Psychoblogical

Hello Readers, Today I am going to write about another topic that I am really passionate about. Since a number of days, I had been thinking about penning down my thoughts on this topic. But every time I sat down to write, I felt like I couldn't do justice to the vastness and importance of it. However, a few incidents in the past days gave me a final thrust to write. As we all know, this year, rains caused havoc in a number of cities throughout the country. Mother nature showed her wrath in the form of floods. Day before yesterday, she gave yet another word of warning when she caused whopping destruction in some parts of my very own city- Pune. To the best of my knowledge, there have hardly been any instances of destruction caused by heavy rains in a city like Pune, given its geographical advantage. But then what was different this year? Mother Nature has had enough of it! That's what's different. This year, she just won't digest all the trash we dump. She w...

Hello Readers,  Today, I would like to share with you all my experience of visiting the country of my dreams - SPAIN!  Let us start from the very beginning. I wanted to learn Spanish since I was 14. However, as the saying goes- 'Better late than never'- I started learning the said language last year and Oh My! I fell head over heels in love with it! Needless to say, I was besides myself with joy when an opportunity to travel to Spain presented itself.  I was lucky enough to travel with a group of students from my institute who were equally thrilled about going to Spain. And this crazy bunch of people with limitless energy and curiosity made my travel experience a 100 times better.  _______________________________________________________________ A fair warning: I love Spain, Spaniards and the Spanish language. So I might have biased opinions.  But Spain is unlike any other place I have ever visited. Like most European countries, Spain t...

We are living in an fast-paced age where it seems like we do not have enough time for others, nor for ourselves. We are running in circles from chore to chore, living "per diem". In such a situation, it is necessary to reinforce the practice of 'Mindfulness' into our routine so as to perpetuate mental health. I say 'reinforce', because our ancestors were hitherto reaping the benefits of Mindfulness through practices such as Yogasana, Praanayam, Yoga nidra, Meditation et cetera. . . WHAT IS MINDFULNESS? Cambridge dictionary defines Mindfulness as “The practice of being aware of your body, mind, and feelings in the present moment, thought to create a feeling of calm.” In plain terms, Mindfulness is the practice of focussing on your thoughts and on the information that you receive from all of your five senses at any given moment, Broadly speaking, it is the experience of the 'here and now'. For experiment purposes, monitor thoughts. Note down ...

Hello Readers, Its been a long time since I wrote my last blog. But I was unable to find anything inspiring enough to write about. Now I have finally found it. Today, I am going to write about the importance of NEGATIVE EMOTIONS by sharing my personal experience. So here it goes. For those of you who don't know: I had been preparing for banking exams the last year. I gave many, many exams resulting in failure. But I didn't mind, because my focus was clearing the IBPS clerk exams. My first victory came when I cleared the IBPS preliminary examination that happened in the month of December. After that, I rigorously started studying for the second round which took place at the end of January. And today, April 1,was the D-day! I failed the examination by less than a mark. I started asking myself, "Why couldn't I have scored just 1 more mark?" "Why does it always happen to me?" "What am I going to do in my life now?" Today, the whole day, I ...

Autism is a mental condition that affects around 23 in 10,000 people in India. The attitude of the society towards them, affects autistic people to a certain extent. In this blog, I will try to write about autism and society's view towards the autistic, on the suggestion of a cherished reader. Before I begin, I would like to make it clear that I have not specialized in Clinical Psychology and hence lack the in-depth knowledge about this mental condition. However, I will attempt to write based on some understanding that I have about it. So to begin with, let us understand what autism really is. Autism is a life-long, complex developmental condition. It includes impairments in social development, communication skills and some behavioral issues. Because of the varied range of symptoms, this condition is now also referred to as "Autism Spectrum Disorder". Let us look at a few symptoms: 1. Communication Problems:      Children or adults with autism may experience challen...

'Procrastination' is a really common term and all of you must have surely heard of it. Each of us, may have also procrastinated at some point in our lives.  For those who are unaware of what procrastination means, it is an act of delaying something that needs to be done, because it is either difficult, boring, or unpleasant. Examples of procrastination include putting off writing an assignment, delaying replying to an email, postponing the payment of bills, etc. But precrastination? Majority of the public doesn't know that such a term even exists. Even as I type this blog, the said word gets underlined in red, telling me that it doesn't exist in the dictionary. That is because 'Precrastination' is a relatively new term. It was coined by three Pennsylvania State psychologists: David Rosenbaum, Lanyun Gong and Cory Adam Potts. So what does precrastination actually mean? It could be said that precrastination is the opposite of procrastination. And like proc...

STRESS MANAGEMENT TIP: 2 As a student of counselling psychology, our teacher used to continually remind us, that ours is a 'helping profession', and that our work becomes worthwhile if we can help bring even a small positive change in a person's life. Writing this blog-series about stress management is very important to me for this very reason. Everyone faces stress in their lives at some point. And through this blog-series, I hope to help at least one person in dealing with their stress. In my last blog, I wrote about the first stress management tip: Keeping in mind that stress isn't always a bad thing.' Continuing with the series, today, I will write about the second tip.  Stress Management Tip 2 is 'Time Management'. Benjamin Franklin rightly said "Lost Time is never found again".  One of the most common concerns and complaints of people today is that they do not have enough time to do what they need/want to do. Be it a housewif...