To allow oneself to grieve is to let something insatiable become digestible.
198. Psychoanalytic Values (post, December 2023; psychoanalysis). At the centre of Psychoanalysis is the capacity to wait, to tolerate.
199. Notes on Lying (post, November 2023; defences, psychoanalysis). Lying is an attempt at safeguarding one’s vulnerability, self, and neurosis, from others as well as the reprimanding self.
200. The Story of Cancellation Fee (post, November 2023; therapy, the therapist). Money is integral to therapy, and not a system outside of it.
201. Why Do We Settle For Less (post, November 2023; love, childhood, culture). Generational trauma (also) shows up in earning what you deserve- even if it’s love.
202. Feeling Empty looks like (post, November 2023; feelings, defences). The feeling of a void in the gut, out of which everything slips off. Nothing stays long enough to make us feel ‘full’.
203. Ordinary Losses (post, November 2023; grief, psychoanalysis). For losing is not an event, it is a process of/in everyday living.
204. Resilience is the Othered narrative of Trauma (post, November 2023; therapy, culture). Resilience is the othered narrative of trauma that forelooks how survivable our patients are.
205. The Misunderstanding (post, November 2023; psychoanalysis, therapy). There is so much that relies on misunderstanding. That is where analysis begins.
206. Omnipotence- inside out (post, November 2023; the therapist, psychoanalysis). Over our careers, if we do not temper this fantasy, we will be destructively self-critical, frustrated, and unable to take pride in the help we realistically offer.
207. Netflix and Resist (post, October 2023; culture, grief). Who says resistance has to look loud and bloody.. it can come wrapped in a wrenching poem or held in a sensitive film.. To resist is to be.
208. How to talk about the War (post, October 2023; therapy, culture, grief). Silence is resistance, pre-verbal state is free. Wait. Allow. Don’t push.
209. War enters the Clinic (post, October 2023; therapy, the therapist, culture, grief). We bear the madness of external destruction, played simultaneously in internal destitution.
210. Psychoanalytic Work is for.. (post, October 2023; psychoanalysis, therapy). For someone who wants to know where it hurts, and why it hurts. Not for someone who needs immediate relief from how it’s hurting.
211. On Adult Friendships (post, October 2023; love, culture). Adult friendships look like society bitten by the super-ego.
212. Boundaries (post, October 2023; defences, psychoanalysis). Frigid boundaries breaks possibilities.
213. The Analytic Language (post, October 2023; psychoanalysis, culture). While conceived, carried & birthed by Freud, Psychoanalysis is also spoken under the Banyan trees with chai… There is a psychoanalysis for everyone.
214. Selling Motivation (post, October 2023; culture, feelings). Lack of libidinal energy to invest in the overwhelmingness of everyday life is not the same as lack of motivation.
215. Fine Artists do Psychoanalysis (post, October 2023; psychoanalysis, culture). Perhaps one wonders if it’s in art that there’s freedom to be & process, or it’s in being that art happens.
216. The feeling called Blah (post, October 2023; feelings, defences). Being blah, is regression without undoing.
217. The Disappearing Friend (post, September 2023; love, feelings). Oh, how it hurts to have that friend. and kills to be that friend.
218. Netflix & Psychoanalysis (post, September 2023; culture, psychoanalysis). A beautiful short film, without words… just gripping us with sounds and symbolisation.. allowing feelings to precede everything else.
219. It’s Okay to Give Up (post, September 2023; feelings). Giving up, is a privilege, it comes at a price. But so does sticking around.
220. Using the word ‘Patient’ (post, September 2023; therapy, psychoanalysis). While you could be a client or a person anywhere, in the clinic, you get to wear your patient-hood, unhinged.
221. The Attack (post, September 2023; defences, feelings). To Attack is to speak from the unconsoled self.
222. It’s unfair to expect someone to heal, so you can soothe your guilt. (post, September 2023; feelings, grief). Pain is not a measure of hurt, it’s a state of being.
223. Resistance is a Compromise lived by the Analysand. (post, September 2023; psychoanalysis, defences). There’s just something so undeniable, yet affectless in resistance.
224. What one forgets is what one has lived long & full(y) enough. (post, September 2023; psychoanalysis, feelings). There’s health in forgetting.
225. We’re all Grieving. Some just do it loudly. Some, like a whisper. (post, September 2023; grief). Nobody prepares you to listen to grief- loud or silenced.
226. We don’t have relationships to get our needs met (post, August 2023; love). We don’t have relationships to get our needs met, we have relationships to discover what our needs might be.
227. Business is hopelessly bad… I only live for the inner work. (post, August 2023; the therapist, work, psychoanalysis). Psychoanalysis grips a large part of who we are, over what we do. Only then it becomes tolerable to hold this ‘impossible profession’.
228. Things Therapists Don’t (get to) Say (post, August 2023; the therapist, humour). hmm.. I’ll just sit here & wait for the bubble to burst.
229. Healing is everyday making a choice to not be what comes easy to you. (post, August 2023; feelings, defences). Anger comes easy, Enactment comes easy, Unhealthy defences come easy, Sabotaging comes easy… And yet, every day, we choose to be otherwise.
230. Things Therapists Say (post, August 2023; the therapist, therapy, humour). You don’t have to apologize for being human.
231. Who Works for Mental Health? (post, July 2023; therapy, the therapist). Well-intended; do not have the qualifications or work experience backing their opinions.
232. You are as needy as your Unmet Needs. (post, July 2023; feelings, love). There’s nothing as emotionally violent as calling someone ‘needy’ in ways that it’s pathological.
233. We are the most Aggressive when we feel Helpless (post, July 2023; feelings, defences). Aggression is a survival tactic, a response of the primitive part of the self that sees helplessness as a moment of death.
234. Why we do What we do (post, July 2023; the therapist, psychoanalysis). We do what we do, because somewhere someone did that for us…
235. When Pain Feels Invalid (post, July 2023; feelings, grief). What you’ve been through, is trauma. No there’s no measure, no one to validate that, no one can invalidate that.
236. Punishment (post, July 2023; culture, psychoanalysis). Punishment is the failure of imagination.
237. De-Clutter like a Therapist (post, July 2023; defences, psychoanalysis, humour). The difficulty is not in having clutter, it’s in embodying one.
238. When did we stop Believing in Magic (post, July 2023; childhood, psychoanalysis). A love letter, if you read in order, to all our disillusioned parts.
239. Minimalism for Mental Health (post, June 2023; culture, feelings). In simple words, Minimalism is beholding only what is needed & serves a purpose.
240. Note to the Strong Friend (post, June 2023; love, feelings, childhood). I’m sorry you thought no one was coming.
241. You should be in Therapy, if (post, June 2023; therapy). Something doesn’t feel right, even though ‘everything is okay’.
242. Let’s Normalise (post, June 2023; therapy, feelings, culture). Being in Therapy; for no apparent diagnosis, but for a vague ache in the heart.
243. Anatomy of Home (post, June 2023; love, childhood). Home is where your absence is felt, where your words are seen, where your body feels safe, where you can take love for granted.
244. The curse of being Too Much (post, June 2023; feelings, childhood). It is in being made to feel ‘excessive’ that it becomes a curse- we become a curse.
245. The language of Blah (post, May 2023; feelings). blah is, what emptiness feels like.
246. But no one came. No one ever does. (post, May 2023; feelings, grief). What when nobody exists, for the melancholic heart?
247. Gratitude: Things Therapists are Silently Grateful for (post, May 2023; the therapist, therapy). For our patients to wait for us to evolve.
248. Showing Up for yourself looks like… (post, May 2023; feelings, therapy). Allowing Nourishment, especially when we don’t know how to ‘receive’ love & help even when it’s given.
249. Childhood trauma is when you learn to be apologetic for your spontaneity. (post, May 2023; childhood). To all the times you laughed too loud; said something untimely; had a breakdown; wanted a hug; took too much (food, space, anything); made a mess; sat on a swing… your inner child needed that!
250. How Therapy Actually Works (post, May 2023; therapy, humour). How we think therapy works, and how therapy actually works.
251. Therapy IS for You. (post, April 2023; therapy). Note to the apologetic self…
252. It’s okay to change your mind. (post, April 2023; feelings). Let that be an affirmation…
253. How do we Love (post, April 2023; love). We almost never enter relationships as a blank slate; we enter as an imprint.
254. Breaking the Myths: Therapist (post, April 2023; the therapist, therapy, humour). A Therapist is always unimpressed. Well, harsh but the best thing your therapist can do for you is to free you from a performative presence.
255. Psychoanalysis 101 (post, April 2023; psychoanalysis, therapy). Psychoanalytic Therapy is a process that appreciates the complexities of Recovery & Reparation, which can neither be rushed, nor duplicated.