About
Anjali Singh-Mitter
Psychotherapist & Neurofeedback Practitioner
The empirical world is a fantastic roadmap, but it isn't the entire landscape.
Traditional psychology is still predominantly studied as a scientific discipline. It encompasses our understanding of the brain and its responses, human development, behaviour, emotion and many of the biological processes involved in what we call mental health. These things are hugely important to me, and to the way I work, but they cannot possibly, in my view, account for all of the complexities that arise when two human beings sit in a room together and begin talking about a life.
There are the things we can measure and the things we can’t. There are experiences we can explain and others that resist explanation entirely. There are beliefs we know to be irrational but continue to feel; memories that exist less as stories than sensations; relationships that change us; and questions about identity, meaning and purpose that have occupied human beings for considerably longer than psychology has existed as a profession.
“My wish for you is that you can begin to understand and accept that what has happened to you is not your fault, healing from it is your responsibility, but most importantly, the journey itself is often far more important than where you end up on the other side.”
A Wider Conversation
If we broaden what we are looking at and address mental health as a fundamental part of being human, we open up a dialogue that I believe is considerably more useful.
My practice therefore moves between different therapeutic ideas rather than remaining loyal to one school of thought simply because that happens to be the school in which a practitioner trained. Within our conversations, we will visit parts work, hypnotherapy, mindfulness and neurofeedback, depending on the person and what emerges through the work.
I am interested in the points at which different forms of knowledge overlap: where neuroscience meets psychology; where the conscious mind encounters something less easily articulated; where Western scientific traditions can sit in conversation with older philosophical traditions rather than automatically displacing them.
I don’t think we need to choose between curiosity and evidence. There is room for both.
The Stories We Tell About Ourselves
We have become a society that is very good at talking about what is wrong with ourselves. The insight is good, but it can get a bit heavy, from all angles, in quite a relentless way. We have to remind ourselves of the good, too. In our most painful circumstances, it is a gift to also be able to find ways of bringing some beauty into your life alongside all the chaos. It won’t solve the problem, and we can’t avoid the bad and only look at the good, but we can’t bury ourselves in negativity all the time.
Our lives are no longer as readily peppered with philosophy, mythology or stories about humanity’s encounters with things larger than itself. At the same time, we find ourselves talking endlessly about a “crisis” of mental health.
I don’t think the answer is to romanticise suffering, or to ignore what hurts, but I do think there is value in recovering some curiosity about the full scope of human experience.
There is more to a person than their most difficult chapter. We have been telling stories about ourselves for generations. Somewhere along the way, perhaps we have become less interested in our own narratives, and yet there is always the possibility of becoming curious about the story we have inherited — and deciding what we would like the next chapter to say.
An Influence Closer to Home
My interest in bringing different ways of understanding the mind together began long before I trained as a therapist. My father was an important influence in the way I learned to think: not only about psychology, but about the meeting point between Western scientific thought and the philosophical traditions of the East. You can find out more about him here.
This influence has stayed with me. I have never felt particularly comfortable with the idea that one school of thought should have all the answers to something as wonderfully intricate as a whole person. My practice has grown out of that same curiosity — an interest in what happens when we allow different forms of knowledge to speak to one another rather than insisting that one must cancel out the rest. This is why there is a real mix here; we will talk as much about brain health as we do about things slightly more esoteric.
Beyond the consulting room
The questions that interest me in private practice don’t stop being relevant when somebody leaves the consulting room. How do human beings regulate themselves under pressure? What happens when fear begins influencing our decisions? Why do we repeat patterns we understand perfectly well? How does the way we see ourselves affect the way we relate to other people?
These questions matter in relationships and families. They matter in schools, and they matter enormously in organisations.
That is why my work now extends across private psychotherapy, neurofeedback, leadership, workplace mental health, workshops and speaking. The setting changes, and the language may change with it, but the central question is remarkably similar: How do we understand ourselves well enough to live, work and relate to one another better?
Each year, a portion of fees received by the practice is allocated through the Khilari Foundation towards charitable work and initiatives.