Grief after losing a parent, months after everyone stopped asking
The hardest part often arrives after the visitors stop and everyone assumes you are fine. Why the fourth month is harder than the first week.
The Bonding Corner
Notes on counseling, plainly written
Practical writing about counseling in Pakistan: what it costs, how it works, and what to do when the circumstances make it difficult.
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Feeling nothing at all: what emotional numbness is telling you
Not sad, not happy, just flat. Numbness is usually protection rather than absence. What causes it and how feeling comes back.
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The depression that looks like laziness
When depression takes away the ability to begin things, everyone reads it as laziness, including the person living it. How to tell the difference.
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Dreading weddings and gatherings when everything happens at them
Social anxiety is hard anywhere. Where life is built on gatherings, it becomes a weekly problem. Why avoiding makes it grow, and what breaks the pattern.
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Burnout in Pakistani workplaces, and the signs people miss
Burnout is not ordinary tiredness, and a week off does not fix it. The three signs that separate it from stress, and what actually changes it.
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When you cannot stop googling your symptoms
Checking and searching feel like caution. They are the fuel. Here is the loop health anxiety runs on, and how it gets interrupted.
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Waking at three in the morning with your heart racing
Night-time panic wakes you with a pounding heart and a certainty something is wrong. Why it happens at that hour, and what helps in the moment.
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What to do when counseling does not seem to be working
Four sessions in and nothing has changed. How to tell slow progress from a poor fit, and what to say if it is the second one.
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What to say in your first session when you do not know where to start
You do not need a prepared speech. Here is what the first hour actually asks of you, and what to do when your mind goes blank.
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How to tell your family you are seeing a counselor, and when not to
You are not obliged to tell anyone. If you want to, here is what to say, who to tell first, and how to handle the questions that follow.
