Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, said Sigmund Freud. And while Freud's work on dreams opened up a completely new pathway to accessing the unconscious, it seems that it made dream work inaccessible to psychologists who are not trained in the psychoanalytic or a psychodynamic approach. When I started working as a counselling psychologist, my supervisor encouraged me to bring in dreams to the session. And in my own personal analysis, my analyst, being a Jungian analyst, worked...

I was working at a Palliative Care Center as a Counselling Psychologist run by an Oncologist Family’s Foundation out of a modest corner building of a well-known Hospital in the South of Mumbai. Here’s a moment that has stayed with me, ten years down the line. I recall sitting across from a 65-year-old caregiver and noticing, Ms. Jasmine, who otherwise looked composed on all the days that she would accompany her 70-year-old husband, Mr. Adi for therapy, feeling exhausted and visibly...

In the past few years, conversations around mental health have become more visible than ever. We see it in social media posts, workplace initiatives, school programs, and everyday language that now includes words like “boundaries,” “triggers,” and “self-care.” On the surface, it can feel like we are finally moving in the right direction. And yet, for many people, mental health support still feels distant, unavailable, but somehow not meant for them. While we traditionally understand this...