The Mental Compass

At fifteen, people started calling him "the fun guy." He always had some fresh reel for you, something ridiculous to send as a meme, or plans for the coming weekend—through gaming, or having long calls, or food delivered till late. To an external eye, he was living the best life. If you'd asked him what happiness was, he would have answered, "Having fun." Not being bored. Life being nice. "That's what psychologists term 'hedonic happiness': the enjoyment, experience, and seeking out of pleasure and comfortable feelings, and avoiding pain and discomfort. It's the "feel good now" aspect of well-being. But one evening, scrolling through his phone after another “perfect” day, he noticed a strange heaviness. The jokes felt repetitive, the likes didn’t feel exciting anymore, and the thought came to him: If I stopped doing all of this, would anything really matter?  Two kinds of happiness: Psychologists tend to speak about hedonic well-be...

Look around you. A beige living room. A white kitchen. A grey car. Black headphones. Neutral-toned clothes. Minimalist cafés with the same wooden tables, cream walls, dried flowers and soft lighting. Even children's spaces, once filled with bright colours, are increasingly designed in muted palettes. Somewhere along the way, colour became something we had to curate. Loud became “too much.” Different became “bold.” And safe became beige. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with neutral colours. They can be calming, sophisticated and timeless. Designers often use them because they create visual balance, make spaces feel larger and allow other elements to stand out. A neutral palette can also give people a sense of order in an increasingly chaotic world. But perhaps the interesting question isn't why do we like neutrals? It is why do we sometimes feel safer when everything around us looks the same? Psychologically, blending in can provide a sense of belonging. Human being...

It was randomly revealed to us that Yayoi Kusama passed away on 14th August. The 97 year old was a world renowned artist from Japan. The easiest way to remember Kusama would be as the “Polka Dot Queen.”  Almost no creative person exists without some or the other issues which may range from physical to mental to financial. Kusama experienced hallucinations and obsessive thoughts from childhood and later described her condition as obsessive-compulsive neurosis. (Turner & Reif, n.d.) She has voluntarily chosen to stay in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo.  In a 1999 interview with BOMB, she explained that her work originated in those hallucinations and obsessional images. Calling herself as an ‘Obsessional Artist’, she developed an extraordinarily disciplined artistic practice around repetition. Dots became fields. Nets became infinity. Mirrors multiplied the self until the boundaries between the individual and the surrounding world seemed to disappear. Her concept of “self-obl...

Written by : Ms. Blessy Jenifer Joannah. H Counselling Psychologist and Student Counsellor Blessy Jenifer Joannah H. is a Counselling Psychologist and Student Counsellor at RCM Matriculation School, Avadi. Her professional work and research focus on adolescent mental health, with a strong interest in understanding the emotional and psychological challenges faced by today’s adolescents. She is deeply committed to supporting young minds through counselling, awareness, and early intervention. Generation Z has grown up in a world where smartphones, instant communication and social media are becoming a part of their everyday life. Especially for this generation, the digital world and the real world are closely interconnected, influencing the way they think, feel and relating themselves to others.  Online platforms are more than entertainment, they serve as spaces for self - expression, identity formation and emotional interaction. This shows that technology has a big impact on their rel...

You can know you did nothing wrong and still feel guilty about something. That is what makes choosing yourself so uncomfortable. You say no, even though you have a perfectly good reason. You protect your time, ask for what you need or decide that something no longer works for you. There is nothing wrong with the decision. No one has been harmed. And yet, afterwards, you find yourself replaying it. Should I have just said yes? Was I being too difficult? Did I make them feel bad? The guilt can be so convincing that we start treating the feeling itself as evidence. But feeling guilty does not necessarily mean you have done something wrong. Sometimes, it means you have done something unfamiliar: you have considered yourself too. Why “yes” can feel safer For people who frequently put others first, saying yes can provide a sense of security. It keeps the interaction smooth, avoids immediate dissatisfaction and offers reassurance that the other person is pleased with them. This is one reason ...

When people think about how a life begins to take shape, they usually picture everything that happens after birth. The first environment that comes to mind is the outside world like family, school, experiences, choices. That’s where development feels visible, where you can actually see change happening. However, there’s an earlier layer to all of this, one that doesn’t look like learning or adaptation in the usual sense, and because of that, it’s easy to overlook. Before birth, there’s already a kind of quiet conversation happening, not with words, not with anything you could point to directly, but through the body itself. The developing baby isn’t sitting in a neutral space. It’s surrounded by a living environment, the mother’s body, which is constantly shifting. Heart rate changes, hormones rise and fall, nutrients move in and out, rhythms of sleep and activity come and go. All of that is happening continuously, and none of it stays isolated. It becomes the atmosphere in which develo...

On September 21st the world celebrates two separate awareness days: the International Day of Peace and World Alzheimer’s Day. The former is part of the political arena and involves a global appeal for diplomacy, while the latter is observed in private and signifies the sorrow caused by neurodegenerative decay. There is, however, a highly poetic similarity in this common date. The broad effort to heal a broken world serves as a compelling metaphor for the intimate struggle of a mind navigating progressive memory loss. In both cases a basic truth emerges: genuine peace, whether among nations or within families, demands radical empathy, the preservation of human dignity, and a firm grounding in the present moment. The Shared Date: Global Scars and Personal Archives Countries have historical grievances; centuries of war and generations of trauma which keep hostility going. In the same way, the human brain has a lifetime of personal history, its identity being shaped by the memories it hold...

We often treat sleep as something we can sacrifice when life gets busy. One more episode. One more assignment. One more deadline. We tell ourselves we will catch up later. But sleep is not the time when your brain switches off. While you sleep, your brain is still working. It processes information, regulates emotions, supports memory, and prepares you for the next day. When sleep is cut short repeatedly, your mood, attention, memory, and ability to cope with stress all suffer. And it works both ways: stress and anxiety can also make sleep harder. That is why sleep and mental health cannot be separated. What Happens in a Tired Brain? Healthy sleep moves through cycles of non-REM and REM sleep. Both deep sleep and REM sleep play different roles in helping us feel rested and emotionally balanced. When we do not get enough sleep, it shows up during the day. You may find it harder to concentrate, make decisions, or manage emotions. You may feel more irritable and low on energy. This is not ...

Sarla had imagined motherhood as something soft and glowing, like the women in the pictures she had grown up seeing in her small town. But in her tiny apartment in the middle of a loud, rushing metro city, it felt nothing like that. At twenty-six, with a newborn in her arms and a husband who left early and returned late, she often sat by the window wondering why she felt so empty when she was supposed to feel complete. She didn’t have the words to explain it, not in English like the neighbours spoke, not even fully in her own language. All she knew was that the more she tried to smile, the heavier her chest felt. Some days, she would stare at her baby and feel a strange distance, followed immediately by guilt so sharp it made her want to cry. She loved her child, she knew that, but why didn’t it feel like enough? Why did the smallest tasks feel so overwhelming? Why did she feel tired even after resting? One afternoon, at a local clinic, she overheard a doctor gently explaining somethin...