Desiderata

I guess it is only natural that mankind craves for approving nods for his thoughts and actions. The social stamp of approval goes a long way in increasing one’s performance, and also his self-image, which in turn boosts his self-esteem. So it is no wonder that when, as a practicing counselor, my clients call me back to tell me that they were on the road to recovery and that the simple external and conscious measures they were following was helping them immensely, it gives me a wonderful sense of satisfaction.

As counselors we never give advice; that is left for the domain of ‘well-meaning’ friends, spouses and relatives, and why, even the shopkeeper at the end of the road! I mean, what else is available freely if not advice? (Not taxable either!) We as counselors believe in the client becoming responsible for his life and actions, and help him in coming up with suggestions for solving the issue on hand. This way, they are also responsible for the outcome. We gently prod the thought process of clients who come so wrapped up in the issues that bog them down that a dispassionate outlook and a rational line of thinking is practically impossible for them at that stage.

The questionings and the lessons of self-analysis and behavioural changes through various therapies sets them going on the road to a better life. Obviously then, no miracle happens; it is a combined journey that they take together, and the therapist and the client decide when the latter can walk on his own, without holding the hands of the counselor.

This lady who was coming for counseling sessions to me for the past six months called me this morning to find out whether she could come and meet me for five minutes. It was not a counseling session she said, she just wanted to see me. When she came, I expected her to start from a negative position, which was happening all along. However, I was in for a very pleasant surprise. She had been away for more than a month, and during this time, the fact that she was able to hold fort on her own, without breaking apart, and the fact that she was able to confront situations head-on, gave her a tremendous sense of confidence and well-being. “Maybe I never did all my homework you assigned, but I found that whenever there was a situation that I used to buckle under earlier, now I found that I was able to rationalize issues and arrive at a decision based on the actual event, and not read anything excess into it,” she said. She sounded so proud of being herself, that she had started loving herself all over again! I was glad for her: glad that a person who had initially been so full of worries, playing blame-games, unable to handle issues that were of earth-shattering magnitude to her, and one who was ready to be a door-mat rather than stand up for herself and love herself, was today able to stand in front of the mirror and tell herself: “I love myself for what I am, I respect the person that I am now, and I have a right to be here in this world!”

All of us need to realize this: I am a very important person in my life: It is not being selfish. Only if you love yourself enough, will you take care of yourself, physically and emotionally. An emotionally healthy person will live life to the full, will be happy being in a state of acceptance, and thus spread this spirit around. Imagine what the world would be like then !!!

The Shoe On The Wrong foot

I think that as long as a woman does not support her kind, she will be always in the shadows. How much ever we shout from the rooftops about equality, about man’s ill-treatment of women and the lack of empathy towards her, unless woman herself changes her stance there is no hope for her. We will still have a mother-in-law ill-treating her daughter-in-law, or the other way around, and will will still have lady bosses in the corporate world who pull down competition in the form of women. We would have healthier serials on the television where we are not fed vamps decorated with all the jazzy clothes and bedecked with jewelry fit for a advertising campaign for a jewellery shop, arranging for pregnant woman falling down the stairs, or having cars ramming in to the heroine. Life overall would be pleasanter!We had some people visiting us, and during the course of conversation, the talk shifted to marriage, and arranged marriages and proposals. One lady in the group remarked about how her cousin’s wedding got cancelled, just because the girl wanted the boy to shift base, instead of the other way around. The reason was something which happens naturally in every family, in Indian society; only difference being, it happens in the boy’s life! Yes. taking care of the parents. It is the accepted norm, and why, even the expected norm that the girl leaves her parents’ house to set up home with the boy, and almost in all cases, with the boy’s parents. But, today, when a woman asks the same of the boy, the society is scandalized. Well, after all who accepts change willingly? But the sad part is, that the women are scandalized! How can a girl even think of saying something like that? How can she be so presemptous so to ask the boy to shift base, leaving a lucrative job? (The girl is having an equally lucrative job , but that is besides the point!) So, though the girl is an only child, and she would like to keep an eye on her aging parents, the thought is ludicrous; so the proposal fell flat. Given the closed door attitude of our society, there are chances that the girl may remain single, just because this one condition or option of hers may not be accepted by a prospective groom. Or if she is lucky (?) she may find a boy in the same city, and they can live happily ever after!We all talk of global changes; yet deep-rooted within each of us are certain basic socially fed norms, ideas and conventions that refuse to give in. The change has to start somewhere. Why can’t it start at our generation? Why can’t we accept that the girl who wants to take care of her parents has an equal right to do so, as the boy, and be open about it? Why do we feel it is below the boy’s dignity to shift base, just to accommodate the girl’s wishes? I personally think, that if he did this one act of consideration, the basis of the marriage would be rock-solid; the girl would meet him more than half-way, simply because she would have realized that here was a man, who accepted a girl as a person in her own right, with her own set of ideas of how the world should be. He may not agree with all of her views, but there would definitely be respect and commitment which are the solid foundations of marriage.

When Puddles Become Rivers

HOW PUDDLES BECOME RIVERS


I had to go out on an urgent call from the office, and after dealing with the crisis, I decided to walk home. However, half-way back home I was caught in a sudden downpour and sheltering in a nearby alcove, called my husband to come and pick me up. While I was waiting for him, I was idly looking at the puddles being formed on the road, and noticed idly how they were becoming larger by the minute. In front of my very eyes, one little stream ran into another, till it became a little rivulet.

I guess that is how life is. One thing runs into another, till suddenly, what you are facing is not just a routine affair, but a crisis that you perhaps just don’t know how to handle. Small issues have this niggling characteristic of troubling you but you are able to shove it aside and get on with your daily life. But somewhere it still exists; and when you least expect it, you find it looming up in front of you as large as a river, threatening to break the dam. You did not realize it would grow and multiply; what contributed to its growth? There they are, like little mushrooms, one growing over the other, like little toadstools in a rainy season under the forest tree. What fed it ? Our attitude to issues that we did not bother to handle, thinking they are small ? Our lack of attention to matters that should have been sorted out then and there, so that the issue no longer remains an issue, but dissipates into thin air and ceases to exist ? Or, is it because the dam has not been fortified, so that even if the large storm breaks over it, it could have withstood the assault?



If only we are able to handle issues at source, I am sure the world would have less of crisis management teams. We would need less life-saving drugs, less counsellors, less divorce courts, and less heart-aches. For what are minor irritants do not cause these; major ones do. And major ones are minor before they catapult into catastrophes.

THE VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER

I guess mankind, when he discovered the usage of coins, made two sides for it, keeping in mind the universal law, that every creation has two sides: including issues. This is very true of personality issues, where one has got to admit that any argument, confrontation, etc. is impossible without have two sides. The world thrives on the adage that every coin has two sides; I had the opportunity to view the mother-in-law daughter-in-law coin recently in this aspect.

Yeah this relationship is as old as the oldest creation; yet it has survived. For each mother-in-law there appears a daughter-in-law, a contra force. The exceptions to it not being a contra force are so few and far between, that they simply don’t seem to matter. Yet again, mostly we would find only the daughter-in-law perspective highlighted. I wonder if it is because the younger generation are more forthcoming, are more ready to open up and talk about the whole thing. They do not think that it would be a betrayal of family confidences, if they discuss their incompatibility with their mothers-in-law! Mothers-in-law are apprehensive of going public on this issue, are wary of discussing it except in closed circles. Generation gap? I don’t know.

Recently, I had the opportunity to get to see the point of view of a mother-in-law. They live in a joint family. The daughter-in-law is modern in her outlook, to the extent that she ‘does not believe in rituals, so would not light the lamp, would not celebrate her child’s first birthday in a traditional manner’. The mother-in-law, though not very traditional is hurt by such blatant denial of preserving certain family traditions. I would like to mention here that she is not a cut of the typical mother-in-law mould as an archetype of a mother-in-law exists today. She is persuing her doctorate at this age, doing voluntary service at an organization for the upliftment for the blind. Now here, I wonder where the problem arises from. The normal grouse between two individuals, who are tied together in this relationship, would have been one of modernism and traditionalism. The mother-in-law is a good mixture of both. But the daughter-in-law does not see it this way. She chooses to live life her own way, without giving in an inch, if not for tradition, at least for the fact that her mother-in-law is ready to meet her more than half-way.

I think there are no bad mothers-in-law, or no bad daughters-in-law; we need to approach this relationship too, with an open mind, and not have preconceived notions attached to it. I have a feeling this daughter-in-law must have fitted her mother-in-law into a round hole, and found to her surprise that she does not fit, but now does not know how to handle a ‘different mother-in-law’! I too had a mother-in-law who was not the one who would fit into the round hole, but fortunately for me, I did not try to fit her in, and so both of us had no major hassles, god rest her soul…

The Mental and Emotional Differences

The phone ring in the midst of my workshop was insistent, and finally, excusing myself, I attended to the call. The young girl at the other end of the line sounded very worried, and upset. My mother is mentally disturbed, and I would like to bring her to you for counseling, she said. I debated whether to correct her, on the usage of the term ‘ mental disturbance’ then thought better of it, choosing to talk to her when she came to see me in person.

A lot of us make this fundamental error in differentiating between mental and emotional disturbance. As a counselor, I have come across many who say that they are scared to tell people they are visiting a counselor, for fear of being labeled as ‘mad’.

I think the difference starts from a very academic point of view. Our brains are divided into two: the right brain, which is emotional, perceptive and intuitive, and the left brain which performs the logical, rational and thinking functions. According to personality traits, people are either predominantly left- or right-brained. This is not to say that one part of the brain functions less than the other, it simply means that one is more dominant than the other. So we have people who make decisions based on logic and reason, which might make them appear very business-like and cool and collected, as they use deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion. On the other hand, we have the emotional, highly excitable individuals, who make on-the-spot, sometimes rash or hasty decisions, based on their emotions and on purely what they feel.

There can be no judgement on which way is the better way. Certain situations warrant a left-brained thinking, and certain issues, right-brained actions and decisions. A balanced working of both sides of the brain results in a healthy thinking individual. However, if a person always allows the right brain to dominate, he or she will end up being a high-strung, easily excitable, edgy and impulsive individual, who would act first and think later. At the other end of this spectrum, we also have individuals who would be low in spirits, be low in self-esteem, who would be global in his or her approach, especially when it comes to negative events in life.

It is important to understand this difference, to know the distinction between a ‘mental’ problem and an ‘emotional’ problem. People who are more right brained will be more emotional, and thus are better candidates for manifesting emotional problems. Now, emotional problems are connected with feelings, thoughts, and mind-set of an individual. When we say a person has a ‘mental’ problem, it is more clinical and medical in nature. It could be a pathological problem, which may require medical intervention, and possibly a consultation with a psychiatrist. A mental problem could manifest in the form of, say, delusions, hallucinations, personality problems, or obsessions.

An emotional problem, on the other hand, is more concerned with how the individual views the world from his or her angle. This would be very subjective, and may result in a distorted view of a situation, especially if the person is the injured party! A continuous series of events in this vein may result in an emotional issue, of say, low self-esteem, depression, self-effacing thoughts etc., further leading to relationship problems. Here, if
the person is predominantly right-brained, the problem is compounded, for he or she would refuse any logical arguments or reasoning on his own for a situation.
A right-brained individual would also be interested in fine arts, be intuitive and very sensitive to larger issues of existence. However, these positive traits maybe clouded because of the emotional problems he or she may be undergoing.

This is where external support would be of help. If one approaches a psychological counselor, who is trained to handle emotional problems and ask the right questions and gently probe issues in the person’s life, it would help the person look at the problem from a different perspective. A counselor would not have ready-made answers to questions, but she would help the client think in the right direction.

Just as one would visit a General Practitioner for a physical ailment before going to a specialist, say a cardiologist or a diabetologist for a specific problem, so too, one can visit a counselor, who would be able to identify whether a problem is of an emotional nature, which can be resolved through a series of counseling or ‘talking’ sessions, or whether the client would require psychiatric or medical intervention.

It is important to mention here, that counseling is not the same as advising. In fact, that is one thing that a good counselor never indulges in. A counselor does not provide a solution to a problem. On the contrary, he or she helps a client tap the inner resources to help the client arrive at a solution on her own. It works on the principle of : Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Most problems are emotional, before they turn out to be of a medical nature. Maybe that is why some healers claim that most ailments are psychosomatic in nature. What is to prevent us then from reaching out to specially trained people who are willing to listen to us, without being judgemental, who would help us cope with the daily stresses, resolve issues, and help us lead a better and healthier life ?