Visions of a Grand Life During Crisis: Positive Manifestation or Aimless Daydreaming?

Crisis has a way of inflating the imagination. When life contracts—financially, emotionally, physically—the mind often expands in the opposite direction. People who feel cornered begin to picture spacious futures. Success appears vividly. Recognition feels inevitable. A better version of life waits just beyond the present difficulty, fully formed and strangely detailed. This is often described as manifestation, framed as optimism with intent. Other times, it is dismissed as escapism, a refusal to engage with reality. Neither explanation quite captures what is happening. The visions arrive uninvited, sometimes embarrassingly grand, sometimes soothing enough to make the present moment tolerable. They do not feel strategic. They feel necessary. The question is not whether these fantasies are useful or delusional. The question is why they appear so reliably when things are falling apart.

Why do scratchy people often make you so uncomfortable?

There is a particular kind of discomfort that arrives before you can justify it. Nothing has happened. No line has been crossed. The person is not rude, not loud, not obviously hostile. And yet your shoulders tighten. The room feels slightly noisier. Conversation develops a grain. You find yourself aware of your own breathing, your own posture, as if something in the air has turned faintly abrasive. You tell yourself to relax. You tell yourself you’re being unfair. The discomfort persists anyway. It’s the feeling that comes from being near someone who is, for lack of a better word, scratchy. Not dangerous. Not offensive. Just… irritating in a way that refuses explanation. What unsettles most people is not the irritation itself, but the moral confusion that follows it. Why should someone’s presence make your body flinch when your values tell you it shouldn’t? Why does a reaction arrive so quickly, so physically, and so stubbornly resist reason? The problem is that we’re taught to distrust sensations that don’t come with clear evidence. But social discomfort rarely waits for permission. It shows up early, uninvited, and insists on being felt before it can be understood.

How the Brain Finds Focus: Silence, Noise, and the Psychology of Attention

There’s an old myth that the best studying happens in perfect silence. Another claims that a little background noise keeps your mind “in the zone.” Both sound plausible — and both are half true. Neuroscience has spent decades unpacking what really happens when the brain tries to focus amid silence or sound. The results reveal something deeper about how humans regulate attention, arousal, and self-awareness. In truth, the brain doesn’t crave quiet or chaos. It craves coherence.

The Science of Silence is Easy to Understand

When you study in silence, your brain’s sensory world contracts. The auditory cortex, deprived of input, grows hyper-attuned to the smallest internal cues — a heartbeat, a sigh, the faint rustle of paper. Inside this void, your own thoughts become louder. The default mode network (DMN) — the system behind daydreaming and self-talk — begins to stir. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) must then constantly refocus attention, pulling you back from wandering thoughts. This makes silent study both powerful and perilous. In silence, concentration deepens only if your internal dialogue cooperates. For highly disciplined thinkers, silence sharpens the mind like a scalpel. For others, it turns the volume up on anxiety. Silence, in other words, doesn’t calm the brain. It confronts it. Silence works best for tasks demanding conceptual synthesis, complex reasoning, or reflective writing — where cognitive quietness helps integrate abstract ideas. But it can sabotage repetitive or memorization-based work, where a touch of sensory texture helps prevent mental fatigue.

The Noise Advantage

Noise, counterintuitively, can make thinking smoother — if it’s the right kind. The brain’s reticular activating system (RAS) thrives on mild stimulation to maintain arousal. Background sounds such as café chatter, rainfall, or low instrumental music offer that sweet balance between monotony and alertness.

Neuroscientists call this the inverted U-curve effect: 

Too little stimulation, and the mind drifts. Too much, and attention fractures.

Just enough — around 70 decibels, like a lively café — enhances focus and creativity.

Studies from the University of Chicago and Stockholm University found that moderate ambient noise improves creative cognition by forcing the brain to think abstractly rather than literally. The mind must “fill in the gaps,” generating fresh associations instead of rehearsing known patterns. Predictability is key. White or pink noise, gentle rain, or soft instrumental music allow the auditory cortex to habituate. In contrast, variable noise — conversation, traffic, lyrics — continually hijacks attention because the brain treats each change as potential significance.

The ideal study soundscape is not silence, but structured quiet — steady enough to soothe, dynamic enough to sustain.

Adaptation and Personality: Why We Differ

Not all brains tune alike. Personality, genetics, and early environment shape each person’s “noise threshold.”

Cognitive Profile Optimal Sound Environment Why It Works

• Introverts / Highly Sensitive People: Silence or steady soft sound. Their sensory cortices are hyper-reactive; noise floods their attention system.
• Extroverts / Sensation Seekers Moderate ambient noise. They need higher arousal to reach peak focus.
• Neurodivergent Individuals (ADHD, ASD) depend on predictability. White noise can mask distractions; unpredictable sound causes overload.

The thalamus acts as the gatekeeper, filtering irrelevant stimuli before they reach consciousness. Some people’s gates are tighter; others’ are looser. What we call “focus preference” is, biologically, a form of sensory gating efficiency. Over time, the brain can train itself to adapt. Musicians, for instance, develop a rare ability to concentrate amid auditory chaos because their neural filters sharpen with use — a kind of attentional callus.

The Neuroscience of Masking and Rhythm

Noise can also serve as camouflage. Controlled sound — white, pink, or brown noise — synchronizes with alpha brain waves (8–12 Hz), frequencies linked to calm alertness. This alignment reduces random cortical firing and stabilizes attention.

EEG studies show that background noise boosts frontal midline theta activity, a neural marker of sustained cognitive engagement. This explains why some students and workers report better flow in environments with mild auditory texture: the noise doesn’t distract — it anchors.

Attention, neurologically speaking, has rhythm. The brain’s prefrontal circuits pulse between engagement and rest every few seconds. In silence, this rhythm floats freely. In noise, it synchronizes with the environment — giving the mind a subtle tempo to follow.

Focus is not stillness. It’s choreography between the brain and its surroundings.

The Cultural Dimension of Concentration

Silence and sound are also cultural languages.

In Western contexts, silence often connotes discipline and control — libraries, exams, private study. In many Asian or Mediterranean settings, shared background noise is normalized; families eat, talk, and study amid gentle activity. Children raised in such environments develop neural habits of filtering without emotional discomfort.

These cultural differences illustrate neuroplastic adaptation: the brain learns which sounds to ignore. Thus, what feels “distracting” in one culture may feel “comforting” in another.

Building Your Own Focus Soundscape

The best learning environment isn’t defined by silence or noise, but by intentionality. The key is choosing sound that stabilizes attention without hijacking cognition.

Recommended Environments:

• White / Pink Noise: Evens out unpredictable sounds.
• Nature Ambiance: Rain, ocean waves, birds — psychologically safe frequencies.
• Instrumental Music: Predictable rhythm, no lyrics.
• Low Human Murmur: Simulates collective focus, like study cafés.

Avoid:

• Music with lyrics (competes with language centers)
• Sudden environmental noise (triggers thalamic alerts)
• Ultra-silence if you’re prone to intrusive thoughts or anxiety

When crafted deliberately, your study soundscape becomes a form of cognitive architecture — not background, but structure. The ability to focus is less about the world’s volume and more about your brain’s choreography within it. Silence demands internal discipline; noise demands external filtering. Both train different muscles of the mind. Perhaps that’s the lesson: silence teaches awareness, noise teaches resilience. Master both, and you become not just a focused learner but an adaptive one — someone who can think clearly, whether in a library, a storm, or the soft chaos of everyday life.

References

• Mehta, R., Zhu, R., & Cheema, A. (2012). “Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition.” Journal of Consumer Research.
• Lee, H. et al. (2019). “Effects of White Noise on Attention in Adults with ADHD.” Behavioral Neuroscience.
• Kounios, J. & Beeman, M. (2015). The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain.
• Sadaghiani, S. & Kleinschmidt, A. (2016). “Brain Networks and Alpha Oscillations: A Model of Selective Attention.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
• Mednick, S. et al. (2018). “Environmental Noise and Cognitive Performance: Mechanisms and Modulation.” Frontiers in Psychology.
• National Institutes of Health (2023). “Neural Correlates of Attention in Quiet and Noisy Environments.”
• Stockholm University & University of Chicago Collaborative Research (2019–2022) on auditory background modulation and cognitive load.

7 Things You Can Do When Your 5-Year-Old Exhibits the Behaviors You’ve Battled for Decades

There is an instant in parenthood that feels like a small, uncanny betrayal: you see a movement, a tone, a sudden tightness of the jaw in your five-year-old and — like a glassware store hearing a dropped plate — your chest knows that sound. It is not merely resemblance; it is a likeness that demands something of you. You might feel anger first, then a cold, practical fear: not again. You have spent years arguing with certain reflexes, certain private scripts written in the margins of your life — perfectionism, a freeze that masquerades as obedience, shame thin as tissue. Now, in a child who can’t explain the shape of those things yet, they arrive raw and small, and everything inside you divides between two tasks: protect the child and manage the ghost. Those tasks are distinct. One is immediate and concrete; the other is long, slow work. This essay offers seven clear, adult things to do — not cheerfully promised cures, nor sentimental platitudes — but actionable practices grounded in both practical parenting and the psychological truth that cycles break when the adult changes their behavior first.

A Germophobic, You Used Bathroom Towels By Mistake – How to Redeem Your Sanitization Now?

You step out of the shower, steam curling around your ears, skin freshly scrubbed and dripping clean. The towel rack hangs nearby, and without thinking, you grab what you assume is your fresh towel. Seconds later, your body stiffens. That wasn’t your towel. That was the one used by someone else, maybe after they washed their face, maybe after they dried their hands from the bathroom sink. A flush of panic spreads. For most people, this might earn a shrug. For someone with germophobia, it sets off alarms as if the sanctity of their entire body has been violated. This is not a trivial overreaction. Germophobia—or contamination-related OCD—rewires the mind to interpret harmless accidents as catastrophic breaches of safety. A towel is no longer fabric; it is a carrier of unseen armies of microbes, imagined threats multiplying in seconds. The question becomes desperate: how do I cleanse myself now? But to understand how to redeem such “contamination” requires more than sanitizer. It requires insight into the psychology of fear, the science of germs, and humanity’s long history of purification rituals. Only then can one calm both skin and psyche.

Why the Wrong Towel Feels Like a Catastrophe

At the heart of germophobia is not dirt itself but the idea of contamination. Psychologists note that the fear is often “magical” rather than scientific. If someone with OCD touches a doorknob, their anxiety spikes not because they logically believe the knob is dripping with anthrax but because their brain treats it as inherently “dirty.” Once contact is made, contamination feels permanent, spreading from finger to arm to entire body. The same happens with towels. A shared towel feels like a sponge of invisible fluids: sweat, saliva, bacteria. The germophobic brain doesn’t pause to calculate risk; it floods with alarm. This explains why such episodes provoke more distress than genuine exposure events like touching money or sitting on a subway seat. The bathroom is coded as a “contamination zone,” so a towel linked to it feels catastrophic. Researchers call this thought-action fusion. The belief is that touching something “dirty” automatically makes one dirty, regardless of context. A split-second mistake becomes a crisis of identity: “I am no longer clean.” This inner rupture explains why such a small error spirals into panic for the germophobic.

Science of Towels and Germs — What Really Happens?

Now for the less emotional, more biological side. Are towels really that dangerous? Research suggests that bathroom towels can indeed harbor bacteria if they are damp and reused often. A study from the University of Arizona found that nearly 90% of bathroom hand towels carried coliform bacteria, and 14% had E. coli. Towels left in humid bathrooms become breeding grounds, especially if not washed frequently. But here’s the nuance: for a healthy individual, the risk of infection is minimal. Your skin is not a passive sponge; it is an organ with layers of protection, oils, and immune defenses. Most bacteria on towels are the same microbes already present on your skin. Unless the towel has come into direct contact with bodily fluids or someone with an infectious condition, the likelihood of catching an illness is exceedingly low. The gulf between perceived and actual risk is massive. The germophobic brain inflates risk until the towel feels like a biohazard. In reality, a shower after accidental use or even a rinse with soap suffices. Science reassures; psychology resists. This is why managing such moments isn’t just about washing—it’s about soothing a mind convinced of catastrophe.

Fear, Purity, and the Human Psyche

The fear of contamination is ancient. Germophobia, though clinically defined only in the last century, echoes humanity’s oldest anxieties around purity. Across civilizations, purity and impurity were moral categories as much as hygienic ones. In Hindu dharma, ritual baths in the Ganga cleanse not just dirt but spiritual pollution. In Islam, wudu (ablution) before prayer is both a physical wash and a spiritual reset. The Romans built elaborate baths not merely for hygiene but for symbolic renewal. Even in Christianity, baptism is a form of washing away contamination. What germophobia amplifies is this primal human obsession with purity. A bathroom towel mishap triggers a crisis that feels larger than hygiene: a rupture in moral or bodily sanctity. Anthropologists like Mary Douglas, in her seminal work Purity and Danger, argued that dirt is “matter out of place.” Towels are supposed to dry you; when a used one touches you, it becomes dirt out of place, collapsing the symbolic order. This explains why germophobic anxiety feels both irrational and deeply human. It taps into a collective subconscious where contamination is chaos and cleansing is redemption.

Learned Helplessness vs. Control in Germophobic Episodes

When someone with germophobia realizes they’ve touched the “wrong” towel, a sense of helplessness often follows. It’s not simply “I touched it,” but “Now I can’t undo it.” This mirrors the concept of learned helplessness in psychology: repeated exposure to uncontrollable situations trains the brain to stop resisting, sinking into panic or passivity. Control becomes the antidote. Washing, sanitizing, or scrubbing restores a sense of agency, even if the actual risk was negligible. The relief is not about germs being gone but about anxiety being silenced. Unfortunately, this cycle of fear–ritual–relief is the very loop that entrenches OCD. Each time one redeems sanitization through ritual, the brain learns: “My fear was valid, my ritual necessary.” Breaking this loop requires balance. Some ritual is fine—re-wash if it calms you—but learning to stop before compulsion takes over is essential. Without this balance, the wrong towel becomes the day’s defining catastrophe, trapping the sufferer in endless loops of washing.

Immediate Coping Strategies — Redeeming Sanitization

• So, what should you actually do after using a bathroom towel by mistake?
• Rewash Quickly if You Must: If the anxiety is overwhelming, take a short rinse. Make it deliberate, not frantic.
• Use a Sanitizing Step: Apply a light antiseptic body wash or sanitizer for hands if the towel touched limited areas.
• Reset Through Breath: After the ritual, sit and do three minutes of deep breathing. Inhale four counts, hold two, exhale six. This shifts the nervous system from panic (sympathetic) to calm (parasympathetic).
• Self-Talk: Remind yourself, “The towel is not a toxin. My skin is designed to protect me.” Cognitive reframing helps weaken catastrophic thinking.
• Stop the Spiral: Avoid repeating rituals. Once done, refuse the urge to wash again.

In practice, redeeming sanitization is less about scrubbing the body and more about calming the mind. Once control is asserted, the panic subsides.

Rituals Across Cultures That Mirror Germophobic Cleansing

What germophobic people feel today has long been expressed through cultural purification rituals. These serve as collective coping strategies for contamination anxiety.

• Islam: Ablution (wudu) before prayer, involving washing hands, mouth, nose, face, arms, head, and feet, resets not just the body but the spirit.
• Hinduism: Post-funeral baths symbolize washing away contact with death’s pollution. Daily ablutions in rivers sanctify the body before rituals.
• Judaism: The mikveh bath represents ritual purification after menstruation or impurity.
• Shinto in Japan: Water-based rituals (misogi) cleanse both physical and spiritual contamination.
• Christianity: Holy water at church entrances and baptism rituals frame cleanliness as rebirth.

These show that the desire to “redeem” cleanliness is ancient and widespread. The germophobic towel panic is, in a sense, a modern secular version of these timeless fears.

When Ritual Becomes a Trap

The danger arises when cleansing rituals stop being a relief and become prisons. Compulsive handwashing until skin cracks, multiple showers daily, bleaching towels after every touch—these behaviors worsen distress in the long run. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for OCD emphasizes exposure and response prevention (ERP): facing small contamination events and resisting the ritual. For example, intentionally touching a shared towel, then waiting out the anxiety without washing, teaches the brain that disaster doesn’t follow. Over time, this weakens the contamination reflex. For germophobics, the bathroom towel incident is an accidental ERP. The challenge is to survive the panic without endless scrubbing. If achieved, it becomes a small victory. If not, it deepens the ritual trap.

Reframing the Towel Incident — It’s About the Mind, Not the Microbes

The final redemption lies in reframing. A towel may carry bacteria, but most are harmless. The danger isn’t infection—it’s interpretation. Germophobia magnifies risk into moral collapse. But just as cultures built rituals to soothe fear, individuals can build reframes:

“This towel does not undo my shower.”

“My skin protects me.”

“Cleanliness is in my care, not in my panic.”

Ultimately, it is less about sanitization and more about serenity. Redeeming oneself after the towel mistake is not washing harder but learning that the mind’s fear, not the fabric, needs cleansing.

Reflection

A germophobic panic over bathroom towels may seem absurd to outsiders, but it is the modern echo of humanity’s ancient battle with purity and contamination. From the Ganga to Roman baths, from wudu to chlorine, humans have always sought redemption after defilement. Germophobia simply personalizes it, amplifying one towel into a battlefield. The true exercise of redemption lies not in soap but in psychology. To redeem your sanitization is to accept that the body is resilient, the skin a fortress, and the mind capable of calm. The towel is not an enemy—it is a test. And every test survived is a step toward freedom from fear.

References

• University of Arizona towel bacteria study – https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/germs-love-damp-towels
• CDC – Hygiene and shared towel risks – https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/hygiene/towels.html
• American Psychiatric Association – OCD contamination subtype – https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ocd/what-is-obsessive-compulsive-disorder
• Mayo Clinic – Germophobia and compulsive behaviors – https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ocd/symptoms-causes/syc-20354432
• Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger – 1966
• WHO – Hand hygiene and cultural practices – https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-guidelines-on-hand-hygiene-in-health-care
• Harvard Health – Coping with OCD rituals – https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/when-to-worry-about-habits
• Islam – Wudu purification practices – https://sunnah.com/bukhari:159
• Hindu dharma rituals – https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm
• Judaism – Mikveh bath purification – https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/mikveh/
• Shinto purification (misogi) – https://www.britannica.com/topic/misogi
• Christianity – Baptism and holy water symbolism – https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/baptism
• Journal of Anxiety Disorders – ERP therapy for OCD – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
• NIH – Cortisol, stress, and rituals – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5573739/
• Cognitive reframing in anxiety treatment – https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/07/anxiety
• National Institute of Mental Health – Contamination fears – https://www.nimh.nih.gov
• British Journal of Psychology – Thought-action fusion – https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
• Indian Journal of Psychiatry – Rituals and contamination anxiety – https://journals.lww.com/indianjpsychiatry
• WHO – Obsessive compulsive behaviors in the global context – https://www.who.int/health-topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder
• Scientific American – Why rituals reduce anxiety – https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/

Have You Seen Dog Meat Market Videos – Why Do These Dogs Usually Look So Docile?

Scroll through social media long enough and you may stumble upon one of the most unsettling sights: dogs crammed into cages in an open-air meat market, their eyes vacant, their bodies strangely still. What startles many viewers is not the expected chaos of barking and biting, but the eerie calm—the dogs look docile, even passive, as if resigned to their fate. It is an image that confuses as much as it horrifies. Why, in the face of imminent violence, do these animals not rebel, not snarl, not scratch? The answer lies less in the idea of “docility” and more in psychology—animal and human alike. What looks like calm is often the silence of collapse, the physiology of fear, and the conditioned hopelessness of captivity. Add to this the cultural lens through which different societies interpret dogs—companion in one, livestock in another—and the unsettling picture becomes layered. This is not just about dogs in faraway markets. It is about the biology of fear, the psychology of trauma, the cultural politics of empathy, and the ethical double standards by which we decide which suffering counts and which suffering we ignore.

7 Things People Trying to Understand Anxiety Symptoms Should Know

Anxiety has become one of those words people use casually, almost like a throwaway line in a WhatsApp chat. “I have such anxiety about this meeting,” someone says, when what they mean is nervousness. “That traffic jam gave me anxiety,” another remarks, when what they felt was irritation. In popular language, anxiety has blurred into an all-purpose synonym for stress, tension, or nerves. But clinical and lived anxiety disorders are far more layered, often misunderstood not just by those who experience them but also by family, friends, colleagues, and society at large. Unlike a fever or a fractured limb, anxiety doesn’t present itself as an obvious, singular symptom. It can surface hours after an event has passed. It can mimic stomach upset, headaches, or dizziness before it ever announces itself as mental unease. It can hide beneath culturally coded words like ghabrahat in India, taijin kyofusho in Japan, or “burnout” in the West. Sometimes it appears to be avoidance, rituals, over-preparation, or irritability—behaviors often mistaken for quirks rather than distress signals.

7 Tips for an Anxious Traveler Stuck in a Claustrophobic Hotel Room

Business trips in Gurgaon, pilgrimages in Haridwar, capsule hotels in Tokyo, layovers in Dubai: for modern travelers, the hotel room is often the midpoint between motion and arrival. Yet for some, that midpoint becomes a mental trap. An unfamiliar ceiling, the low thrum of an AC vent, curtains that hide a city you don’t know—suddenly, the mind begins its spiral. Claustrophobia does not always announce itself with dramatic panic attacks. Sometimes it’s subtler: a quickened breath, a racing thought that “the air feels stale,” a sudden itch to throw open a window that doesn’t open. For the anxious traveler, small rooms magnify unease. And if you’ve crossed time zones, battled jet lag, or carry a predisposition for anxiety, the box begins to feel like a cell. The problem is ancient. Vedic hymns praise the dawn sky as liberation; Biblical stories equate wilderness with freedom; Buddhist imagery paints boundless space as enlightenment itself. By contrast, confinement has always symbolized punishment—from medieval dungeons to solitary asylums. To find yourself in a modern business hotel and feel trapped is not weakness—it is a human inheritance. But humans have also always fought back with ritual, imagination, and rhythm. Below are seven expansive, culturally resonant, scientifically informed tips to help any anxious traveler manage the tight squeeze of a claustrophobic hotel room.

1. Rituals: Claiming Space With Small Acts

Hotel rooms are not just boxes—they are stages waiting to be claimed. Anthropologists studying nomadic cultures observed that a single carpet spread across bare desert sand transformed wilderness into a dwelling. The message was clear: humans make space their own with ritual. In a hotel room, the same principle applies. Draw the curtains open, switch on multiple lights, unpack at least one object of your own—a book, a scarf, a framed photo if you travel with one. These small acts of claiming corners reduce the brain’s “foreignness” perception. Environmental psychology research shows that rituals of territoriality, even symbolic ones, lower cortisol levels and increase perceived safety. Indian culture is full of such gestures. Lighting a diya in a new house, arranging Rangoli patterns at a threshold, even setting one’s slippers neatly by a bed—these are not trivial acts. They are neural scripts that tell the body, “You belong here.” The anxious traveler who begins by establishing micro-rituals is not indulging in fuss but practicing an ancient strategy of orientation. The room shrinks not because its walls move, but because your agency expands.

2. Breath Before Square Footage

Claustrophobia convinces the body that air is scarce, though oxygen levels are rarely the issue. What happens is a self-fulfilling loop: shallow breaths signal danger, the brain amplifies it, and panic escalates. The antidote is ancient. Yogic pranayama taught that controlled breath steadies not just lungs but consciousness. Modern psychology has validated this: the “4-7-8” technique (inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8) directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system, slowing the heart rate and quieting fight-or-flight impulses. NIH studies confirm that paced breathing lowers anxiety scores even in clinical claustrophobia. Culturally, breath has long symbolized freedom. In Hebrew texts, ruach means both breath and spirit; in Greek, pneuma carries the same duality. In India, prana is life-force itself. To breathe deeply in a sealed room is to remind oneself that liberation is internal before it is spatial. When anxiety whispers “I can’t breathe,” the truth is the opposite: you can, if you choose to reclaim rhythm. Practicing two or three minutes of guided breathing before sleep or upon waking in a strange hotel not only calms nerves but sets a baseline of inner vastness against outer confinement.

3. Mirror, Not Wall: Using Visual Expansion

Small rooms compress vision as much as they do the body. Evolutionary psychology shows why: our ancestors equated open horizons with safety (you can see threats coming) and enclosed spaces with risk. That is why mountaintop views are calm while basements unsettle. You can hack this bias with visual expansion. Even a simple mirror—on the wardrobe door, the bathroom, or a travel-sized one placed strategically—tricks the eye into perceiving depth. Mughal palaces perfected this with sheesh mahal halls, where countless mirrors multiplied candlelight into grandeur. Modern studies in environmental psychology confirm the effect: mirrored surfaces consistently reduce reported claustrophobic stress. But mirrors aren’t the only tool. A switched-off TV reflects just enough to double depth perception. A laptop looping horizon footage—a sea, a railway journey, even slow aerial drone shots—gives the brain “peripheral vision” cues. Neuroscientists note that the hippocampus, which regulates spatial awareness, responds to such cues almost as if they were real. The anxious traveler who angles a mirror or runs a horizon video is not deluding themselves; they are prescribing visual therapy. The room does not grow—but perception of volume does, and perception is half the battle.

4. Anchor With Soundscapes

Confinement is rarely silent. In fact, silence in a sealed room amplifies discomfort: the hum of the mini-fridge, the uneven thrum of air-conditioning, footsteps in the corridor. The brain, already alert, interprets each as a threat. Ancient travelers countered this with deliberate sound. Caravaners in Central Asia carried flutes to play in camp; sailors sang shanties to drown monotony and fear. Today, soundscapes are portable in every phone. Research in the Journal of Environmental Psychology shows that chosen auditory environments—waves, rain, classical ragas, lo-fi beats—reduce anxiety by stabilizing heart-rate variability. Psychologists call this “auditory scaffolding,” where you build a mental environment that overrides the one imposed by the room. For some, devotional chants or Quranic recitations achieve this; for others, a Spotify playlist of jazz or cinematic scores works. The key is agency: you curate the acoustic space instead of passively absorbing mechanical hums. For the anxious traveler, headphones are less an accessory than a shield, transforming the claustrophobic chamber into an inhabited sound dome.

5. Movement Is Expansion

Claustrophobia thrives on stillness. When the body lies frozen on a stiff hotel bed, the mind interprets immobility as entrapment. But movement reclaims space. Confinement studies—from submarines to Antarctic stations—find that crew members who kept exercise routines reported less anxiety. Proprioceptive feedback, the signals joints send when you stretch or move, reinforces the brain’s sense of territory. Yoga traditions already knew this. Asanas like Vrikshasana (tree pose), with arms stretched upward, counter the psychology of compression. Pacing diagonally across a room asserts ownership of every inch. Even ten minutes of jumping jacks or push-ups resets the nervous system. NASA studies on astronauts confirm this: physical routines mitigate “space cabin syndrome,” where small enclosures heighten distress. Children instinctively know it—they run laps in cramped classrooms or bedrooms until restlessness dissolves. Adults forget, until claustrophobia reminds them. The anxious traveler must relearn it: don’t lie still in the box. Move, and the box becomes a stage, not a prison.

6. The Window of the Mind: Guided Imagination

When actual windows don’t open, mental ones can. Prisoners of war have survived solitary cells by “walking” their hometown streets in memory. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy prescribes similar visualization for claustrophobia: imagine wide skies, rivers, and meadows. Neuroscience explains why—it activates the same neural pathways as real vision. Cultures have long sanctified this. Buddhist meditation speaks of boundlessness; Sufi poets write of desert horizons; Hindu mystics visualize cosmic space in the heart. Modern travelers can adapt this with small tools: a postcard of the Himalayas on the nightstand, a phone wallpaper of the sea, even VR travel apps that simulate wide vistas. By focusing on these during panic, the brain’s claustrophobic coding resets. You are no longer “in” the sealed room; you are in a remembered or imagined landscape. The room becomes a vessel, not a cage. For the anxious traveler, carrying mental windows is as essential as carrying a passport.

7. Reframe the Room as Pause, Not Prison

Confinement reframed becomes a retreat. Gandhi’s Yerwada letters, Dostoevsky’s Siberian novels, Mandela’s Robben Island meditations—all testify that small spaces can birth expansive thought. The anxious traveler is not a political prisoner, but the principle stands: the story you tell yourself about the room matters. Cognitive reframing, a pillar of modern therapy, reduces stress by altering interpretation. A hotel room can be framed not as a trap but as a pause: time to journal, to sleep without interruption, to binge a guilty-pleasure show, to write postcards, to pray. Hospitality marketing already plays this trick, branding rooms as “cocoons” and “sanctuaries.” The traveler can lean into it consciously: “This is an interlude, not a sentence.” Studies show that reframing confinement reduces cortisol levels and improves problem-solving. By telling yourself “paused, not trapped,” you turn the hotel into an ally. Anxiety’s story shrinks; your narrative grows.

The Myth of the Perfect Room: Why Hotels Are Designed Small

It is worth noting that your anxiety isn’t always about you—it’s also about design. Hotels, especially in Asia and Europe, deliberately design compact rooms for efficiency and cost. Capsule hotels in Japan evolved from urban land shortages; budget Indian hotels squeeze maximum inventory out of limited real estate. Even luxury chains emphasize standardized layouts, which paradoxically feel less personal. Environmental psychology has documented “spatial stress” in uniformly small, impersonal environments. Travelers expecting a “perfect room” often collide with this economic reality. Knowing this helps: the claustrophobia is not a personal weakness but partly an architectural imposition. Cultural historians remind us that humans have always protested against smallness: the Roman elite built vast atriums to prove status, while peasants lived in dark huts. Modern travelers relive the same hierarchy in hotel corridors. To feel oppressed in a boxy room is to be human, not broken. And that knowledge itself can calm the anxious mind.

NRIs, Jetlag, and the Amplifier Effect

For NRIs returning to India or traveling abroad, hotel claustrophobia often arrives amplified. Jet lag destabilizes circadian rhythms, making night feel eternal. Nostalgia complicates it: returning to India, many NRIs expect familiarity but find themselves in rooms that feel both foreign and too familiar. Psychologists call this the “cultural dissonance effect”—when memory collides with present experience. Small rooms intensify it. Stories abound: IT professionals flying from California to Bengaluru, awake at 3 a.m. in tiny service apartments, scrolling social media to quiet racing thoughts; families in Dubai’s budget hotels whispering that “the walls feel closer” after a day in malls. Claustrophobia in such cases is not just about space but about temporal dislocation and cultural expectation. Recognizing this pattern helps NRIs normalize the distress. It is not madness; it is a common collision of body clock, nostalgia, and boxy architecture. The remedy is the same: ritual, breath, sound, movement, reframing. But the understanding that “I am not alone in this” is itself therapeutic.

Reflection: Beyond the Room

Claustrophobia in hotel rooms is not trivial. It is the modern expression of ancient archetypes: confinement as danger, openness as freedom. From Rig Veda hymns to dawn, to sailors singing shanties in cabins, to astronauts pacing in space stations, humans have always sought ways to expand beyond walls. The anxious traveler today stands in that lineage. What do the seven tips teach? That space is not only architecture but perception. Rituals claim it, breath expands it, mirrors stretch it, sound fills it, movement asserts it, imagination opens it, and reframing transforms it. Add to this the awareness of hotel economics and diaspora psychology, and the anxious traveler is armed with both explanation and solution. Ultimately, anxiety in a small hotel room reveals how deeply human the need for vastness is. But vastness does not always lie outside. Sometimes it lies in lungs, rituals, memories, and the stories we tell ourselves. The room remains four walls. But within them, the traveler can still carry a horizon.

References

• Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966) – https://archive.org/details/puritydanger00doug
• WHO – Mental health and travel stress: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-and-travel
• American Psychological Association – Claustrophobia overview: https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety/claustrophobia
• National Institutes of Health – Breathing techniques for anxiety: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5455070/
• Harvard Health – 4-7-8 Breathing: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/4-7-8-breathing-calming-method-201708
• Environmental psychology on mirrors & perceived space: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494402000043
• Journal of Environmental Psychology – Soundscapes and stress reduction: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494418301976
• NASA Behavioral Health research – confinement and exercise: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190028614/downloads/20190028614.pdf
• CBT Institute – Visualization techniques: https://www.cbti.org/resources/visualization
• Gandhi, Prson Writings (Yerwada Jail, 1930s): https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/prisonwritings.pdf
• Dostoevsky, Notes from the House of the Dead (1862): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33817
• Mandela, Conversations with Myself (2010): https://www.nelsonmandela.org/publications/entry/conversations-with-myself
• Rig Veda translations – hymns to dawn: https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/index.htm
• National Geographic – How horizons shape our brains: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/how-horizons-shape-our-brains
• Journal of Travel Research – Traveler anxiety and hotel design: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0047287516649053
• Cultural dissonance in diaspora travelers – Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022022115597069
• Environmental stress in architecture – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249441930085X
• Mughal Sheesh Mahal architecture notes – ASI: https://asi.nic.in/sheesh-mahal
• APA – The psychology of nostalgia: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/nostalgia
• NIH – Cortisol reduction via cognitive reframing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28813276/

Are They Helpless or Hustling? The Uncomfortable Truth of Urban Begging in India

Air-conditioned air holds differently at a red light. From behind tempered glass, the city appears in slow motion: a child with a box of tissues; a man with a gauze-wrapped stump; a woman carrying a sleeping toddler whose head lolls with a suspicious stillness you don’t want to believe; a knock on the window—polite first, then insistent. You look ahead, counting down the signal, bargaining with your conscience. Maybe this person is gaming you. Maybe there’s a “racket.” Maybe it’s safer to do nothing. Yet the hand on the glass is a mirror; it reflects the unease of a country where modern prosperity idles inches from profound precarity. This essay traces the fault line that runs between the driver’s doubt and the beggar’s plea: the law that criminalized and then partly decriminalized begging; the religious traditions that sanctified alms; the economics of India’s informal city; and the psychology that makes strangers’ suffering feel negotiable. What emerges is neither a defense of every outstretched palm nor a condemnation of every refusal, but an attempt to look squarely at how a society chooses to see—or not see—its poor.

From Windshield Morality to Street-Level Reality

The judgment many Indians make at traffic signals—are they helpless or hustling?—is not simply a snap moral verdict; it’s a story we tell ourselves to live with contradiction. Researchers call one engine of that story the just-world hypothesis: the comforting belief that, broadly, people get what they deserve. When that belief is threatened by visible suffering, people explain it away—by inflating the supposed failings of those who suffer, or by minimizing their own obligation to respond. In the micro-theater of a red light, this bias is reinforced by compassion fade and the identifiable-victim effect: we feel for the single vivid face but shut down as the faces multiply, converting a human encounter into a policy problem that belongs to “the government.” None of this proves that every beggar is honest or coerced; it shows that most drivers’ certainty about who is “faking” is often a psychological convenience more than an evidence-based conclusion. To get past convenience, we have to look beyond the glass: at data on homelessness and homelessness, at migration and disability, at the legal status of begging, and at how cities actually work for people with no cushion.

Counting the Unseen: What the Numbers Say (and Don’t)

India’s official lens on the street poor is imperfect by design; the homeless are hard to count and easy to ignore. The 2011 Census enumerated 1.77 million homeless people nationwide—about 15 per 10,000—with 938,000 in urban areas; Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra led absolute counts, and sex ratios were starkly skewed among the homeless. Civil society networks argue the true figures run higher, and city-level snapshots are volatile: Delhi has swung from ~16,000 in a DUSIB 2014 count to claims of 150,000–300,000 sleeping rough in recent surveys and press reports; the range itself signals chronic under-measurement and policy drift. Meanwhile, a nontrivial share of people on pavements are interstate migrants, the mentally ill, the elderly without kin, and people with untreated disabilities—groups that face the sharp end of urban informality. Data gaps do not absolve anyone; they indict our measurement priorities. If we cannot even agree on how many are outside, our debates about “rackets” risk substituting suspicion for statistics.

(Sources: Census 2011 homeless abstracts; HLRN briefings; recent reportage on Delhi homelessness.)

Law and Order—or Order without Law? The 2018 Decriminalization and After

For decades, Indian states relied on the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 (and its extensions) to arrest, detain, and “rehabilitate” people for the act of asking for alms. In 2018, the Delhi High Court in Harsh Mander & Karnika Sawhney v. Union of India struck down key provisions of this law as unconstitutional—holding that criminalizing begging punishes people for systemic failures and violates the right to life and dignity. Journalistic and legal commentary called it a watershed: the capital could no longer treat destitution as a crime. In 2021, amid COVID-era pleas, the Supreme Court added an important note of caution: the Court “would not take an elitist view” to ban begging, emphasizing that people beg in the absence of education and employment, and directing governments to focus on vaccination and rehabilitation rather than removal. Decriminalization, however, is not the same as support. Without robust shelter capacity, mental-health services, and income pathways, the end of arrest simply leaves people to the same signals. The law can stop adding harm; it cannot by itself create help.

(Sources: Delhi HC judgment; Reuters coverage; legal analyses; SC remarks reported by national dailies.)

From Bhiksha and Dāna to the Red Light: India’s Long History of Alms

To see roadside begging only as a nuisance is to forget India’s civilizational memory of alms giving. In Hindu traditions, bhiksha (alms) and dāna (charity) emerge from Vedic and classical texts, mapping a repertoire that includes support for renunciants, students, and the poor; in Buddhism, dāna is the first perfection and the beginning of a moral path; in Sikhism, langar collapses hierarchy through shared food; in Islam, zakat binds the prosperous to the needy. That history does not sanctify every knock on the glass; it contextualizes it. Colonial and post-colonial governments reframed mendicancy as a problem of order, severing alms from ethics and poverty from policy. Today’s discomfort—“shouldn’t they work?”—is an inheritance of that pivot. Our past recognized the poor as a moral claim on the community; our present often treats them as an administrative inconvenience. The question is not whether alms “solve” poverty (they do not). It is whether a society with deep traditions of giving can modernize its compassion without outsourcing it to suspicion.

(Sources: doctrinal overviews of bhiksha/dāna; cultural essays on Indian giving; Buddhist teachings on dāna.)

Economics at the Signal: Informality, Income, and the ‘Racket’ Narrative

Few topics inflame middle-class conversations like the “organized begging mafia.” Rigorous, national-scale evidence is thin; local police busts and investigative features do find coercive rings that exploit children or the disabled. There are also credible studies documenting forced begging as trafficking, particularly of minors. But between the denial (“it’s all genuine”) and the generalization (“it’s all a racket”), reality is mixed. The informal economy is India’s largest employer of last resort; for those shut out—because of injury, addiction, psychosis, documents, language, caste prejudice—begging is sometimes the only remaining margin. Daily “earnings” vary wildly by city, junction, time, and police pressure; the modal state is not scam, but precocity. A serious response must do two things at once: prosecute coercion where it exists, and provide exits where it does not. Otherwise, the “mafia” story becomes a moral alibi that lets cities ignore the far larger population of unorganized, unprotected poor in plain sight.

(Sources: social-science papers on begging in India; policy briefs; SSRN/legal overviews on trafficking/forced begging.)

Disability, Illness, and the Edges of Employability

One reason the “just get a job” refrain rings hollow is that a visible share of beggars are people with disabilities—amputations, untreated infections, congenital impairments—often compounded by mental illness or substance dependence. India’s labor market is unforgiving even for the able-bodied poor; for those with psychosis, epilepsy, or intellectual disability, reality is brutal: employers shun, families fracture, documentation lapses, medication is unaffordable, relapse is frequent. Women face layered risks: abandonment, intimate-partner violence, trafficking, and the burdens of caregiving without cash. When “employability” is invoked as a cudgel, it ignores these frictions. Any ethical urban response has to start with low-barrier shelters, assertive outreach, harm-reduction, and ID recovery, and only then speak of skilling. A city that cannot keep someone clean, fed, and medicated cannot credibly demand productivity from them.

(Sources: homelessness and shelter reports; ministry briefs; clinical and NGO literature on mental illness and street survival.)

Why We Doubt: Just-World Beliefs, Compassion Fade, and the Single Face

Back at the red light, psychology explains some of our worst instincts. The just-world bias pushes us to assume people deserve their lot; scope insensitivity dulls our empathy as numbers rise; the identifiable-victim effect makes us more generous to the single story than the crowd. We also rationalize non-giving with stories of fraud, whether or not we’ve verified them. These cognitive shortcuts serve a purpose: they protect us from burnout and help us navigate relentless exposure to need. But they also distort moral vision, turning structural failures into individual blame. The antidotes are not heroic: give through channels you trust; if you decline, do so without contempt; stay curious about the causes you cannot see; and remember that evidence beats anecdotes. The person at your window is neither proof that charity works nor proof that it doesn’t; they are evidence that the social contract frays exactly where the city is most shiny.

(Sources: classic and contemporary research on just-world beliefs; compassion fade; identifiable-victim literature.)

Children at the Window: Protection First, Not Policing Alone

Nothing polarizes drivers like children selling pens or tapping on glass after 10 pm. The Juvenile Justice framework and anti-trafficking laws already recognize child begging as exploitation, requiring rescue, shelter, and family tracing. But “rescue” is not a photo-op; without follow-through—de-addiction, schooling, case-work, income support for families—children boomerang back to the same junctions, now smarter and more cynical. The public dramatizes “drugging rings” (some cases are real), yet often ignores migratory poverty that pushes families to put children to work. Effective city practice looks boring: night shelters that are safe, bridge schools, cash-plus support for caregivers, and police trained in child protection, not harassment. Outrage fades when the signal turns green; the child’s problem does not.

(Sources: JJ Act materials; NGO field reports; trafficking literature and media reports.)

Policy Pivot: From Handcuffs to Rehabilitation (The SMILE Experiment)

If criminalization failed, what replaces it? The Union government’s SMILE umbrella scheme (Support for Marginalized Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise) launched in 2022 includes a sub-scheme for the Comprehensive Rehabilitation of Persons Engaged in Begging (guidelines updated Oct 2023). It funds identification, counseling, shelter, skilling, and reintegration through local bodies and NGOs. Early numbers suggest ambition exceeds capacity: one independent analysis cites roughly 9,958 people identified across 81 cities, with ~970 rehabilitated—a start, not a solution. City showcases (e.g., Indore’s “beggar-free” claim) report training, product lines, and family reunification; other cities are just beginning baseline surveys. SMILE’s promise is in coordination—health, police, child-protection, shelters, IDs, jobs—yet that is precisely where Indian urban governance frays. Decriminalization opened the door; delivery will decide whether people step through it.

(Sources: official SMILE pages, guidelines, and PIB notes; independent policy analyses; recent news on city pilots.)

Era-Gone-By vs. Today: From Mendicants to Margins of the Metropolis

In older India, the mendicant occupied a paradoxical prestige: renunciation conferred moral authority, and giving to the monk was a merit practice. Urban modernity flips the valence: market logic prizes productivity; the non-earning poor become an eyesore, not an ethical claim. The same society that funds temple kitchens and gurudwara langars flinches at a boy knocking on an SUV window. This is not hypocrisy so much as dislocation: the institutions that historically managed charity (kinship, guild, temple, monastery) cannot absorb the scale and anonymity of migrant mega cities. The old script—householders give, monks receive—doesn’t cover a metropolis where the mendicant is neither monk nor neighbor. If we want compassion that fits the city, we must update the channels: cashless street-giving into verified funds, corporate kitchens linked to shelters, municipal dashboards that show real-time needs, and philanthropy that flows to boring operations, not just branded moments.

(Sources: cultural histories of alms; contemporary urban policy commentary.)

What Drivers Can Do: Between Cynicism and Sentimentality

Two reflexes fail us at red lights: sentimentality (give indiscriminately to feel good) and cynicism (never give because “it’s all a scam”). A saner middle path starts with clarity: if you choose to give in person, prefer food, water, sanitary supplies, or QR-linked donations to vetted shelters; if you choose not to, don’t demean. Support night-shelter ecosystems, harm-reduction, and community kitchens that outlast a signal cycle. Vote and volunteer for city capacity: shelters with women-safe spaces, mental-health linkages, and outreach teams that speak migrants’ languages. Ask your ward Councillor one boring question: How many functional shelter beds exist tonight within 3 km, and who checks? Above all, keep judgment provisional. A society that sees every beggar as a thief will design policy like a lockbox; a society that sees every beggar as a saint will neglect systems. The work is to build systems sturdy enough that neither myth is necessary.

(Sources: practice notes from shelters and city pilots; behavioral science on giving.)

The Hardest Sentence: Some Are Coerced, Many Are Cornered

Yes, coercion exists; yes, there are gangs; yes, children are exploited. These require policing that is rights-literate and prosecutions that stick. But the larger truth is duller and more devastating: many who beg are cornered by structural scarcity—no address to get an ID, no ID to get a benefit, no benefit to stop a slide. Others are pulled under by illness, addiction, grief, or disability. To call this “easy money” is to confess distance from the street. None of this obliges anyone to hand out coins at signals; it obliges a city to stop recycling the poor between junctions, lock-ups, shelters, and pavements. When you feel the urge to explain away the hand at your window, try a harder thought: what would it take for this person to not be here next month? If your answer begins and ends with “they should work,” you have described your hope, not their options.

Reflection: The Glass is Thinner Than It Looks

The moral comfort of the driver’s seat is an illusion. The glass is not a wall; it is a lens that magnifies our stories about worth, work, and waste. The beggar might be hustling, helpless, coerced, recovering, or simply surviving today to try again tomorrow. The city will contain all of these truths until it chooses an architecture of care strong enough to make signal-side charity unnecessary. Until then, our ethics at red lights should be modest: refuse contempt, resist convenient myths, and route generosity into channels that outlast a green light. The goal is not to romanticize begging or giving; it is to retire the question by building a city where no one has to ask it.

References

• Delhi High Court Judgment (Harsh Mander & Anr. v. UOI & Ors., 08 Aug 2018) – PDF copy via HLRN: https://hlrn.org.in/documents/HC_Delhi_Decriminalisation_of_Begging.pdf
• Harsh Mander & Anr. vs UOI & Ors., text via Indian Kanoon: https://indiankanoon.org/doc/117834652/
• Reuters (Thomson Reuters Foundation). “Begging is not a crime, Delhi High Court rules.” https://www.reuters.com/article/world/begging-is-not-a-crime-delhi-high-court-rules-idUSKBN1KU1FG/
• IDR (India Development Review). “The decriminalisation of begging.” https://idronline.org/decriminalisation-of-begging/
• Supreme Court remarks on pleas during COVID (“won’t take an elitist view”): Times of India report. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/cant-take-elitist-view-to-ban-begging-supreme-court/articleshow/84809917.cms
• The Economic Times (SC remarks, 27 Jul 2021). https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/wont-take-elitist-view-of-banning-beggars-from-streets-says-sc-on-plea-for-their-rehab-amid-covid/articleshow/84785407.cms
• NDTV (SC remarks). https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/wont-take-elitist-view-of-banning-beggars-from-streets-supreme-court-2496375
• Census of India 2011 – Houseless (PCA HS, district level): https://censusindia.gov.in/nada/index.php/catalog/5047
• Census summary (houseless overview). https://www.census2011.co.in/houseless.php
• HLRN (Homelessness overview; urban numbers). https://hlrn.org.in/homelessness
• Population Association of America paper (houseless metrics based on 2011). https://paa2019.populationassociation.org/uploads/190986
• Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment – SMILE scheme overview. https://socialjustice.gov.in/schemes/99
• SMILE sub-scheme guidelines (Comprehensive Rehabilitation of Persons Engaged in Begging). https://grants-msje.gov.in/display-smile-guidelines
• PIB press release on SMILE allocations (12 Feb 2022 launch; outlays). https://www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1806161
• Lok Sabha starred question annex (SMILE-B guidelines issued 23.10.2023). https://sansad.in/getFile/loksabhaquestions/annex/183/AU3583_HdFtsx.pdf?source=pqals
• IMPRI policy note on SMILE outcomes and constraints (2025). https://www.impriindia.com/insights/support-marginalized-individual-scheme/
• Just-world hypothesis primer and sources (Lerner 1980; Rubin & Peplau 1975). https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/just-world-hypothesis
• Lerner, M. J. The Belief in a Just World (book chapter overview). https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-0448-5_2
• Identifiable-victim/singularity effects (open-access article, 2024). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10977801/
• Meta-analysis on compassion fade (2019). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597818302930
• Wisdom Library – Bhiksha (concept and sources). https://www.wisdomlib.org/concept/bhiksha
• Overview of alms giving traditions (Hindu/Buddhist context). https://www.hinduwebsite.com/buddhism/practical/dana_praciceofgiving.asp
• SSRN article (legal status, organized exploitation, SMILE). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/5208299.pdf?abstractid=5208299&mirid=1
• Social Science Journal PDF (2020) on begging causes/implications incl. organized exploitation claims. https://www.socialsciencejournal.in/assets/archives/2020/vol6issue6/9041-535.pdf
• Times of India (2025) – City-level homelessness and shelter capacity debates (Delhi). https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/lakhs-homeless-in-delhi-little-planning-on-their-relief/articleshow/121523850.cms
• Times of India (2025) – Indore’s SMILE showcase as “beggar-free city.” https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/indore-shows-the-way-to-a-beggar-free-city-at-national-workshop/articleshow/122394750.cms

Do inherently vengeful, judgmental & hateful people make good psychiatrists, counselors, or psychologists?

Psychiatry, counseling, and psychology are professions built on trust, listening, and empathy. They demand neutrality, patience, and the capacity to hold another person’s pain without judgment. Yet history and real life tell us that the people who step into these professions are not saints; they carry their own flaws, biases, and sometimes even darker traits. This raises an unsettling question: what happens when someone inherently vengeful, judgmental, or hateful chooses to become a healer of minds? Is their practice doomed by temperament, or can the scaffolding of training, ethics, and professional codes create a safe container in which flawed humans still do meaningful work? To answer this, we must look to history, psychology, ethics, and culture — tracing how temperament and morality intersect with the vocation of healing minds.

Trying To Talk Yourself Out of Depression Does Not Always Work

The actual professionals and the self-acclaimed psychology experts have embedded an idea via articles, blogs, and social media posts that talking about mental health issues, particularly depression, is perhaps the first and many times, the last step to reclaiming a life without feeling the daily blues. However, the truth couldn't be any different. For starters, people suffering from depression are often in jobs and family roles where they have to speak throughout the day. Many people with depression have a rather well-established circle of friends with whom they converse every day. People visiting the family psychologist might continue to have long conversations about redemption, loss, and unhappiness, and still might feel that the therapy is not really making an impact. People need to realize that you cannot talk your way out of depression, at least not in most situations.