Clinical psychologist Raksha Rajesh, M.Sc., M.Phil., a Mitsu therapist, offers one small step to take for anyone who smokes when they’re feeling stressed — and wants to quit.

First, ask yourself: Are you feeling stressed and want a smoke to help you manage your stress? Or are you feeling stressed because you’re craving a smoke? It’s not a natural awareness, and may take several tries before you easily arrive at an answer.

Next, delay: Just do one thing before you go for that smoke — talk to a friend, go to the loo, or drink a glass of water. This gradually separates the act of smoking from the feeling of stress.

There’s a lot more to stopping a smoking habit, but taking even this one step can help you feel more empowered and in control.

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The information in this video has been vetted by:

Raksha Rajesh (M.Sc., M.Phil., CRR No. A80195) is a clinical psychologist licensed by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI). She has 5+ years of experience in helping people from diverse backgrounds build skills to understand and manage their emotions.

Are you practising self-compassion or being lazy? It can be difficult to tell the difference, especially for those who struggle with self-criticism and shame. But being able to distinguish self-compassion from laziness can be vital to our mental health. Mitsu’s clinical psychologist Raksha Rajesh breaks it all down in the video below.

It’s laziness if you have the energy and resources to do a task, but you choose not to. Whereas, when we talk about self compassion, it is about giving yourself the permission to step back and analyse whether you have the energy and the resources to do a task. It is just not about taking care of yourself but also understanding your limits — whether you have those resources to complete a task. In fact, research shows that practising self-compassion makes us more motivated and capable — almost the opposite of laziness.

So in simple ways, if you want to check if you’re practising self-compassion or being lazy, you can ask yourself: Am I genuinely tired and not having resources to complete a task? or am I just putting it off for the sake of it?

If you answer yes to the first question, you’re probably practising self-compassion. If you answer yes to the second question, then I think you’re probably leaning towards laziness.

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Read more related articles:

• Can You Be Too Hard on Yourself? (Mitsu)
• Feeling Bad About Yourself? Try Self-Kindness to Feel Better (Mitsu)
• Rethinking Laziness (Psychology Today)
• Self-Compassion: The Most Important Life Skill? (LiveScience)

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Raksha Rajesh (M.Sc., M.Phil., CRR No. A80195) is a clinical psychologist licensed by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI). She has 5+ years of experience in helping people from diverse backgrounds build skills to understand and manage their emotions.

Can’t control emotions? There’s nothing worse than feeling like your emotions are driving your behaviour. The first step to regaining control over overwhelming emotions is to name them. It may sound too easy to be true, but neuroscience explains this practice. Watch the video to learn more.

Our emotions come from our brains’ limbic system. The limbic system allows us to feel different emotions in response to experiences and memories. 

But the limbic system doesn’t control how intensely we feel our emotions.

Emotions can easily get out of control when we simply feel them. 

But, when you identify your emotions by name, such as:

• I feel affectionate.
• I feel impatient.
• I feel envious.
• I feel hurt.
• I feel insecure.
• I feel awed.
• I feel proud.
• I feel peaceful.
• I feel embarrassed.

you activate the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the brain region that allows us to analyse, reason, and think things through.

And gradually, instead of feeling overwhelmed, our emotions feel more in control and orderly.

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Read more:

• Can Emotions Be Controlled? (Mitsu)
• Why Is It So Difficult to Talk About Feelings? (Mitsu)
• What Does It Mean to Feel Overwhelmed? (VeryWell Mind)
• 6 Reasons Why You May Not Know What You’re Feeling (Psychology Today)

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The information in this video has been vetted by:

Vidula V Sawant (M.A., M.Phil., CRR No. A80980) is a clinical psychologist with  4+ years of experience and a passion for understanding the complexities of our minds and behaviours.

How to stop feeling shame all the time starts with identifying what triggers with this complex emotion, says clinical psychologist Vidula Sawant in the video below.

Shame is a common and often overwhelming emotion that we feel.

For many of us, this emotion develops in our childhood, when we receive feedback from our parents about our thoughts and behaviour. And sometimes, we internalise this feedback in ourselves so much that when we don’t meet our own standards of performance as adults, we shame ourselves.

This creates a vicious cycle where we feel less and less confident and more and more shameful.

One way to break this cycle and stop feeling shame, is learning to identify the triggers — like the situations, thoughts or people — that are contributing to this feeling of shame. We do this by asking questions like:

• What specific actions trigger my shame feelings?
• Am I judging myself too harshly in this situation?
• Is this shame based on my own values or others’ expectations?
• Is it possible that I’m attributing shame to someone else’s judgment?
• What evidence do I have that supports my shame?
• How can I reframe this situation in a more positive light?
• Do I treat myself with the same kindness I offer others?
• What lessons can I learn from my shame experiences?
• Is my shame preventing me from pursuing my goals?

Remember that shame, while complex, is something you can navigate, and it’s important to extend self-compassion throughout this exploration.

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Read more:

• Can You Be Too Hard on Yourself? (Mitsu)
• How to Identify and Challenge Negative Thoughts (Mitsu)
• Where Toxic Shame Comes From and How to Work Through It (Healthline)
• The Psychology of Shame (VeryWell Mind)

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Vidula V Sawant (M.A., M.Phil., CRR No. A80980) is a clinical psychologist with  4+ years of experience and a passion for understanding the complexities of our minds and behaviours.

Clinical psychologist Vidula Sawant breaks down how to be less pessimistic in the video below.

One reason you end up thinking negatively is probably you’re falling into a thinking trap. A thinking trap is an assumption that we make, often without realising, that colours our interpretation and perception of ourselves, others, and the world.

It’s just like wearing sunglasses inside. It’s darker and less clear, right?

For instance, you might have a tendency to always assume that something worst is about to happen, or you always end up thinking there’s right and wrong in every situation.

Everyone struggles with thinking traps at times — everyone. And recognising the ones we frequently fall into is the first step in challenging them, changing our thoughts, and thus, changing our outlook to be less pessimistic and more optimistic.

When you challenge a thinking trap, it’s like removing those lenses and choosing to look at the world with more clarity, accuracy, and positivity.

Here are some common thinking traps:

• Black & White (or All-or-Nothing) Thinking: When we assume there is are only extreme possibilities. Recognise this line of thinking by words like always, never, everything, nothing, best, worst, right, correct, wrong.
• Mindreading: Assumes others are thinking negatively about us.
• Fortune telling: Assumes unlikely negative outcomes or farfetched negative predictions about the future, without being based in any evidence.
• Catastrophisation: Assumes the worst possible outcomes are the most likely and that we’ll be unable to cope with them.
• Discounting the Positives: Assumes we’re unworthy of good things or our achievements. Recognise this line of thinking by phrases like, “It doesn’t count,” or “It’s not enough,” or ”But that doesn’t matter.”

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Read more:

• Why We May Feel Uneasy for No Reason (Mitsu)
• Can You Be Too Hard on Yourself? (Mitsu)
• How to Identify and Challenge Negative Thoughts (Mitsu)
• The Surprising Benefits of Being a Pessimist (The Conversation)
• Signs of Pessimism and How to Respond (VeryWell Mind)

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Vidula V Sawant (M.A., M.Phil., CRR No. A80980) is a clinical psychologist with  4+ years of experience and a passion for understanding the complexities of our minds and behaviours.

Feeling bad about yourself can trap you in a vicious cycle. Clinical psychologist Raksha Rajesh explains how self-kindness can help us escape by balancing out our negative thoughts and feelings.

These are your negative thoughts — dark, bitter. Doesn’t taste good, doesn’t feel good.

Most people think that getting rid of these negative thoughts, eliminating them, or shutting them off, are the only ways to stop feeling bad about yourself. But that is something that makes it stronger.

One way to manage feeling bad about yourself is balancing it out with one supportive thought, one warm thought, a day.

Thoughts like: “I’m good enough,” or “I’m doing the best that I can.” It almost seems like a warm hug, doesn’t it? And the result is, you balance out your negative thoughts and feelings about yourself enough for it to feel better. (And actually taste better, too!)

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Related:

• When Being a Perfectionist Becomes a Problem (Mitsu)
• How to Cope With Failure at Work, When You’re Used to Success (Mitsu)
• How to Identify and Challenge Negative Thoughts (Mitsu)
• What Is Self-Confidence? (Positive Psychology)
• Give Yourself a Break: The Power of Self-Compassion (Harvard Business Review)

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Raksha Rajesh (M.Sc., M.Phil., CRR No. A80195) is a clinical psychologist licensed by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI). She has 5+ years of experience in helping people from diverse backgrounds build skills to understand and manage their emotions.

Explain mental health to people who don’t understand with this simple comparison from clinical psychologist Raksha Rajesh.

You can explain mental health like this: Your mental health is just like your skin. Just how your skin reacts to different seasons differently — sometimes it might feel oily, sometimes it might be dry, sometimes you will get sunburnt — similarly, your mental health also reacts to different circumstances and events in your life which might hurt you. 

We have learned how to take care of our skin, right? If we get wounded, we put a BandAid; if we get sunburnt, we know we need to use aloe vera; if we get an allergy, we might take some medicine.  Similarly, we can learn how to take care of our mental health, too, by learning strategies, certain skills, and certain techniques to take care of ourselves better. 

Just how we invest time and resources to learn and know about how to take care of our skin, we can do that for our mental health, too. And sometimes, we might need professional help in taking care of both.

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Learn more:

• Mental Health Is More Than Just Wellness or Illness (Mitsu)
• What Skills Does Therapy Teach? (Mitsu)
• Why Are There Different Types of Therapy? (Mitsu)
• The Importance of Mental Health (VeryWell Mind)
• Caring For Your Mental Health (National Institute of Mental Health)

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Raksha Rajesh (M.Sc., M.Phil., CRR No. A80195) is a clinical psychologist licensed by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI). She has 5+ years of experience in helping people from diverse backgrounds build skills to understand and manage their emotions.

Learn how to get motivated again from clinical psychologist Vidula V Sawant.

It’s OK for even the most driven people to feel moments of demotivation. We can’t be always excited and enthusiastic about everything.

Go-getters feel demotivated when they are burnt out, when they experience setbacks, when they are overwhelmed by the high expectations they have set for themselves, or when they lose a clear sense of vision.

So, how can you get motivated again?

When this happens to you, it’s OK to focus and take a deep breath.

Break down your bigger goals into smaller, achievable tasks. Write these tasks down. You will start to regain momentum whenever you check off these tasks one by one.

It’s also important to celebrate small steps of success. It may sound silly, but smaller steps of success actually help us go get to the bigger things. Celebration is vital for motivation.

Other ways of finding your drive again might include:

Taking a break to reset. Sometimes a break from routine can be the best way to refresh your mind. If a holiday is possible, take it. If not, try including small self-care breaks in your schedule throughout the week.

Practising self compassion. Remind yourself that it’s okay to not always be ‘on’ and charging forward. You’re not a machine, and it’s okay to just coast.

Seeking support from friends and colleagues. An encouraging word can help you keep going, even when you don’t feel like it. Or, perhaps a friend or colleague can help by taking a task off your plate, so you can rest and reset.

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Read more:

• How to Cope With Failure at Work, When You’re Used to Success (Mitsu)
• When Being a Perfectionist Becomes a Problem (Mitsu)
• Motivation: The Driving Force Behind Our Actions (VeryWell Mind)
• 20 Most Popular Theories of Motivation in Psychology (Positive Psychology)

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Vidula V Sawant (M.A., M.Phil., CRR No. A80980) is a clinical psychologist with  4+ years of experience and a passion for understanding the complexities of our minds and behaviours.

Learn how to calm your worries with tips from clinical psychologist Vidula V Sawant.

Constantly worrying is undeniably tough, as it drains out our mental energy, hampers our decision-making, and impacts our well-being. Our brain is wired to anticipate threats and dangers, making us prone to overthink and imagine all possible worst-case scenarios and creating the perpetual cycle of worrying.

To help break the cycle, here’s what you can do.

Practise calming exercises, such as deep breathing, that activate your body’s relaxation response and helps you observe the thoughts without getting caught up in them.

Creating a worry journal will also provide a safe outlet to write down your fears and emotions without being overwhelmed by them.

Or, try setting aside a specific time of day for ‘Worry Time.’ Make it the same 15-minute slot every day. Plan a place to sit and do nothing but obsess, panic, and worry (pro tip: not your bed). If you start worrying at other times of the day, write the worry down so you don’t forget it, but don’t give it any time until your 15 minute ‘worry time.’ When you’re done worrying, make sure you switch to doing something that you look forward to — it will help your brain switch out of worry mode.

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Read more about worry and anxious feelings:

• Is Overthinking Bad for Your Mental Health? (Mitsu)
• Is It Normal to Feel Worried All the Time? (Mitsu)
• Why Do We Worry So Much? (Psych Central)
• 4 Surprising Ways to Worry Less (Backed by Science) (Psychology Today)

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Vidula V Sawant (M.A., M.Phil., CRR No. A80980) is a clinical psychologist with  4+ years of experience and a passion for understanding the complexities of our minds and behaviours.

How do you cope with failure at work when you’re used to being a success? Clinical psychologist Raksha Rajesh shares some tips for high-performers who are facing a setback and feeling stress, shame, or worthlessness.

As a high achiever at work, when you encounter certain setbacks in your life, it can be daunting, disappointing, confusing and sometimes may lead to certain feelings of failure. You may even dismiss the kind of successes that you have had before, which then just adds to the vicious cycle of feeling like a failure all over again.

Now what can you do about it?

Here’s a tip: Take a step back and try to reassess the kind of standards that you set for yourself. As and when we grow, we evolve. There are so many other things that come as a part of our life, and there are so many more responsibilities that we have to cater to. We can’t be 100% everywhere, but we can readjust the kind of expectations that we set of ourselves in different areas of life. And maybe that can be a very essential part for you.

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Read more about feeling like a failure:

• Can You Be Too Hard on Yourself? (Mitsu.care)
• Working with Your Inner Critic (PsychCentral)
• Why Are High Achievers Often Unhappy? (Psychology Today)

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Raksha Rajesh (M.Sc., M.Phil., CRR No. A80195) is a clinical psychologist licensed by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI). She has 5+ years of experience in helping people from diverse backgrounds build skills to understand and manage their emotions.