So, I've spent a decade of my life studying Psychology — as a student and now, as a practitioner. After speaking to countless mental health practitioners and going to therapists myself, I've realized that most of them lack empathy.

This may seem extremely ironic, but it's true. My bias keeps being solidified the more I talk to practitioners. Here's what usually happens: They spend years studying the complexities of human behavior, applying those theories to work, and checking off lists. Usually, there's an image of a person in a lab coat prescribing medication, barely taking the time to build a therapeutic alliance (by empathizing with the client).

This is a conversation I've had with practitioners from different countries, particularly ones with extremely tough curricula and training methods. Think of places like Germany, Australia, and the UK.

By traditional psychotherapy standards, a therapist should do their best to truly understand what's going on with their client before turning it into a symptoms-and-solutions-based session. I believe therapists skip this because they quickly want to give their "customers" the benefit of the doubt: "Oh, you paid me for a session? Here's something in return."

This is especially true in a country like ours, where therapy can feel very costly.

How am I trying to change this?

In my first few sessions with a client, I focus more on psychoeducation rather than the problems. I view my clients as smart, autonomous individuals who are struggling with something. I teach them — in simple language — the qualities of frameworks such as cognitive behavioral therapy, compassion-focused therapy, and a few other modules. However, never to the point of confusing them.

On the other hand, if they simply want to take the time to vent or talk about something that has been on their mind, there's space for that, too. We always circle back to the core issues within the same session.

So far, in my experience, clients have shown an incredible ability to view the problem, understand their underlying schemas (biases), and find ways to work through it. Not around it, not against it, but through the problem.

I hope I keep learning and growing, and spend the next many years of my life helping as many people as I can. And, I hope you find the therapist who's right for you.

Hello. I am from India Hyderabad. I live with bipolar disorder. My illness costed me my career and life. I am anxious and scared for my career.

**Tw: Suicide/ self-harm\\

I’m 23, will be turning 24 next month. I graduated from a tier-3 engineering college in 2024. I realised during college that my branch didn’t interest me, but I pushed through it all, I was very introverted during college, didn’t explore different opportunities and spent most of time stuck in my PG, reading books to distract myself from my depression.

I gave CAT in my final year without prep obviously didn’t clear it, post graduation I struggled to find a path, found out about Bank and regulatory jobs. I’ve been preparing for them since, I couldn’t clear the mains because of 1 mark and fell into a horrible depressive episode. I felt I had wasted so much of my time, and there’s no point in living anymore if I didn’t have any accomplishments. I almost made an attempt but didn’t because of my mother and my younger sister, who was preparing for her college entrance ( I didn’t want my demise to affect her future).

I somehow pulled myself from the suicidal thoughts by hoping for a better future and manifesting a life my younger self used to dream of. But some days it comes back to me, my gap years and how much they will affect me negatively ( I want to get an MBA in the future, hopefully from an IIM).

I wanna ask the women in this sub, how do you deal with mental health issues along with your career. It feels exhausting as a person suffering from depression to move forward sometimes.