Relationships are dynamic situations, where we experience the highs and the lows, with our budding, but lifelong partners. We reach the highest of highs, like the throes of unadulterated compassion, where we fall into one another’s arms for security and comfort. Sometimes, we can also reach rock bottom, where we hit a temporary patch of turbulence, where arguments run rampant, and you need some time to yourself. At the end of the day, most relationships go through their highs and lows. That’s j

Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash — Relationships come with many rules and norms. The current state of our world has either forged, reinforced, or aggravated existing partnerships. This is especially true for those individuals who used to live alone but are now living in very closed and confined living spaces with many other family members for many more hours of the day. Thus, it puts a great burden on yourself to exercise more caution in making compromises that suit your individual needs and the n

Depression can be sometimes fleeting, but it can also be chronic and pervasive, last many months, and can often produce many psychological and physiological signs, such as fatigue, lower energy, eye problems, stomach pains, back pain, and many more. While it sounds pretty overwhelming, depression is a surprisingly common circumstance. This means that many others have gone through the notions, and have somehow continued to fight onward. Fighting onwards, those others were somehow able to conjur

Colouring and doodling are fun activities to pursue, even for us adults. Sometimes, we doodle and colour away because we want to spend time away from our computers and phones. Plus, no one wants to obsess or ruminate on deadlines all the time. Either way, we don’t usually have a grand or conscious purpose for doodling. We just do it because we were in the mood for it. If we take the premise of mindfulness, it’s basically the notion that we try to keep ourselves grounded by focussing on our pre

As I work towards becoming an aspiring therapist, I am constantly thinking about the various mental health sub-cultures that exist online. These include the support groups or fandoms on websites like Tumblr, Reddit, or even YouTube. Here, we will briefly examine the subculture of Tumblr. Tumblr, founded in 2007 by David Karp, is a microblogging platform, where individuals can digest short, accessible, and concise posts. As of 2020, Tumblr boasts over 510 million blogs and as of today alone, ha

It’s your first day on the job, and with all the uncertainty permeating across these several months, you might have a shrinking fear that you’re secretly not the best candidate for the role. I mean, you rarely know anyone from the office. You don’t know the so-called hidden rules that come with the package of being hired. You also don’t know who your potential allies are, and you don’t know how casual or professional you need to be. You, my friend, may have imposter syndrome. Sheryl Sandberg,

Validation encompasses many things, whether it is understanding or accepting ourselves for what we really are. Validating ourselves does not necessarily mean that we approve or agree on the things we did back then. It just means that whatever had happened was just simply something we felt we had to do, with the information we best knew at the time. There are many instances in our lives where we seek to do what seems to be the most justified cause of action. However, new information constantly

We all make mistakes from time to time, and it’s okay to be making them. We aren’t perfect. We’re just human. We did the best that we could with the information that we had at the time. As time stretches on, we get to see more information, but for that instance, you did what you best knew. There’s no use in going through the notions on what we could have said, or should have said. While hindsight makes us regret our past decisions, sometimes bad things happen, resulting in a series of domino e

As an aspiring therapist in Canada and as a female undergoing her second rodeo of graduate school, I’ve had many opportunities to work closely with people who had undergone a variety of distressing situations, including power differentials, miscommunication, gaslighting, and many more. While I have written about gaslighting in the past, I wanted to explore the topic from other angles, especially if you’re unable to escape such situations right away. Gaslighting can be a slow-burner type of sit

Social deduction games are highly immersive and intellectually stimulating experiences where players attempt to resolve and uncover the hidden roles, motives, and allegiances of the other members. Usually, such games are played within teams, where the main members are primarily the “good” ones and the impostors are the “bad” ones. During such games, players may have to use their superb skills of deduction and logic to make sense of the roles of others, even when those other players are unrelia