The Mental Compass

The post-covid period came with an evolved technology which surprisingly has all the answers to all the bizarre human queries and started to collaboratively work with us. It is the golden age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which not only changed the history of technological development but also the essence of human growth.   Oh! So, you feel like asking AI what type of dog breeds you can adopt? It will list every single dog breed according to your preference before you can blink.   Oh! Again, you feel like asking that you had a bad argument with your friend and what should you reply to to reconcile with them again? In a span of seconds, it will revert with a list of potential replies you can write back to your friend.   Oh! Once again, you have some difficulty but this time it is about feeling lonely and stressed at an office party and you ask AI to keep you company like a good colleague. Yet again, it will progress quickly and engage you in a conversation...

Sometimes, the person who makes a difference is simply the one who cares enough to ask. Written by Ms. Gurneet Kaur Jaitly, Counselling Psychologist She was sitting at the dinner table, answering every question with the same two words: “I’m fine.” Her mother noticed she barely touched her food. A father passing his son’s room noticed the door had been closed for days, and the usual laughter was gone. A husband came home to find his wife unusually quiet. She smiled and said, “Nothing, I’m just tired.” A friend cancelled another plan. A teacher noticed a usually cheerful student sitting alone. A colleague who always stayed back to chat suddenly began leaving without a word. Nothing looked like a crisis. Yet something had changed. When “I’m Fine” Doesn’t Feel Fine The little changes we notice when we care enough to pause. Emotional struggles don’t always announce themselves. They can hide behind a smile, good grades, professional success, family responsibilities or simply getting through ...

There is a strange paradox in the way we understand ourselves. We spend years trying to figure out who we are, what our personality is , our likes and dislikes, our strengths, our flaws. We take personality tests, describe ourselves with labels that seem to fit, and slowly build a story around the kind of person we believe we are. And yet, place us in a different room, with different people, under different circumstances, some part of that story can change. The question is not whether we behave differently. We do. The more interesting question is: if different situations bring out different versions of us, which one is actually the real one? We like to think personality is fixed There is something comforting about believing that personality is steady. We often like to say, “That's just who I am.” But psychology has spent decades exploring a more complicated question: how much of our behaviour comes from the person, and how much comes from the situation? In 1968, psychologist Walter...

Written By : B. Padma Priya, Psychological Counsellor  Sweet messages are lovely, but a meaningful connection needs more than cute moments! A little affection can make you smile, but consistency helps you feel valued. Warmth is shown through kind words, thoughtful actions, hugs, shared laughter, and special moments. These little gestures bring happiness, comfort, and a sense of connection. A meaningful relationship grows through affection as well as trust, respect, understanding, consistency, and a good sense of humor. When these qualities come together, they create a bond that feels secure, supportive, and lasting. A bond can have plenty of love and still feel confusing, unpredictable, or emotionally exhausting. Relational stability is about creating a connection where both people can trust, communicate, and feel confident about where they stand. Recent research shows that affection matters, but stable relationships also need trust, communication, commitment, and understanding. Re...

The 1980s are suddenly everywhere again. Big hair, vintage clothes, film grain, old-school settings and that unmistakable retro glow are taking over Instagram. All it takes is one photograph, one prompt and a few seconds of AI processing to see ourselves as if we had stepped out of an old photograph. It feels harmless, even fun. After all, what could possibly be wrong with asking AI to give us an 80s makeover? The uncomfortable answer is that the environmental cost of this nostalgia is much less visible than the picture appearing on our screen. The trend works because it taps into something deeply psychological: nostalgia. Nostalgia is emotionally comforting. It can make us feel connected to a simpler, more familiar version of life, even if we never actually lived through that period ourselves. When thousands of people begin posting their AI-generated 80s versions, another psychological force enters the picture - social proof. We see everyone participating, so participation starts to ...

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...