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Have a Long Standing Grudge Against Your Parents?
The way you were brought up, the experiences you had with your parents and even your peer groups play a very important role in shaping you. You may have some complaints about your parents. You may even have some grudge against your parents that has stayed with you for years. Maybe your parents did not understand you, maybe they compared you to other kids or your siblings. Maybe they did not give you enough time, maybe they were disinterested in your life, imposing an excess of restrictions and so on. Whatever the nature of the grudge, it leads to similar emotions. You might be angry, upset, sad or deeply disappointed about this part of your childhood. Sometimes, you are unable to confront your parents or have an open conversation with them about the way you feel. As a result, these emotions remain bottled up and unaddressed. Sometimes, a long standing grudge even affects the way you see yourself. You wonder if you are less deserving of certain experiences. This might again lead to chronic sadness, anger or insecurity. It also affects your relationships with others. You could have difficulty expressing anger, confronting others, trusting others. You might remain apprehensive about your relationships. In some way, you are unable to be yourself freely. Is It Okay To Leave A Long-Standing Grudge Against Your Parent Unaddressed? Even a brief look at how this long-standing grudge is impacting you is enough for you to know that ignoring it only worsens it. The longer these feelings remain unaddressed, the more it will fester and continue to impact you. Different areas of your life will continue to suffer, making you suffer more. How Can You Begin Addressing It? It is difficult to hold a grudge against your parents. Your parents have moulded you, taken care of you, and raised you. Experiencing love and pointed sadness or anger towards the same person can get difficult. Hence, it is worth all its while to work with the grudge rather than letting it remain on snooze mode. Here are some ways of helping you work with the grudge and related feelings: Acknowledge It: The first thing you can do here is take a step back and acknowledge that you have a grudge that is difficult to tide over. Acknowledge each emotion you feel, even the difficult ones. Shoving difficult emotions under the carpet only makes the heart heavier. Talk Your Feelings Out: Try talking to someone about these emotions. Maybe a friend, a sibling, your partner or even a therapist. Support is very important when you address certain emotions after long. Confront Your Parents: Confrontation is difficult but it helps greatly to get things off your chest. Talk to them about how you feel and be honest while doing that. Try hearing what they have to say. You might get some answers and even if you don’t, things will be openly communicated, instead of remaining bottled up. Try to Empathize: Try taking them off the pedestal of parenthood for a minute and try to see them just as people. Just for the time being, put yourself in their shoes and try to understand their situation. It might help you understand their position and what caused their behavior. There are chances you might relate to what they were going through and understand why they were not able to do better. This will open up some space for your feelings to heal. Some things are hard to let go of. At the same time, coming to terms with your past will allow you to move ahead in life with far less burden. You will notice a change in your relationships and in yourself. If you cannot let it go completely, you don’t have to. But you can try working on it, so it does not stop you from enjoying your beautiful present and from making an even more beautiful future. Feeling Misunderstood When You’re With Your Parents? Counseling can be a great tool for you to manage and work through difficulties in your relationship with your parents. We are here for you. Book an Appointment Frequently Asked Questions Can Therapy help me work on difficult emotions I have towards my parents? Therapy can be a great tool to foster acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding, and work on your relationship with your parents. Therapy can offer you a safe space for working towards resolving any resentment or difficult emotions towards parents. Will my therapist be partial and biased, and take my parents’ side? No, a professional therapist is neutral and impartial. Their role is to support you and help you work on your feelings and emotions related to the difficult relationship. Therapists do not take sides but instead work towards fostering better understanding and communication between family members. About the Author This article was written by Inner Space Team. This post was consulted & approved by professional therapists practicing online therapy and counseling. Ask a Therapist If you are interested to know more about parent-child relationships and other mental health topics, ‘Ask A Therapist’ is a platform for you to ask your questions related to Mental Health, Mindfulness & Emotional Well-Being to our team of qualified Therapists. Ask a Therapist Related Blogs Why We Feel Misunderstood The Gift Of Psychotherapy Dealing With Anger Mindfully
Are You Overprotecting Your Child?
The parent of today is quite different from the parent of 20 years ago. If you are today’s parent, you read up regularly, follow various parenting blogs and try to stay aware about the resources needed to raise a child effectively. You try your best to meet all your child’s needs be it at a physical, mental or social level. Many of you may have also decided on the kind of parent you would like to be. This could be based on the kind of parenting you have received as a child. “I’ll give everything I have not received to my child”, “I’ll be the best parent and will ensure that my child is always happy, protected and successful” are commonly expressed thoughts. Hence, you go through the first few years of parenting while painstakingly fulfilling every need of your child. When your child is bored, the next toy or game is readily furnished. When she is about to cry, her favorite youtube video is ready. If she refuses food, varieties of alternatives are present. If she is confused while reciting the alphabet, ready recitals are given. When she runs into a fight with another child, the parents are spoken to. Each problem is solved, each barrier, removed. Is this kind of Parenting truly Problem Free? Considering the degree of preparation and effort involved, you might expect that this kind of parenting would be least likely to create any problems for your child in their future. However, as a common consensus among psychologists, we find that this may not always be true. As overprotected children grow and enter middle childhood and teenage, psychologists find that many of them fall into one of two symptom buckets: One bucket is Anxious and Underconfident: These children are overly worried and have low self belief. They may have difficulty in making even smaller decisions with confidence. They may have difficulty taking initiative and be overly dependent on others to fulfill their needs. The other bucket is Self-Centered and Entitled: These children grow up with a sense of entitlement. They do not like to take responsibility for their actions and are looking at others to do things for them. They come across as self centered and are unable to build meaningful relationships. Observing these behaviors in your children, you worry and you question yourself– “Where am I going wrong? I am giving my child everything, every single time!” Not finding a satisfactory answer to this, you continue the same pattern of giving them whatever they need. This makes the problematic behavior even more pronounced. Looking into your pattern of overprotecting will give you an understanding of where the problem lies. Overprotecting Your Child: When You ‘Give It All’ When you take care of “everything”, you are unknowingly overprotecting your child. Every decision from the smallest, like what to wear, to the bigger ones like future plans, are highly influenced, or perhaps even taken by you. If your child ends up facing a problem, you have ready solutions that you want the child to implement. Sometimes, you may even implement it for him or her. You shower your child with too much attention, too quickly, to take away his or her pain. Different people can overprotect their children in different ways. You may not be doing all the things described, but do you have the orientation of quickly solving all your child’s problems? Do you find it hard to tolerate your child’s discomfort? If you do, you are probably overprotecting your child. What happens as a consequence is that the child rarely has opportunity to face a crisis or a challenge and use his or her own devices to navigate through it. For example, the child has not learnt to stay with his boredom for a few minutes and figure a way out. He has only watched his boredom being taken away. He grows up to be impatient, easily frustrated and impulsive, not having the resources to deal with boredom. Similarly, if the child handles a fight wrong, and then figures how to handle it right, she has learnt how to manage. On the other hand, if you have handled it for her, she has only watched it, not learnt it. It is thus not surprising that these children grow up to have little belief in their abilities to manage their environment. They are unable to try, because they have had little opportunity to try and fail. They see failure as meaning that they are not good enough, rather than as a part of the process of figuring something out. If you do identify with these patterns, it’s not too late. Effective parenting, simply put, is to equip children with the necessary tools to become healthy, emotionally stable, competent and independent adults who are ready for bigger challenges in life. A parent is a guiding light under which a child begins to design his future. How do I Begin Changing this Pattern? Allow: Keep in mind that it is a good practice to allow your child to use his or her own resources before you step in. You can help your child when they are stuck. However, once they get unstuck, let them take the lead. Ask: Ask them what they feel and how they would like to deal with the situation. Give them the inputs they need to decide well; but let them take the lead. This way, the child has support and guidance while they are also actively involved, thinking, figuring it out and growing, through each situation. Pause: See how you uneasy you feel when your child is navigating through some situation. Take a few deep breaths and see if you can stay with the discomfort instead of acting out of it. Staying with difficult emotions increases our capacity to tolerate and manage it. It also reduces the urge to act impulsively and gives you space to pause and respond in a more healthy manner. This post has been contributed by Gitali Chatterji. Gitali is
Are You Too Busy?
Whenever I ask people : How are you? Often the reply is “I am busy” or “I am crazy busy”. Very rarely do I hear “I am fine”, “I do a lot of things that I enjoy”. Neither do I see people trying to figure out why they are so busy and saying “I am feeling exhausted, I need help”. How do you experience your busyness? Do you find that you are busy to return calls, meet people that matter, fold laundry, cook a meal, spend few minutes with your kids/spouses without something “so important” coming in between? Probably you are even too busy to get 8 hours of sleep. Mysteriously though, you seem to always have time to read all whatsapp forwards and send them to others, spend long hours following up on other people’s lives, constantly be in front of the computer or phone, scrolling through facebook, twitter, Instagram, news.. the list goes on. The Price of Being Too Busy The price of being so busy is that you don’t get the time for self care. Ask yourself, if all your time is spent on the external world, where is the time to actually take care of yourself, and rejuvenate yourself for the next day and the day after? When you get time to do other activities that are not related to work or duties, do you invest time in “yourself” or are you drowning in busyness? Chances are, its the latter. Working hours are rarely defined anymore. Moreover, you are constantly consumed in your devices 24/7. You are probably focusing on “everything needs to be done right now” instead of preparing yourself and starting afresh the next day. In a 2013 Boston Globe column, Dr. Susan Koven from Massachusetts General Hospital wrote: “In the past few years, I’ve observed an epidemic of sorts: patient after patient suffering from the same condition. The symptoms of this condition include fatigue, irritability, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, heartburn, bowel disturbances, back pain, and weight gain. There are no blood tests or X-rays diagnostic of this condition, and yet it’s easy to recognize. The condition is excessive busyness.” Many of you might be going through this syndrome. Probably, it initially started as a way of helping you make use of your time productively. However, if in recent times this is causing chaos in your mind and in the way you function with other people, you are probably too busy. You may have difficulty engaging in fulfilling conversations without uttering the word “busy” or without getting busy during the conversation. You may find that your productivity is getting affected immensely at work, home and with self. How Can You Make Time to Care for Yourself? These are some good starting points to create some space for yourself amidst your schedule:- Be Aware of how often you are using the word “busy” – this will tell you first hand how busy you are, and how you feel about it. Try not to use the word ‘Busy’ as often: Whenever you notice that you’re about to say “I’m busy”, take a breath, pause. Constantly saying ‘I’m busy’ only perpetuates the pattern and prevents you from truly understanding the nature of that busyness. As the Buddha said, “what you think, you become”. Limit multitasking, increase ‘mono tasking’. Focus on one task instead of on three. Research has found that mono tasking is more efficient than multitasking, it helps you attend to each task better. Moreover, your mind remains clutter free and you immediately notice how much more systematic this feels! Delegate since it is important to prioritise Self – we overlook this one quite often. Remember, your workload is sapping your energy. Often, you make excuses to keep tasks to yourself because you believe that only you can do it best. However, giving others a chance too could help. It will help you focus on the things that will actually help you grow, or things that you actually want to do. Moreover, it will also help you build a resource pool of people who can support you in your workload, in the long run. Limit Distractions, One primary mode of distraction is the phone. Other avenues are television, internet surfing etc. Without your recognition or intention, they take away time and space. Keep some gadget free time in your day, even if it is just 10-15 minutes. This will allow you to mentally rest and reorient to the task at hand with greater focus. It goes without saying that this will also save your time! Make time to Pause, multiple times in a day – check in with yourself to how you feel and what you need in this moment. Maybe it is a glass of water, or a walk, maybe it is to look away from the screen for a few minutes! Be Mindful – when you pay attention to the present moment, you stay rooted to what is happening in the now, and get less swayed by thoughts and mental chatter. Sleep – an often undervalued process in current times, sleep helps you rejuvenate, neurologically and physically. Lack of shut eye time can be more harmful to mental health than you may imagine. If it is daunting to incorporate all of these tips, pick one or two and get started. In a week or two, you will be able to tell the difference. The clutter will start to lessen. Space will begin to open up. Then, pick two more and integrate them in your routine. Keep this going until you feel more space in your day, in your mind and heart. This post has been contributed by Nandita Sarma, counselor and psychologist at Inner Space. Related Articles : Fear of Missing Out: Am I Doing Enough? Burnout: How Do You Know If It Is Happening To You?
WHAT SHOULD I DO IF I FIND LIFE TO BE MEANINGLESS?
It is hard to come by a person who has not experienced moments when they are swallowed up by a vacuum within themselves and in their lives. For many, these moments are fleeting. But some of us have a sense of meaninglessness deeply entrenched in our lives. The questions What am I doing here?, What is the purpose of my life? or Why am I doing what I’m doing? seem to hang over our heads like the sword of Damocles. There seems to be no convincing reason for existence. This feeling often sets in during young adulthood, when the comfort of childhood is replaced with the weight of responsibilities, but individuals of all ages may experience it sometime during their lives. This pervasive feeling of purposelessness, when sustained over time, makes you rather unhappy. It also drains you of the motivation to get out there and enjoy life. In short, life becomes a chore, a path to trudge across simply because there is no other visible option. So What does One Do When One finds Life Meaningless? Let us first look at how this feeling evolves within the each of us. We each have a number of things that bring meaning to our lives. It may be a romantic partner, or the aim of landing a dream job, a career we want to build, children we wish to raise well, or a passion for music and art. These things are fleeting, their significance in our lives temporary. Partners can be broken up with, jobs can be lost or grow monotonous, and art can get repetitive. When life is stripped bare of its sole source of meaning, all sense of purpose is in question. Robin Sharma very articulately stated, “The mind abhors a vacuum”. When deprived of a concrete end or goal that may seem to lend meaning to life, the human mind grows restless, eventually arriving at the bothersome existential question of life’s meaning. It is this very question that could either propel one forward in life, or decrease the very motivation to live. Either way, it is important to acknowledge that the tendency to question meaning and purpose is inherent in the human mind. And like all other emotional or psychological states, it can be overcome! Here’s what you can do about it. Don’t make ‘Searching for an Abstract Meaning to Life’ an Intellectual Pursuit Many people get preoccupied with the fact that death renders all of their actions debatable. They then begin to search for a higher, metaphysical meaning to life. If internalized and felt experientially, this can lead to spiritual and emotional growth. However, often, it may solely remain an intellectual pursuit, a preoccupation where we keep coming up with theories to support a higher meaning to life. Then, we feel that these theories don’t relieve us of anxiety, and search for better theories. Eventually, this increases the feeling of emotional overwhelm and we are perpetually distressed. The existential question of whether or not life has any meaning to begin with is a valid one. However, it can lead you to keep thinking and remain disconnected with your emotions. To ease this out, the idea is to not get caught in answering the question but in handling the associated emotions, and to be more mindful and present to life. As a mystic once said, “Life is a purpose unto itself”. You may not be able to know whether your life is meant to serve a purpose in the grander scheme of things. However, now that you are indeed alive, be more mindful and present to life, as it is. Do Activities that You Enjoy, for the Activity itself and Not for the Result. What are some activities that you truly enjoy? Could be interaction, could be exercise, writing.. activities are many! Do what you love, it fills you with positive energy. However, do it just for the sake of engaging in it, simply because you enjoy yourself, not necessarily for a result. One usually reaches a state of flow when partaking in their favourite activities and hobbies. Research has repeatedly shown that adults who spend more time in flow are happier overall, and tend to feel more cheerful and creative. So whip out that old guitar or paint brush and lose yourself in something you love! Stop Living in the Past and in the Future Hankering after past joy, or dreading possible future difficulties are a shortcut to misery. It is misery and suffering that often begets a questioning of the significance of life. This questioning, when left unchecked, breeds a loss of meaning. Do you find your mind constantly wandering to the past or future? If so, make yourself aware of your thoughts and consciously bring them back to the present. Practising meditative techniques also helps greatly in grounding the mind in the present. Cultivate a Beginner’s Mind Have you noticed the way a child reacts to such simple things as soap bubbles or a butterfly? Growing up takes away from the most of us the perpetual wonder that children display towards all things. “Shoshin” is a concept in Zen Buddhism which refers to a beginner’s mind; the state of being open and eager when learning something, just like a beginner. Cultivating a beginner’s mind in your daily life would mean being observant about you, and appreciating everyday things such as a tree or the clear blue sky, as if seeing them for the very first time. Do this, and you will be surprised at how you can find beauty in things you earlier thought of as mundane. Life ceases to seem meaningless when you see beauty all around you – whether in a simple flower or a sleeping stray dog. Serve It is a very human desire to want to make a difference. Involve yourself in small activities of social service. Be it helping a little extra with the household chores, buying a homeless person food, or volunteering regularly with an NGO, small acts of service go a long way in bringing meaning into one’s life.
HOW TO DEAL WITH A PHOBIA?
Our last post talked about the difference between fear and a phobia, and what it feels like to have a phobia. Once one knows the implications of living with a phobia, it becomes easier to empathise with those dealing with one. As a next step, one might ask – How can I deal with my phobia? Since phobias vary in intensity, there are different means by which one may effectively deal with them. Self-help strategies can be effective in overcoming low-intensity phobias. Low intensity phobias are those that do not get in the way of your daily life, such as a fear of bats (odds of encountering the flying mammals are rather low unless you intend to star in the next Man Vs. Wild series!). However, if you suffer a fear of crowded places, or a fear of elevators, living in the city would be very difficult. High intensity phobias might need professional help, in addition to self help. We discuss some ways in which you can deal with a phobia below: How to Deal with a Phobia? Accept the Phobia and know that it is not your fault: It becomes easy to criticise yourself for being fearful, or weak. However, that makes things even harder, since resisting a feeling is like not looking at what exists. Gently accept whatever you feel, while remaining compassionate to yourself. A phobia usually means that there are underlying fears or anxieties which need to be gently addressed. These could range from childhood experiences, long standing feelings, a fear of being oneself, low self-confidence etc. In order to address these, it is necessary that there is a gentle acceptance of what you feel. List your Goals and Motivations: Listing your goal, for example, “I want to overcome my fear of spiders”, often helps; once you are compassionate to yourself. Writing down the reasons you want to overcome your fear, for example, “I want my children to know I’m strong enough to do this”, helps you remain motivated towards trying to overcome your fear. Engage in Self Exposure: Work on slowly bringing yourself to face the object of your phobia. In the case of arachnophobia, that would mean beginning by looking at pictures of spiders, and later increasing proximity with real spiders, until a certain comfort level is achieved. Again, this must be done repeatedly and regularly, without self-indulgent cheating! Keep an exposure homework diary, where you can note down every small step of your progress. You must bear in mind, however, that self-exposure would only be advisable for low-intensity phobias that would not much hamper everyday functioning. Also, remember not to overexpose. Keep exposure times brief and extend effort just a little bit more than what you usually do. For example, if you cannot tolerate looking at a spider, see if you can look at a spider’s picture from the room’s entrance, even if it is just for a few seconds. Be careful not to overdo, and to gradually increase exposure as you feel settled and ready. Learn Relaxation Techniques: Learning and using practices such as such as mindful meditation, rhythmic exercise and yoga can help effectively reduce distress stemming from a phobia. Even simple breathing exercises or counting from one to ten in your head when overwhelmed with panic can help. These should be practised regularly when in a relaxed state of mind so that you become accustomed to calming down quickly when anxious. Learning relaxation also helps in self-exposure, since you can enter exposure in a relaxed state – for example, see the spider’s picture when you feel relaxed and ready. You can also continue to practice the relaxation response through the exposure, for example, continue to stay with the breath while you watch the spider. Pause when Negative Thoughts occur: What often gets in the way of managing a phobia is a negative chain of thoughts that makes you underestimate your ability to cope with a feared object or situation. For example, sometimes, dramatic, or catastrophic thoughts occur, “That man in the elevator sneezed on me, I’m sure to fall sick!”, “I’m sure to forget my speech and look like a total clown!” Pause when such thoughts occur. Gently remember that these thoughts are occurring more because of the overall state of mind. You can practice the relaxation response while reminding yourself about how these are simply anxious thoughts that are exaggerated. Moreover, the probability of them ringing true is low. Just like super happy thoughts – ‘My life is great! Everything will be wonderful now on!’ are not realistic, super worrisome thoughts too, don’t paint a true picture of reality. Once you pause, let more realistic versions of reality arise, such as, ‘That guy sneezed on me, but it is not necessary that I should fall sick.’ ‘ I might forget a few lines, but if I allow myself a few seconds it might come back.’ Moreover, practice the relaxation response and ask yourself if contracting the common cold or forgetting a few lines is worth all the anxiety you go through. Congratulate yourself on facing your fears: Positive self-reinforcement is an important part of achieving your goals. Acknowledge your progress, no matter how small. Small steps can be very encouraging and make way for relief and freedom, mentally and physically. Go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back for swatting that spider on your window-sill all by yourself! If you think that it could be hard to cope with the phobia by yourself, you can always seek help from a mental health professional. It is also not advisable to deal with high intensity phobias completely by yourself. Help is more accessible with therapists, psychiatrists, support groups etc being around. Do reach out, since some support can be very helpful in encouraging whatever effort you are already putting in. Phobias can definitely be worked with. Talk to your near ones, take support and you’ll do much better 🙂 Post Contributed By: Suneha Sethi and Malini Krishnan Suneha is a student of psychology and interned with us in
On “Phobia”: What It Really Is
Most of us use the ‘word’ phobia rather casually. We often hear such exclamations as, “I really hate Maths… I think I have a phobia of numbers!” or “I don’t socialize much- It’s like I have social phobia!” But what really is a phobia, and how is it different from the more generic, everyday fear we experience? Psychologists would describe a phobia as a type of anxiety disorder where one has an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. Someone with a phobia will experience distress so intense, that they will go to any lengths to avoid the source of the fear. On the other hand, fear, in the generic sense of the the word, is a survival mechanism hardwired into our brains, that helps us react to danger and protect ourselves from harm. Unlike phobias, fear is a normal part of our daily lives and does not usually debilitate an individual. Phobias may be specific, that is, involving particular objects, like spiders, dogs or needles, or they may be linked to certain events or circumstances, such as social situations. Some common phobias (with their fancy names) include: Social phobia – fear of being in places with a lot of people Agoraphobia – fear of being somewhere with no support, away from home, open spaces Claustrophobia – fear of being in constricted, confined spaces Aerophobia – fear of flying Arachnophobia – fear of spiders Living with a phobia can be an extremely challenging task. When faced with the object of their phobia, a person may experience tremendous feelings of dread, sweating, shortness of breath, trembling and nausea. Some may even experience a fear of dying, or a sense of unreality. Further, one may end up missing out on opportunities in life, simply to avoid the unpleasantness of anxiety. What Happens To Someone With A Phobia? There are two ways in which a person with a phobia may react to the source of their fear. This also helps differentiate a phobia from a generic, less severe fear. Experience Severe and Incapacitating Distress and Anxiety Take glossophobia, for example. Glossophobia is the extreme fear of public speaking, or of speaking in general. This extends beyond the classroom fear that had us all praying that the teacher wouldn’t pick on us to answer that trigonometry problem. A person with glossophobia would panic at the mere thought of communication with even a small group of people. Granted, a person with “normal” stage fright would also experience some anxiety before making a boardroom presentation, for example, but they would be able to deliver despite this fear. In contrast, one with glossophobia could experience symptoms like hyperventilation, trembling, sweating, and stammering. Needless to say, such an emotional state would not allow for a very effective conference-room presentation, and could be extremely embarrassing for the individual dealing with the phobia. Engage in Avoidant Behaviours, and Evade the Feared Object Completely: If you have glossophobia, you might entirely refrain from voicing your groundbreaking new sales idea during the board meeting, in order to avoid the crushing anxiety of speaking up in a group. You may also completely avoid situations that focus group attention on you. Imagine the stress of having to plan your daily routine around trying to avoid speaking up in public. So much as buying that local train ticket to office and back becomes a terrifying task. Even if a feared object does not appear in your life, you might spend a significant amount of time worrying about facing it. How unpleasant it must be to go through a fearful mental countdown, for a whole month, unto the day your train pass expires, just because you dread that ticket window so much. What often makes dealing with a phobia still more challenging, is a misplaced attitude towards it. It is hardly comforting to be told, “Get over it, dude, it’s just a bit of stage fright” or “Everyone feels nervous, it’s normal”. This would only make someone dealing with a phobia embarrassed and hesitant to address the issue. So, How Do You Deal With A Phobia? “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” -Nathaniel Branden In order to get over a phobia, it is important to first acknowledge and accept your fears. No matter how out-of-control your fears seem, know that it is well within your reach to control, if not completely overcome your phobia, with the help of adequate support and curative measures. Stay tuned for our next post that will talk about managing and overcoming a phobia. Do let us know what you think about fears and phobias, what your experiences have been like here Are your anxieties holding you back? Counseling can be a great tool for you to manage and overcome your anxiety and lead a happy, stress-free life. We are here for you. Book an Appointment Frequently Asked Questions Do I have to live with phobia all my life? Phobias can manifest differently in different people. Some people may notice their symptoms have gone completely, while some may continue to experience the symptoms in varying intensity. However, with early intervention and having healthy coping skills can help ease out the intensity of the fear. Can I prevent Phobias? Phobias cannot be prevented. But, it can be managed with early intervention, counseling, lifestyle changes, and having healthy coping skills in place. Do I have to consume medications if I have Phobias? While medications do help in managing certain symptoms of the phobias, many people do not require them. They can manage their symptoms without medication by going for therapy, using self-help and stress management strategies, and having a healthy lifestyle. About the Author This article was written by Suneha Sethi, Content Developer Intern at Inner Space. This post was consulted & approved by professional therapists practicing online therapy and counseling. Ask a Therapist If you are interested to know more about phobias and other mental health topics, ‘Ask A Therapist’ is a platform
