Showing posts with label Psychiatrist. Show all posts

Monday, 27 January 2020

Psychotherapist, Vedic Astrology, Online Depression Counselling, Psychotherapy, Mind Body & Cognitive Behaviour Therapy in Mumbai, India

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Psychologist,Psychiatrist,Psychotherapist and Counsellor

What is Psyche-Therapy

I am often asked why do I call my practice “Psyche-Therapy” as opposed to “Psychotherapy?” Psyche-Therapy is a particular orientation some practitioners of mental health have when they work with their clients, where attention is given to the whole person instead of being isolated or reduced to a DSM-V diagnosis.

The word Psyche-Therapy comes from two ancient Greek terms “Psyche” and “Therapeia”
Psyche: is an ancient Greek term which can be appreciated as soul, spirit, life force . . . or more expansively the animating principle of the kosmos. Psyche in modern psychology encompasses both the mind and the brain and the conscious and unconscious aspects of the Self.

The term Psyche has specific meaning in the Greek mythological and symbolic context where it is often synonym for the human soul. In the myth (see links below) Psyche is a human princess who falls in love with a divine God, Eros. The legend is about love, enchantment, betrayal, heartbreak, pain, reunion and everlasting happiness, pretty much the existential journey of life. Metaphorical it is about the soul’s love affair with the Divine and the hardship the soul goes through to realize that union.

http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/psyche-and-eros-myth/
or
http://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/eros-psyche.htm

Therapeia: is another ancient Greek term that connotes healing, treatment, curing . . . Therapy, the modern English term is etymologically derived from Therapeia and encompasses vast fields such as pharmacological therapy to physiotherapy. Therapy then is a generic word that simply underscores a mode or method of working with a field to help catalyze results within the individual that are rejuvenating.

So Psyche + Therapy = Psyche-Therapy= a holistic therapeutic facilitation engaging the myriad conscious and unconscious layers of the Self.

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Friday, 24 June 2016

Mind Your Food & Mindfulness and Eating

: Mind Your Food

Food is a necessity for our life and eating is a quintessentially primal activity whose roots lie deep in our evolutionary past. The ingestion and digestion of food is a non-negotiable activity that is intimately weaved into the very rhythms of our daily lives.

Food has been articulated as a life-giving force in numerous traditions, from Ayurveda, Chinese medicine to coeval nutritional science. From a biological perspective, our bodies need the right type of food to function properly as diseases and compromised health conditions have been scientifically linked with malnutrition.

Furthermore, individuals suffering from diabetes, cholesterol, heart disease, obesity, neuro-endocrinological disorders, digestive issues, cancer, kidney and liver disease all need regulated diets. In such circumstances, paying attention to the act of eating invariably starts taking on more importance than simply filling one’s stomach with tasty bites and is central to our health and well-being.

Hunger: The drive to eat

Getting to know our subjective sense of hunger then becomes an important part in consciously eating. Understanding how we eat, when we eat and why we eat is necessary to correct our unstable relationship to food. Conventionally, hunger is understood as a physiological drive, signaled by a fall in blood sugar or a rumble in the stomach, indicating that the body is in need of nutrition. Yet, in a deeper sense, hunger is an existential state that drives one consciously and unconsciously to want to eat food and functions on multiple levels from biological to

emotional to spiritual.

Today, satisfying hunger in urban metropolitan areas has become increasingly easier due to the 24/7 accessibility we have to food. Over appreciating the value of the instant gratification good food provides us, our post-modern psyche has imbued food with a relevance that goes beyond physiological survival, making it a principle source of pleasure and comfort. We eat sugary, fatty, fried and salty foods not to fill our stomachs only, but to help us deal with stress and assuage other disturbing emotions such as depression, loneliness, boredom, anxiety and anger.

Mindless munching

We “feel bad” so we eat food to “feel good.” Eating, as the pursuit of comfort becomes a coping mechanism to face the numerous demands made on us on a daily basis. Behaviorally, this is more common than not. Have you ever sat in front the TV or in the cinema with a tub of popcorn or some other snack and have ploughed through the whole thing in the course of the film? Or been at a cocktail party sipping a drink and chatting with a friend while devouring bowls of nuts and chips? Or polished off a whole bar of chocolate while sitting in front of your computer screen trying to reach work deadlines? In such instances we are not realizing how fast or how much we are eating. This is called mindless munching or the act of grinding down edibles with a mind contemplating everything but the food one is eating.

Conscious eating

An antidote to this would be to mindfully observe and understand our experience of hunger. By being “mindful,” one pays nonjudgmental attention to the moments when and why one wants to eat, the food one eats and the act of one’s mindfulness & eating. By being focused on how we feed ourselves, we can aid a more sophisticated self awareness of ourselves and our subliminal desires and drives that motivate us to eat as well enable a balanced relationship to food and body size.

The reasons why we over eat, starve, grow fat, become skinny or on a more severe note become anorexic, bulimic or obese have a lot to do with how we are psycho-emotionally processing our sense of self and the stresses we encounter. Hence it is very imperative to pay attention to the emotional states behind one’s eating habits and working with them if they are disturbed.

Guidelines to eating consciously:

Before eating do a baseline self-check on your hunger level. Ask yourself where do you feel the hunger? How hungry are you?

Involve all your senses when you eat i.e. see, smell, taste and feel the food you are eating.

Serve yourself moderate helpings of food.

Really chew your food and break it down. Eat in a slow fashion to prevent over eating.

Don’t skip meals. Avoid all distractions when you are eating.

Eat an organic plant-based diet as much as possible for yours and the planet’s health.

Therapeutically work with yourself or with a mental health professional to reduce your stress, depression, anxiety, anger and boredom levels.

(Dr. Sonera Jhaveri is an Integral Psyche Therapist attached to Nanvati Group of Hospitals, in Mumbai, India.)

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Friday, 27 November 2015

Depression Treatement in Mumbai

Depression

Understanding the Dangers of Depression
Our lives are colored by numerous textures of feeling ranging from deep joy to being down in the dumps with many shades of grey in between. It is but natural to feel sad at the death of a loved one, or to be melancholic to be leaving a familiar place or to be upset when we have disagreements with people or get laid off from work.

In fact, there are many instances in life where we feel the blues and this is but natural. However, what is not psychologically healthy is to remain in a perpetual state of dysphoria, which could be described as a “profound state of dis-ease, unhappiness and dissatisfaction,” day in and day out.
According to the DSM V, the following symptoms would help you identify Persistent Depressive Disorder (Dysthymia) in yourself or a loved one:

Depressed mood for most of the day, for more days than not, as indicated by either subjective or observation by others
Poor appetite or overeating
Insomnia or hypersomnia
Low energy or fatigue
Low self esteem
Poor concentration or difficulty making decisions
Feelings of hopelessness

If a person embodies having a “depressed mood for most of the day” with two or more other symptoms one can be said to be clinically depression therapist in mumbai. Being clinically depressed, in turn, will have negative consequences on one’s health, wellbeing, relationships, work, productivity and bring down the overall quality of one’s life. Research has shown, that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol have been found in the blood stream of people who identified being depressed, this in turn reduces immune function and makes any pre-existing medical disorder worse or may perhaps even create new ones. What we can gauge from this is that depressed people are more likely to be easily stressed and in turn, people who have a low threshold to stress are more susceptible to becoming depressed.

If an individual is in an intimate relationship or has small children their having depression would impact their loved one’s in very harmful ways where there is a diminishing of real interpersonal contact and closeness since the depressed person is no longer present to anything other than overwhelming feelings of sadness. Spouses of depressed individuals report very low relationship satisfaction as depressions gnaws away at the fabric of intimacy where emotional connection, sexuality and simply having fun together is greatly reduced or becomes non-existent Studies have also shown that children of depressed people have a higher risk of being depressed themselves, as well as a vulnerability to having addictions and exhibit behavioural disorders.

It is extremely harmful to the self and to one’s loved ones to ignore constant negative ruminations and feelings about one’s life, as they could transition from being pathological to fatal, where individuals driven by disturbing thoughts and emotions could end up taking their life. Another alarming point regarding depression is that it has a propensity to recur once a person has suffered from it before. Since depression, in essence, is a thinking dis-ease, which is premised on habitual negative thinking, perceiving and evaluating one’s self and the world, this in turn creates neural pathways in the brain, literally grooves in our psyche, which get easily activated when certain triggers are present. Over a period of time, even small mundane disappointments may set off disproportionate feelings of anguish and hopelessness.

Although, ironically, depression is extremely common, with 20 percent of the population suffering from it at any given time; literally, perhaps one in every five people experiences depression, it remains unfortunately, ignored, undetected and untreated. While awareness is increasing regarding the importance of mental health globally, in India, historically and perhaps even to some extent today, psychological issues have been ignorantly stigmatized. Individuals are made to feel ashamed of themselves for having life traumas and upheavals and are marginalized for seeking help. Contemporarily, this is a very unfortunate set of circumstances, as historically in ancient India, dukkha was greatly acknowledged by all philosophical traditions, and especially, highlighted by the ultimate healer and therapist, Gautama Buddha who stated that “Life is suffering.”

If you or anyone close to you is depressed it is extremely important that you seek professional psychotherapist in mumbai attention, while exercise, yoga, meditation and good nutrition are useful adjuncts and supports, what the depressed person really needs is a facilitation to cognitively re-frame and dis-identify with negative thoughts while developing the ability to tolerate distress and work though disturbing affect, which, unfortunately, does not happen automatically or with family support.

Sonera a psychotherapist in Mumbai, Psyche Therapist, Psychotherapy in Mumbai