The Mental Compass

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The Pain We Don’t See: Understanding the Silence Behind Suicidal Thoughts

There are people who laugh loudly in a room and cry quietly when they get home. People who answer every “How are you?” with an automatic “I’m fine,” even when something inside them is falling apart. There are people who continue going to work, attending classes, replying to messages, helping their families and posting pictures while carrying a kind of pain nobody around them can see. This is one of the hardest things about understanding suicide: severe emotional distress does not always look like sadness. Sometimes, it looks completely ordinary. Suicidal thoughts rarely appear because someone simply “doesn’t want to live.” More often, they can emerge when psychological pain becomes so overwhelming that a person struggles to imagine another way for that pain to change. It can be connected to hopelessness, loneliness, shame, loss, trauma, prolonged stress, relationship difficulties, financial pressure, academic or workplace struggles, or feeling like a burden to others. Sometimes there i...

Eating can gradually become an emotional coping response when food repeatedly provides comfort, distraction, pleasure, or temporary relief from difficult emotions such as stress, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, or sadness. A simple psychological cycle can develop: Emotional distress → urge to eat → temporary relief → repeated association → emotional eating When this pattern is reinforced over time, the urge to eat may become associated with certain emotional states or situations, even when physical hunger is not the main trigger. Other factors - such as irregular eating, restrictive dieting, sleep problems, food availability, learned habits, and individual responses to stress can also influence eating behaviour. Emotional eating by itself does not mean someone has an eating disorder. Many people eat for comfort occasionally, and that can be a normal part of life. But we need to understand: Sometimes, a craving may be pointing to another need: Reassurance when you're anxious Connecti...

Symptoms of emotional distress: Students may exhibit emotional distress at home as a result of several factors that may manifest in the classroom as lack of concentration and irritability, withdrawal from peers, frequent absence from school, and significant deterioration in academic results. These indicators do not ensure the student engages in self-harm behavior; however, they indicate that there may be a problem or that the student requires an accessible pathway of help and support. Suicide prevention work in schools is vital because it's the one place where all young people will be seen by the same staff regularly and some may never attend a mental health service independently. A recent overview of suicide-prevention work in school-age people suggests it increases resilience, self-esteem, and self-help skills as well as reducing acts to end one’s life and self-harm thoughts for some. The problem in India, though, is not how to identify distress but how to devise school systems ...

Most of us don’t sit down and think about music; we just play it, while studying, walking, traveling, or even lying on the bed doing nothing. It becomes part of the background of everyday life. But sometimes, without warning, a song hits differently. It changes your mood and calms you. It reminds you of someone. It makes you feel something you didn’t expect; that moment is not random, something is happening inside the brain. Music is not just sound that enters the ears; it is a full brain experience. When a song plays, different parts of the brain start working together, many areas at the same time. The brain treats music as something important. Researchers have studied this using brain scans. They found that music activates areas related to hearing, memory, movement, and emotion all at once. It is like multiple systems syncing together, which is why music feels powerful even when we don’t understand it. Rhythm is the beat, the steady pattern you feel in a song. People respond to it na...

Written by Ms. Gurneet Kaur Jaitly, Counselling Psychologist “You know what hurt the most?” she asked me during a counselling session. “It wasn’t the argument. It was watching everyone choose a side without asking me what happened.” She paused. “My mother supported my brother. My relatives had their opinions. Everyone seemed to know my story—but no one had actually asked me to tell it.” Her words stayed with me. In many Indian and South Asian families, conflict rarely remains between two people. It travels: from room to room, phone call to phone call, until a private disagreement hardens into a collective narrative. One person shares their pain, an elder adds an interpretation, and suddenly, the person at the centre is no longer part of the conversation. They have become the subject of it. As a psychologist, I frequently see how damaging this is. When an entire unit agrees against us, we internalise the blame: “If everyone thinks I am wrong, maybe I am.” Self-reflection is healthy, but...

Emotional strength is often misunderstood as unyielding resilience, the capacity to absorb endless stress and keep moving forward without breaking. From a psychological perspective, however, true emotional strength is built on recovery and balance, not constant endurance. In every family and workplace, there is often one person known as the “strong one.” This is the person who holds everything together and navigates challenges without complaint. Yet behind this exterior may lie an untold story of exhaustion, a quiet fatigue that comes from always being the pillar for others. What Is Emotional Burnout? Emotional burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion that can develop after prolonged exposure to unmanaged stress. Unlike ordinary tiredness, burnout can leave a person feeling depleted, detached, and less effective. It can gradually reduce empathy, dull the ability to experience joy, and make everyday responsibilities feel overwhelming. It is not simply being tired; sometim...

Imagine you are back in school and you got your marksheet which says that you have successfully passed and secured 85%. Then you try to peer over your classmate’s marksheet and to your surprise, your classmate has scored 90%. You start to think about all the times you studied together and have knowledge of the subjects at an equal level but still somehow your classmates scored more than you. Eventually, your brain starts tingling about how your abilities or caliber might be less than your classmates. After a while, this might start influencing your interests and choices, and you might even start studying under stressful conditions just to be better than your classmates. Now, imagine a time lapse to your current self. You are scrolling through your Instagram stories on a sunny day in your leisure time. You stumble upon your friend’s story of how they got admitted to Oxford University. Your fun, leisure mood starts to spin around into feelings of incompetence, envy, self-doubt...

Written By : Ms. Mina Dilip, Consultant Psychologist & Play Therapist I love emojis. In fact, if you've ever received a text from me, you've probably noticed that I use them rather generously. I'm always on the lookout for new ones, and my current favourite is the little bouncing ball. It has bounced its way into far too many of my WhatsApp messages, much to the amusement and occasional exasperation of my friends and family. My teenage son recently decided it was time for an intervention. Apparently, there are unwritten rules about emoji usage, and I had unknowingly broken several of them. I thought emojis were fairly straightforward. A smile meant happiness, a thumbs-up meant "okay," and a heart meant affection. Then my son gently informed me that I had been living in a parallel emoji universe. Apparently, a thumbs-up can sometimes come across as passive-aggressive, a slightly smiling face may not be smiling at all, and the rules of emoji etiquette have be...

"The Boy and the Heron," an animated film, offers profound psychological lessons about mental health and the complex relationship between mothers and their children. The story explores the inner world of a young boy facing emotional turmoil, highlighting how grief, fear, and hope intertwine in shaping one’s mental well-being. The film emphasizes the importance of confronting inner struggles rather than suppressing them, reminding viewers that healing often begins with acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s feelings. This message is particularly relevant in today’s society, where mental health issues are often stigmatized, and seeking help can be seen as a sign of weakness. A central theme in the movie is the influence of a mother’s love and her impact on her child's psychological resilience. The boy’s relationship with his mother is depicted as a source of both comfort and challenge. While her love provides a safe haven, her absence or emotional distance can create feelin...

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The Mental Compass

Posts

The 80s Are Back. But What Are We Leaving Behind?

The Pain We Don’t See: Understanding the Silence Behind Suicidal Thoughts

Understanding Emotional Eating: Signs, Causes, and How to Manage It

Breaking the Silence: School-Based Strategies to Prevent Teen Suicide and Foster Resilience

Music and the Brain: How Rhythm and Melody Reshape Cognitive and Emotional Processing

Not Every Story Has a Villain : Sometimes we need to stop choosing sides and Start listening

The Power of Rest: Redefining Emotional Strength and Recovery

Social Comparison Fatigue: How we weigh our worth on the scales of other’s achievements!

Beyond the Emoji : Understanding Digital Emotions

Toon Therapy : Lessons from the Animated World - The Boy and the Heron