Tuesday 13 December 2016

Sonera Jhaveri Psychotherapy for Mental Illnesses & Understanding the Dangers of Depression

 
Depression Treatment in Mumbai
Depression symptoms


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 depressed. Being clinically depressed, in turn, will have negative consequences on one’s health, well being, 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 behavioral 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 psychotherapeutic 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.

Address: Flat No 1. Ground Floor, Firdaus, Vitthaldas Thackersey Marg, New Marine Lines, Marine Lines, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400020
Phone:09820023623, Email ID- sonerajhaveri@gmail.com

Website - http://www.sonerajhaveri.com/

Sonera Jhaveri is a psychotherapist who specializes in:

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Mumbai

Somatic Therapist Mumbai

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Mumbai

Mindfulness Meditation Mumbai

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Psychodynamic Therapy

CBT

Dreamwork

Somatic Therapy

Transpersonal Psychotherapy

Tuesday 22 November 2016

Mindfulness and Eating

Mindfulness and Eating
Mindfulness Eating
Conscious Eating: Re-evaluating our responses to food

The context of food in our lives 

       As the festive season culminates in the onset of the New Year, we might invariably find ourselves ritualizing these transitions and celebrations with food and wine. 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 nonnegotiable activity that is intimately weaved into the very rhythms of our daily lives and is an important arena of gratification where we relate and bond with others.

Food has been articulated as a life giving force in numerous traditions, from Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine to coeval nutritional science. Moreover, a significant number of the world’s cultures and religions have sacaralised the act of eating. 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, which underscores an organic void or depletion within us 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 the polysemic phenomenon of 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 food 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
The experience of stress and the need to de-stress is subliminally played out endlessly in multiple distress- gratifications cycles that seek to balance out an over-activated nervous system, but invariably ends up distorting the natural hunger of the body to a mechanical, unconscious and insatiable deprivation that hijacks the physical response to food. On a more rudimentary level, we “feel bad” so we eat food to “feel good.”

           Eating, as the pursuit of comfort, in a fast paced, hyper stimulated and highly pressured epoch, 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 every 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 front of your computer screen trying to make our 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 and by that token our relationship to food. 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 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.

For those of us seeking meaningful and healthy ways of being-in-the-world, our relationship to food, (equivalently) along with other quotients of well being, such as spiritual practice, psychological growth, exercise, time spent in nature, nurturing relationships, and aesthetic appreciation, to name a few, is of paramount importance. Below are some guidelines to help restore us to consciously eating:

1)      Before eating do a baseline self- check on your hunger level before eating. Ask yourself where do you feel the hunger? How hungry are you?
2)      Involve all your senses when you eat i.e. really see, smell, taste and feel the food you are eating
3)      Serve yourself moderate helpings of food
4)      Really chew your food and break it down
5)      Eat in a slow fashion to prevent over eating
6)      Don’t skip meals
7)      Avoid all distractions when you are eating
8)      Eat an organic plant based diet as much as possible for yours and the planet’s health
9)      Therapeutically work with yourself or with a mental health professional to reduce your stress, depression, anxiety, anger and boredom levels

Sonera Jhaveri is a psychotherapist who specializes in counselling psychology, individual, family, couples, group and cognitive behaviour therapy in Mumbai, India

Address: Flat No 1. Ground Floor, Firdaus, Vitthaldas Thackersey Marg, New Marine Lines, Marine Lines, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400020
Phone:09820023623
Website-:http://www.sonerajhaveri.com
Email - sonerajhaveri@gmail.com

Services
dialectical behaviour therapy mumbai
somatic therapist mumbai
cognitive behaviour therapy mumbai
mindfulness meditation mumbai
cognitive behaviour therapy
psychodynamic therapy
cbt
dreamwork
somatic therapy
transpersonal psychotherapy

Thursday 3 November 2016

Understanding the Dangers of 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:
  1. Depressed mood for most of the day, for more days than not, as indicated by either subjective or observation by others
  2. Poor appetite or overeating
  3. Insomnia or hypersomnia
  4. Low energy or fatigue
  5. Low self esteem
  6. Poor concentration or difficulty making decisions
  7. 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 depressed. Being clinically depressed, in turn, will have negative consequences on one’s health, well being, 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 behavioral 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 psychotherapeutic 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 is a psychotherapist who specializes in counselling psychology, individual, family, couples, group and cognitive behaviour therapy in Mumbai, India

Address: Flat No 1. Ground Floor, Firdaus, Vitthaldas Thackersey Marg, New Marine Lines, Marine Lines, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400020
Website: http://www.sonerajhaveri.com
Phone:09820023623
Email - sonerajhaveri@gmail.com

Monday 26 September 2016

Health Psychology- Mind, Body, Stress & Anxiety Disorder

Health Psychology

The term “health psychology” pertains to our emotional and psychophysiological responses to our personal conditions of health and illness as well as thoughts, emotions and  behaviours  that either contribute to or hinder our well-being.

Often in the  Cartesian world of conventional  bio-medicine, individuals are split up as bodies and minds, implicitly  implying that the mind and the body are separate entities and not connected. This is because whatever the ailment whether it is cancer, auto immune diseases, irritable bowl syndrome, obesity etc.  the physical body is always treated with surgery and pharmaceutical drugs but the mind or rather the psyche is often left out and rarely given therapeutic attention.
Health Psychology
Health Psychology
This is unfortunate on two accounts, firstly,  people have very strong emotional reactions to their illnesses and physical disabilities,  which need to be treated as individuals could spiral into clinical depression, severe anxiety, anger or frustration in relation to not “feeling well,” which could hamper their recovery.

Secondly, our bodymind is an integrated system whose reciprocity needs to be acknowledged. Today, illnesses  such as fibromyalgia as well many neuro-endocrinological disorders are all pointing towards psychogenic causes of these conditions, as is the whole field of psychoneuroimmunology which emphasises the inter-connections between the psyche, nervous system and immune system.

The role of stress and anxiety in the cause and proliferation of illness ranging from cancer to coronary disease to diabetes  is getting highlighted, as last year in the US alone more 300$ billion dollars were spent on stress-related medical ailments. It is interesting to note that in contrast to conventional western medicine,  nonwestern medical systems such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese medicine have always given importance to and have inquired into the subjective states of those who were sick and have underscored a deep connection between the mind and the body.

Drawing from Eastern philosophical  systems of understanding the psyche-sensorium, I often work with people who are suffering or surviving from cancer or have recently recovered from heart attacks or those who have had Bariatric surgery with mindfulness-based cognitive therapeutic interventions. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy helps  facilitate my clients to regulate their disturbing emotions regarding their physical conditions and enables them to tolerate  distress with more ease. Accepting and working with our emotional reactions to dis-ease has a huge impact for our recovery and ongoing maintenance of health. While not a substitute for medical attention, health-oriented psychotherapeutic attention is a very important complement and adjunct.

Address: Flat No. Ground Floor, Firdaus, 1, Vitthaldas Thackersey Marg, New Marine Lines, Marine Lines, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400020
Phone:09820023623
Email - sonerajhaveri@gmail.com
Website- http://www.sonerajhaveri.com

Click here- Find Postal Address Location on Google Maps

http://www.bizsheet.com/company/sonera-jhaveri-psychotherapist-mumbai-psychiatrist-mumbai
http://mumbai.locanto.in/ID_878310346/Dreamwork-Mindful-Eating-Stress-Management-in-MumbaI-India.html
http://mumbai.yalwa.in/ID_134199959/Sonera-Jhaveri.html

Questions & Answers URLs
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-treatments-for-depression
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-improve-on-my-public-speaking-skills
https://www.quora.com/What-was-one-of-your-most-defining-moments-in-life-1
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-biggest-mistake-you-have-ever-made/
https://www.quora.com/Ive-been-suffering-from-severe-depression-for-the-past-6-years-but-I-cant-afford-professional-counseling-right-now-What-other-options-do-I-have
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-know-that-I-am-in-depression

Tuesday 26 July 2016

Tips To Beat Exam Stress

Tips To Beat Exam Stress

Tips To Beat Exam Stress
As a student, one is very palpably aware of one’s thumping heart and butterflies in one’s stomach just before an exam. At times, these sensations are compounded with muscle tension, jitteriness and nausea. These physiological symptoms are often complemented by anxious  ruminating thoughts that give one an overall sense of edginess and dis-ease as one’s examnears.

Exam stress or performance anxiety causes havoc in the lives of students and those who live around or with them. If we break down what ‘exam stress’ is, we see that exams are tests of our knowledge and understanding of what we have learnt, while conversely our subjective sense of stress bespeaks of a perception of not knowing or coping with the demands that are put before one.

Correlating these two points, ‘exam stress’ signifies the fear of not being able to cope with the pressure and challenge exams put before us. Often, this is related to our sense of achievement, ambitions for the future and sense of self-esteem. It is a feeling of being ‘out of control.’
Up to a certain point, from an evolutionary perspective, anxiety and stress keep us motivated and on our toes as it helps get things done but there comes a point where our concern of how we will do turns into a catastrophic fear about our existence. In such cases, exam stress starts becoming pathological, as we are in a nutshell, overreacting. Troublesome thoughts about the questions that we might be confronted with in our exams spiral us into full blown panic accompanied by depression and a sense of hopelessness.

Sonera a psychotherapist in mumbai, likes to refer to her practice as Psyche-Therapy.Integral Psyche-Therapy facilitates the integration of mind, body, soul and spirit.

For More Detail Visit Our Website-:http://www.sonerajhaveri.com/about/

Find Postal Address Location on Google Maps

Friday 24 June 2016

Mind Your Food & Mindfulness and Eating

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.)
 
 
Click here- Find Postal Address Location on Google Maps

Tuesday 17 May 2016

Do You Have The Singleton Gene?

Psychiatrists
                          Do You Have The Singleton Gene
Eternally single? Perhaps you have the singleton gene. Or maybe you need to seek some answers within before you seek out your partner, says Dr Sonera Jhaveri, Consultant Integral Psyche Therapist attached to the Nanavati Group of Hospitals.

You’ve met your perfect match. Someone who makes you laugh, shares your dreams and hopes, interests and goals...someone who could possibly be a potential partner in future. And yet, when it comes to making a long-term commitment, you back off and run without looking back.

If this is a pattern in your life too, then you probably have the singleton gene to blame. Is it possible that your interest in socialising with a person of the opposite sex, and your ability to commit to a relationship is determined by genes? Experts have debated this topic extensively. “Yes, to a certain extent, our social behaviour and interest in socialising is determined by our genes. Human temperamental factors, like our need to seek new or novel things, and our dependence on rewards, actually motivate people to form relationships and maintain them. And these, research has proved, are determined by your genes. People with certain psychiatric conditions like schizoid personality and borderline personality disorder are known to have frequent relationship problems, and these disorders are known to have a genetic basis,” says one expert.

But, to claim that one’s DNA or genes are solely responsible for our relationship status would not be accurate, feels Dr Sonera Jhaveri. “Socio-cultural and psycho-emotional elements play a very important role in informing one’s sense of self and others,” she says. There are other factors such as developmental trauma, and individual attachment styles that influence one's connections to others. “But if a person has schizoid and narcissistic features, chances of the person developing or sustaining a long-term relationship are low,” she admits.

So, eventually, it boils down to the age-old conundrum of Nature Vs Nurture—the subject of intense research across the globe. “Some studies suggest certain behaviours like novelty-seeking have around 9-10 percent inheritability, while certain eccentricities associated with schizophrenia have around 40-50 per cent chances of being inherited by future generations,” points out yet another expert. This means, genes do play an important role in determining at least your desire to be in a relationship. “However, evolution is a very complex phenomenon and is not driven solely by the genetic factor. So, one should be careful not to take a biologically reductive approach in understanding human behaviour,” says Dr Sonera Jhaveri.

For instance, your upbringing, social and family circle, relationships of people around you, the kind of childhood you had, your dreams and aspirations, long term goals, all of these play an important role, in addition to your genes, in determining whether you will remain eternally single, or will go forth and find your mate.

But, before you begin to despair and wonder if you are a ‘carrier’ of the eternally ‘singleton’ gene, here’s some good news. Psychiatrists aver that it’s possible for all individuals to have healthy social relationships. Modern psychiatry has done a lot of progress over the years, and today there are newer and better psychotherapies, counselling techniques and newer medicines, which change pathological behaviour and decrease the commitment phobia, helping individuals with a problem to form healthy and long-lasting relationships.

Agrees Dr Sonera Jhaveri, “Yes, it is possible for people with whatever attachment style or genetic makeup to be able to get over their fear of intimacy. Of course, this does not happen automatically. Individuals who are commitment-shy are often very defensive and also sometimes lacking in interpersonal skills, and may therefore need therapeutic attention. “A healing relationship with a professional psychiatrist/confidant can help the individual let go of the defenses that block intimacy and connection. Often, children who were brought up in abusive households have issues with bonding as they don't feel safe in intimate situations. This is because their trust was broken by an abusive parent, who was actually supposed to be caring for them,” says Dr Sonera Jhaveri.
While the debate and the controversy rage on as far as the existence of the 'singleton gene' is concerned, it is a fact that a combination of genetic makeup and outside factors does affect an individual’s personality, which in turn determines whether they will pursue and commit to a relationship or not. So, if you are single, blame the singleton gene, but at the same time, delve into your mind, try to find out the kinks in your personality and surroundings that make you wary of relationships. Eliminate them and you will find your soul mate waiting just around the corner.

Friday 13 May 2016

Sonera a psychotherapist in Mumbai, Psyche Therapist, Psychotherapy in Mumbai: Understanding the Different Types of Stress

Sonera a psychotherapist in Mumbai, Psyche Therapist, Psychotherapy in Mumbai: Understanding the Different Types of Stress: What is Stress ? Stress is a ubiquitous and multilayered phenomenon that is an entrenched reality of our daily postmodern lives. In ef...

Understanding the Different Types of Stress


What is Stress?

Stress is a ubiquitous and multilayered phenomenon that is an entrenched reality of our daily postmodern lives. In effect, the stress response has played a significant role in the evolution of our nervous system and was crucial for our survival on this planet.  As hunter gathers we experienced acute stress when there were life-threatening perils from the environment confronting us for e.g. a wild animal that crossed the path of our foraging ancestors. In such instances, the human body would mobilize itself defensively and activate the autonomic nervous system to a fight, flight or freeze response to meet the demands of the situation.

When an organism is stressed and in either fight of flight mode, there are profound alterations due to the enervation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Noticeable psychophysiological shifts take place such as an increase in the heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, muscle tension, sweat activity in conjunction with a cascade of neuro-endocrinological alterations.  The adrenal-hypothalamus- pituitary axis gets activated and there are rapid secretions of the stress hormone cortisol along with blood moving from the periphery of the body i.e. the limbs to the core i.e. to the heart and lungs.

These psychosomatic shifts allow the organism to speed up the action that needed to be taken, which in most cases was either confrontation or agitated escape. However, in freeze mode, which occurs in profound experiences of trauma, the parasympathetic nervous, system dominates and the body drops in pressure, temperature, and mobility simulating a corpse. From an evolutionary perspective, the freeze mode was useful as on occasion predators may loose interest if the prey is already dead.
According to one of the pioneers in stress research Hans Seyle, upto a certain point stress is beneficial as it helps us take effective action when facing challenging conditions and this can be understood as “eu-stress.” As such, the stress response to a particular point helps us become focused and efficient and enables us to get things done while simultaneously it protects us from negative consequences that might pertain to our survival.  Yet there is a certain threshold value to stress and beyond that stress starts becoming “di-stress” and it starts pathologically eroding and wearing and tearing down our cardiac-respiratory, immune, gastrointestinal and muscular-skeleton systems.

Stress becomes di-stress when the stress response is provoked chronically, which is, unfortunately the zeitgeist of our times.  Today acute stress is replaced by chronic stress, where a biological threat is now a psychological one.  We react to not finding a parking spot before an important meeting in the same way our ancestors reacted to encountering an avalanche near a mountain that might crush them. Our bodies have not caught up with the evolutionary shifts in our life style and so in a nutshell, our bodies are over reacting to the mundane pressures and irritants of every day living.

Due to a revolution in our material culture, life is now becoming faster and faster . . . we have faster computers, faster cars, faster communications and often our bodies lag behind and we have to whip ourselves to keep up our pace, to perform, to meet deadlines and to make money.  As a result, our default existential state is that of an incessant low-grade activation of the autonomic nervous system, which keeps the body and mind latently stressed.

In busy urban areas, especially, we are almost all the time normalized to being unconsciously stressed to the point that we do not realize that we are stressed. This psychologically predisposes us to depression, irritation, frustration, mood swings, and angry outbursts, all of which underscore psychoemotional disturbances. Simultaneously we are prone to worsening any pre-existing medical disorder and susceptible to creating the causes and circumstances for diseases to take root in our bodyminds, highlighting psychosomatic over drive. Diabetes, hypertension, colitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, eczema and ulcers are a few stress related conditions.

How Do We Know We Are Stressed?
Since stress is an integral part of our lives, learning how to identify when we are stressed and what to do about de-stressing ourselves becomes paramount for our psychophysiological health and well being. Stress is a polyvalent experience and has cognitive behaviour therapy, emotional, physiological and behavioral ramifications.

Below is a brief exegesis of some of the symptoms that manifest in us in relation to each category within which our stress response can be observed. It is important to recognize if any of these are being embodied in our own experience in order to assess how stressed one is and moreover, the ways in which we create stress for ourselves through our perceptions. Regarding a demand from the environment as either a threat or a challenge depends very much on our sense of  self esteem and feelings of being resourced and resilient.

Cognitive dimensions: ruminating repetitive thoughts that are automatic and pessimistic; negative interpretations of life events; and a predisposition to play the victim.
Emotional dimensions: feelings of anxiety, panic, irritability, agitation, frustration, jitteriness, anger, impatience, overwhelm, being out of control
Physical dimensions: changes in heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, muscle tension, sweat activity, body temperature, fatigue, migraines, stomach aches, palpitations
Behavioral dimensions: lack of exercise, eating excessively, indulging in unhealthy foods, smoking, drinking, abusing drugs, unnecessary shopping

Some Useful Guidelines to Regulate Stress:
      While we cannot prevent stress in our lives, we can definitely shift our emotional reactions to stress. In order to modify how we are oriented to overwhelming life events it is quintessential to make life style changes that allow us to slow down and relax. Some suggestions to safe guard ourselves from being chronically stressed are the following: 
1)   Mediation, yoga, tai chi, qui gong
2)   Physical exercise
3)   Spending time in nature
4)   Healthy nutrition
5)   Listening to music and appreciating the arts in general
6)   Meditation and yoga
7)   Enjoying conviviality with family and friends
8)   Going on holiday
9)   Sleeping a full eight hours
10)   Having a massage
11)   Adopting a pet such as dog, cat, hamster, even having an aquarium
12)   Working with a mental health professional to see your patterns of stress, how you perpetuate them and ultimately to dis-identify with them

 Contributed by: Sonera Jhaveri

Sonera is an integral psyche therapist who specializes in working with generalized anxiety disorders, depression and mood disorders, anger management, stress reduction, issues of low self esteem, eating disorders, marital discord, chemical dependency and addictions.