Anjali Singh-Mitter
Multimodal Therapy & Neurofeedback
More and more, a psychiatrist is approached today by patients who confront him with human problems rather than neurotic symptoms. Some of the people who nowadays call on a psychiatrist would have seen a pastor, or priest, or rabbi in former days. Now they often refuse to be handed over to a clergyman and instead confront a doctor with questions such as, “What is the meaning of my life?”
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Therapy, in its best form, should be a brief and light hearted break to your day, a source of a little quiet time or a candle to shed light on a dark corner of your mind to show you what some part of you already knows. Here, there isn’t an emphasis on pathology or diagnosis, but rather on the journey towards a sense of wholeness.
We all teeter on the edge of fear when it comes to the big questions “What does it feel like to be me?” or “Why is this happening to me?”. That fear is what we feel as the “ailment” that brings us to therapy in the first place. In an attempt to destigmatise the questions around therapy and its needs, this is a unique approach to therapeutic practices, bringing together the scientific approach of the Western world with the philosophical concepts found in the East. There’s more to our existence than what we can see or prove, and somehow we need to recognise this in the care that we seek out or implement for ourselves. Parts of this journey will take you through why an acknowledgement of this might be the liberation that you didn’t realise you were looking for.
In order to grapple with our inner world, we must take into account that it is only by doing this in a multifaceted, palatable way that it may not frighten the psyche into rigidity in its structure. Fear places a strain on the psyche’s elaborate system, tightening its hold on its current beliefs, many of which may have grown from pain. If we want to be able to truly shift our perception, it’s important to make it a desirable choice for the frightened mind. Desirable doesn’t just mean to play into what one could call the ego-driven want for solution to our “issues”. Desirable, to the psyche, means safe. Change – therapy – needs to feel safe, even perhaps enjoyable, and in best cases, playful. Enticing the frightened mind with the prospect of gentle joy is going to gain far greater access to the inner world than a blundering, loud, inconsiderately militant need for the answer to our perceived problems. We are not “broken”, we do not need “fixing”; there is no “problem” to be “solved”. We are made up of many characters, and these characters are experiencing our lives. Sometimes, it hurts, and we get stuck. You don’t have to punish those inner characters – and yourself – for getting stuck, you just need a map, and a guide, whilst you get yourself from where you are to where you would like to be.
The Khilari Foundation is an initiative founded alongside the therapy practice that aims to see a systemic change in the way mental health is recognised and treated. The Foundation believes in a holistic understanding of mental health, providing a multi-modal psychoeducation to clients and practitioners of any kind. All workshops are in keeping with the teaching of the Foundation, based on systems rooted in the intersection between evidenced based psychological intervention, and the philosophical questions that drive us towards that knowledge.
A percentage per year of all fees paid to the practice are donated to establishments across the globe that work with the Foundation towards a vision of a better understanding and practice of mental health care. Businesses, hospitals, and schools are invited to partner with the Foundation for ongoing support and feedback in the care of their staff, patients and students. The Foundation also serves as an cross disciplinary educational body for practitioners to develop their understanding of multimodal intervention. For more information, please get in touch.
The driving force behind the Foundation - some thoughts from Anjali
The mental health industry has become just that: an industry. Frankly, it’s the stuff of nightmares. We have entered an era of basic human emotion being labelled problematic, and in many cases, an almighty attitude at the sheer audacity of the fact that we “have been made to feel” a certain way. There is a particularly hot and trendy culture of finger-pointing in the mental health world. Social media, commercial marketing and the pharmaceutical companies tend to take the brunt of it, but there is plenty to go round. Therapists spend hours listening to various laments about societal injustice, systems that are failing the individuals, corporations that have dehumanised work life, and so on and so forth. It’s all a bit T.S. Eliot-dreary sometimes. It is the nature of therapy to come with something that feels like this, but everything being a problem with “society as a whole” paints a very bleak picture when it comes to galvanising the self into making any substantial change to the way that we feel.
The “systems” that we tend to blame are not without fault. There are enormous holes in most societal establishments, from corporate industries, to education, to healthcare. This is why part of this initiative is to help iron out creases in establishments that are causing unnecessary stress and pain. The reason that we feel dehumanised in so many of these forums is that they are, in many ways, working towards what can feel like a more impersonal environment, placing more emphasis on business, and less on individualisation. Society appears to be looking to standardise things that fundamentally need individual input: jobs like teaching have seemingly become more formulaic than they ever have been before. Business seems to have become a competition over how many hours one can work without sleep, rather than a passion for the product or idea with which we are working.
There is the potential in every system out there to be one of creativity and abundance rather than one of monotony and obligation. There is a silent but sure war going on under the surface of society, where many feel that if enough pressure is put on a system, the system will have to change, and the injustice of it all is that “it doesn’t”. The problem here is that it is an arbitrary system. It’s not conscious, we are. We can’t change the system if we don’t work towards a change in mentality in the human beings at the centre of these systems.
This is the belief that gave birth to The Khilari Foundation. Here, I want to support the people at the centres of these establishments to understand more wholly what it is they would like to achieve, and how to reach this potential in the healthiest, happiest and most efficient way possible. If you are a practitioner and this resonates with you, do drop me an email if there is something you think you can contribute to.
The many benefits of a multimodal approach to therapy can bring
Frequently Asked Questions
What do you treat?
Anybody can seek out therapy. On the one hand, there are the rather conventional reasons that someone might seek out help. If the emotional aspect of your life is hindering your ability to move forwards, therapeutic care is definitely something to look at. However, what might also lead you to therapy are things like learning difficulties, professional stagnation, or simply the desire to push yourself to reach your potential. Please see the Neurofeedback page for a more specialised list of what can be treated through this modality.
What kind of therapy do I need?
Most people benefit from a Neurofeedback/talk therapy combination, but do get in touch and I will be able to point you in the right direction.
What is neurofeedback?
Neurofeedback is a computer-assisted method of behavioural therapy working to relieve symptoms of dysregulation by providing the brain with feedback that allows for a natural process of self-correction.The brain is presented with its own activity in real time by means of visual, auditory and tactile feedback. Through these signals, the brain improves self regulation over time by efficiently shifting arousal levels and learning how to sustain positive states as needed.
Do you see children?
Neurofeedback is a fantastically effective tool for most paediatric cases in assisting with behavioural and emotional regulation. In working with children, I encourage parents to engage in their own sessions in order to better understand what might be going on with their child. If you are looking for support for your child, please get in touch and we will discuss what might be the best approach for you.
Are you covered by insurance?
This depends on your insurance providers, and whether they cover private psychotherapeutic care of your choosing. I am not directly affiliated with any insurance providers.
How much do you charge?
For a full list of costs and cancellation policies, please see the contact page. Please note that I do not charge any up front fees, and work on a non-commitment basis. You do not have to commit to a series of sessions from the outset, and thereafter there is a choice as to whether to pay via blocks of sessions or one session at a time.
What makes therapy effective?
It is difficult to give a formulaic answer to something that is in its nature so personalised and taps into the heart of each person’s individual core essence. However, at a surface level what is clear is that a holistic and all-encompassing approach to wellness does allow for the breadth of understanding that is crucial in therapy to make real, long lasting, felt change in your life. You will find that I often ask about diet, lifestyle, and most importantly, passion and love in the life of someone who is looking to overcome adversity. One cannot treat the entirety of our being as a “symptom” and we certainly cannot go about the discussion of mental health as an “ailment” or “illness” (see my informal musings in the About Anjali page for more on this). As soon as we break this mould, therapy becomes far more “effective” insofar as we can consider these things to have varying degrees of effect.