The Mental Compass

When everything arrives quickly, what happens to our ability to wait? A message goes unanswered for ten minutes, and we start checking our phones again. A video takes a few seconds to load, and we wonder impatiently if the internet has stopped working. We order something online and find ourselves checking the delivery status before the order has probably even been packed. A question crosses our mind, and within seconds, we have an answer.  Waiting has become an increasingly unfamiliar experience. Modern life has made it possible to get food, entertainment, information, products, and services with remarkable speed. Convenience has removed countless unnecessary delays from everyday life. But it has also changed something less visible: our expectations of how quickly things should happen. The problem isn’t that we have become incapable of waiting. It’s that waiting can now feel strangely out of place. When “now” becomes the default Psychology has long studied why people often prefer s...

Written By T Mugunthan Chari Counselling Psychologist & Social Observer, Chennai Indians are, by nature, deeply fond of both cinema and cricket. Both are embraced almost as religions, commanding cult-like followings, none more so than in Tamil Nadu, where movies wield immense cultural influence. As the adage goes, in the film industry, "business is marketing." Effective marketing makes or breaks brands and blockbusters alike. To explore this dynamic, let us compare two Tamil films from vastly different eras: a recent commercial juggernaut and an acclaimed parallel-cinema masterpiece. The Commercial Titan: Jailer 2 (2026) Production: Made by Sun Pictures, a dominant force in the South Indian film industry that, alongside its associates, controls screens across Tamil Nadu and major metropolitan areas.  The Star Cast: Headlined by South Indian superstar Rajinikanth, the film features a pan-Indian ensemble including Mohanlal, Mithun Chakraborty, Vidya Balan, Ramya Krishnan,...

Written By Gurneet Kaur Jaitly, Counselling Psychologist “Sometimes, children do not need us to put them back together. They need us to sit beside them while they find their way.” A few days ago, I came across an improvised version of a familiar nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty, thoughtfully reimagined around children’s emotional well-being. It offered me a fresh perspective on the rhymes we have grown up listening to and often teach our children without looking beyond their words. What caught my attention was the simple yet powerful shift in the narrative. Instead of focusing only on Humpty Dumpty’s fall and the inability to put him back together, the revised version spoke about friendship, emotional support, the freedom to cry and the courage to seek help. Kudos to the creativity behind this beautiful idea! It inspired me to pause, reflect and pen down my thoughts as a counselling psychologist. What if nursery rhymes could do more than entertain children? What if they could also help the...

Have you ever opened your front camera, looked at your face, switched on a beauty filter, and suddenly felt that the filtered version looked a little more like the person you wanted to be? Perhaps it was smoother skin, a sharper jawline, a smaller nose, brighter eyes, or a more defined face. What begins as a fun social media feature can sometimes leave us questioning our natural appearance. We scroll through perfectly posed photographs, carefully edited videos, celebrity transformations, fitness influencers, and skincare routines, often forgetting that what we see online is not always an honest reflection of everyday life.  In a world where almost everyone has a camera and an audience, beauty is no longer just something we see in magazines or advertisements. It is something we encounter every time we unlock our phones. One of the biggest changes in recent years is how beauty standards have become increasingly personalised and accessible. Beauty filters, face-editing applications, ...

For centuries, art has been a formidable space to express feelings, especially for children. For children who are introverted and cannot disclose their emotions by talking, art provides a non-threatening mode of expression to pour out unspoken feelings. Actually, artistic expression can be used as a supportive aid and therapeutic tool to unearth the unspoken or unexpressed feelings in a psychologically healthy manner by a trained mental health professional. Art becomes a language for nonverbal symbolic expression among children. Introversion and Emotional Expression in Children  Introverted children are more inward-focused and less inclined to talk about what they feel and say and articulate what they are feeling. Extroverted children are comfortable talking about how they feel, but introverted children tend not to express or push inward what they are feeling. This is often because they lack the words or confidence to express their experience of any negative emotions, such as anxie...

Note: "Productivity dysmorphia" is a colloquial term from social media and pop-psychology, not a clinical diagnosis in the DSM-5. It is used here as a descriptive framework to explore the psychological gap between objective achievement and subjective self-worth. You open the mail, and there is the email confirming that competitive internship you have been working three months for, the notification stating you finally have the GPA to qualify for a promotion, or the update on the role you have been dreaming of. Your heart skips a beat, but this time, it is not with the joyous excitement. As apprehension washes over you, you realize, "Now I actually have to perform.", "Everyone else in my batch is smarter than me," you think, "What is the next benchmark I need to hit myself so that I do not lag behind?" Within ten minutes, instead of popping a champagne or calling your friend to share the good news, you open a new Notion page and have a color-coded ...

Anger is a normal emotion. What matters is how we understand, regulate, and express it. What Is Anger? Anger is an emotional reaction that can arise when we feel that something is unfair, frustrating, threatening, disrespectful, painful, or obstructive. It may arise because someone has crossed a boundary or because we feel our views haven’t been heard. It may be because something we’ve worked hard for didn’t turn out as expected. At other times, anger isn’t really about the situation in front of us; a minor event might bring to mind an old wound, accumulated stress, exhaustion, disappointment, or a sense of helplessness. Psychologically, anger can prepare us to respond to what we see as wrong or threatening. In this way, anger has a purpose: it can draw our attention to a problem and encourage us to protect ourselves, set boundaries, or make a change. That doesn’t mean all angry thoughts are correct. It means the emotion should be recognised before it is judged. Did you hear this kind ...

Are you worried about impending work almost all the time and then, when you finally get time to yourself, you can't stop binge-watching or can't stop thinking about keeping yourself busy again?  You can ask yourself whether you do your work solely to achieve an outcome. Or whether you do it to keep yourself occupied In some sense, both can be draining. When you do an activity just for the achievement of a goal, without enjoying the process itself, you tie your worth to external outcomes and overlook the intrinsically rewarding part of the process. And when an activity itself serves as an escape from your daily life or your own thoughts, you are perhaps exhibiting avoidance, a reluctance toward what you may need to face. Most of us imagine peace and contentment, yet we spend time in activities that offer neither. Sitting with our thoughts is either too overwhelming or too difficult so we stick to momentum and continuous activity.  But why is it so difficult to sit idle for a mo...