Dr. Saras Bhaskar is a renowned Counselling Psychologist and Corporate Consultant with over three decades of experience, advocating health psychology principles.
She is the co-founder of the Chennai Counselors’ Foundation and practices at Bloom Healthcare, Velachery. Grounded in the biopsychosocial framework, her work focuses on educating, empowering, and enhancing psychological well-being through an integration of traditional and contemporary therapeutic techniques.
Key Takeaway:
Today’s Anxiety Is Constant, Not Occasional
Young people today aren’t just facing pressure from parents or peers…but from algorithms, constant visibility, and comparison culture. Mistakes, awkward phases, and emotional lows no longer fade with time; they linger online, creating a persistent background anxiety around worth, success, and belonging.
Speed Has Outpaced Emotional Processing
We live in a fast-track world where emotions arrive faster than our ability to process them. With little room for boredom, reflection, or pause, feelings stack up and often get buried, leading to emotional overload rather than emotional growth.
Mental Health Is Not a Personal Weakness or Just a Medical Issue
Viewing mental health as either “lack of willpower” or only a “chemical imbalance” oversimplifies a deeply bio-psycho-social experience. Mental wellbeing sits at the intersection of biology (nervous system), psychology (coping and interpretation), and social context (support, belonging, discrimination).
Psychological Immunity Means Feeling…Not Shutting Down
Resilience is not about becoming emotionally numb or staying positive all the time. True psychological immunity is the ability to feel emotions without being flooded by them, built by regulating the nervous system, processing experiences daily, and allowing emotions to move naturally.
Connection Builds Resilience More Than Performance
Many young adults believe they must be impressive to be accepted—but this mindset is exhausting and isolating. Emotional resilience grows in spaces where people can say “I’m not okay” without justification, and where relationships are transformational, not transactional.
Corporate Mental Wellbeing Often Stops at Talk
While companies promote self-care and wellness resources, many still reward overwork, urgency, and burnout-driven productivity. Real wellbeing requires organizational accountability, manager training, and systems that value emotional load—not just output.
Listening Is Becoming Rare and That’s Dangerous
In a culture that rewards speed and instant responses, deep listening has declined. True listening requires sustained focus, tolerance for silence, and attention to non-verbal cues. Without it, both counseling and leadership lose their effectiveness.
Chethan K (Host): Hi Ma’am. Welcome to Edexlive
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): Thank you and glad to be a part of this podcast today.
Chethan K (Host): It’s wonderful having you here Ma’am. Let’s dive into questions. You have worked across clinics, corporate and communities for over 3 decades. When you look at young people today, what has fundamentally changed about their emotional struggles and what has not?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): Very good question because first I want to address the ones that has changed and then probably talk about what hasn't changed. What has changed is, unlike earlier, there is this constant visibility and comparison among youngsters, not just by peers or parents, but also by algorithms. Mistakes, awkward phases, and any pain that youngsters go through doesn't disappear anymore because there is a constant reminder. This creates a persistent background anxiety. Am I up to the standards? Am I meeting people's expectations? Am I worthy enough? There is lot of this anxiety that has escalated, not that it wasn't there before, but now it is all the more.
The second is being in the fast track world that we are in in the last 25 years, speed and saturation happens faster. Emotions hits home faster, and it keeps stacking.
There's no time to process those emotions because it's like a missile coming one after the other. We tend to kind of bury it, hoping we will address it later, but there is no time for that. There is not much of thinking that is involved and there is less time for boredom, more time for adrenaline rush where lot of emotions are not being processed. Then the language without relief. What happens these days is youngsters going through the online and AI, they tend to be language savvy about the mental wellness.
There’s no use in being aware about OCD, schizophrenia, paranoia, no use in just knowing the labels, but this also creates more anxiety because they are doing this introspection: do I have it, without seeking professional help. These are the anxiety, the external pressures and the unstable future, they are baked into the daily decision that we don't have time to process currently.
Now, what hasn't changed, what I talked about, the anxiety, the core fear. Do I meet my parents' expectations? Do I meet my boss' expectations? Am I being on par with my peers when it comes to my vocation? The emotional intensity is loud now because they are able to express better from the colonisation generation that we grew up with. Now it is like speaking up and speaking out has become to de-normalize the colonial approach. What it has done is hormones, identity formation, social stakes still amplify everything, both joy and despair alike.
Chethan K (Host): On the same lines, what do most people misunderstand about mental health when they look at it only as a personal weakness or a medical issue?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): See what happens, the only reason I believe in bio-social model is this individual has both family constellation and social constellation, a sense for belongingness, to be accepted, to be embraced, and they want it reciprocal, and we are all social animals in that sense.
If mental health is seen either as a personal weakness or medical issue, both views flatten something that is inherently interactive.
What I mean by that is mental health isn't something that you are, it is something that happens at the intersection of the person and the world around them.
People assume you should be able to push through. Other people have it worse, so you count your blessings. If you just tried harder, you would be fine but what is ignored is biology.
Our nervous system sets the thresholds, mind and body connection. When the mind is agitated, it shows up in the heartbeat, in the rising of the blood pressure.
So the chronic stress, trauma, discrimination, isolation change how the brain and the body function. Willpower does not just regulate cortisol, sleep cycle and threat responses.
People should not assume it is a medical imbalance or personal weakness. It is biology that shapes vulnerability and capacity.
Psychology shapes interpretation, information processing, coping, and cognitively understanding and the third one is the social context, the exposure, the support, the reciprocity. You cannot fix one layer of this individual without touching upon the bio-psychosocial context.
Chethan K (Host): That’s nicely said Ma’am. You often speak about psychological immunity, right? In a world that constantly feels uncertain, how can students and young professionals build emotional resilience without becoming emotionally numb?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): This is a very carefully crafted question, and I want to answer this carefully. As I said earlier, there is this persistent existing anxiety in individuals, and what it does is sometimes it shuts down the emotions and what I mean by psychological immunity is not shutting the feelings down. It is about being able to feel without being flooded and that requires processing every day, every situation.
How students and young professionals can build this kind of resilience is to strengthen the nervous system and not just the mindset. Attitude is not going to adjust, because regulating the nervous system aligns with the psychological immunity. Resilience isn't just staying positive and not looking at the negatives. Yes, ability to move emotions between positives and negatives.
Last but not the least, choose connection over performance. What I mean by that is many young adults feel that they have to be impressive to be accepted, but that can be exhausting. That can be isolating also. Resilience grows in a space where youngsters begin to say, I am not okay, without explaining it away. It's okay to be not normal. Relationship is not transactional. It needs to be transformational, only then resilience grows. Vulnerability isn't treated as oversharing or weakness but it depends on who you share with and whether that relationship is going to be growth oriented or de-growth oriented.
Chethan K (Host): You've worked with over 350 organisations from MNCs to government institutions. From your experience, what is the biggest gap between how companies talk about mental wellbeing and how they actually practice it?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): It's not just one gap. There are many. The companies talk about mental wellbeing as if it is an individual's responsibility, but one of the reasons I moved away from my private practice to the training part is rather than confining my knowledge, experience, and exposure into a single individual or a single family within four walls, I chose to do it with a group of individuals where I know at least if I have 50 people, at least five of them would be able to absorb what I'm saying and so they'll be able to evolve.
The moving on from private practice to the corporate structure is more, I look at it as expansion, expanding my horizon and companies talk about “take care of yourself, we encourage work-life balance, use our wellness resources, speak up if you're struggling,” but at the same time, what do they do?
Reward overwork with promotional chances and praise, or even out-of-the-country visits for projects, normalising the urgency, measuring value through output while ignoring the employee's emotional load, treating burnout as an individual's failure rather than an organisation's flaw. We see how it can be counterproductive.
I would want the organisations to take the accountability that in order for my employees to peak in their productivity, they need to be given the support, not emphasised an “I want it yesterday” attitude, to train the managers on that and also ask people not to bring their whole selves to work while ignoring their competency and capability.
Chethan K (Host): You often said that active and objective listening is the most important skill for a counselor. Why do you think listening, something that sounds so simple, is actually becoming rarer today?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): Absolutely, because what I notice these days is people want quick responses. You begin to process even before the sender finishes the sentences how you need to respond or react.
What it means is we are rewarded for responding but not for listening. When you take some time to listen and respond, you are called slow pot, you process information slowly, you are not quick. It is a judgmental statement.
What happens is people are always on the edge wanting to respond and not listen to reply. Attention has been fragmented, not just shortened.
I believe in this profession that I am in, true listening is sustained focus, tolerance for silence.
I can't expect you to be saying “yes, yes, yes” all the time. As long as we both are in alignment, I need to be able to tolerate your silence and the ability to track the emotional subtext based on the nonverbal cues I receive from you if it's an in-person session.
Whether it is a corporate or in counseling session, I feel that focus, silence, and nonverbal cues are very important for objective listening.
Chethan K (Host): We see a lot of transition in your career from direct client care to mentoring and leading corporate counseling. What made you take that step and what legacy do you hope your work leaves behind?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): Legacy is an important component in my life and one of the reasons, as I said earlier, the reason I moved from the private counseling practice to the corporate environment is to bring about positive changes in the lives of more people for the same time I spend with an individual or a family.
If I do a training for 90 minutes or a half-day training or a one-day workshop, I am catering to about 200, 300 or 500 people where I believe at least 5% of them would benefit with some learning, if not anything at least it stays in their head and pops out when situation arises.
I feel I would reap the fruit of my labour with larger audience and what would I like to leave as a legacy is for the counselors, therapists to trust their judgment and not confuse compassion with self-erasure.
Sometimes we confuse empathy and compassion as professionals at workplace. That stops treating mental health as a damage control and start treating it as a design or a mandatory process for increased productivity, decreased recidivism, retention.
Leaders need to understand that psychological safety isn't in softness, but it is in infrastructure. These are the legacies I would want to leave behind.
Chethan K (Host): With this question, I’m going little offbeat. Adoption counseling is a space you have shaped both professionally and personally. What are the most common fears adoptive parents carry, but rarely say out loud?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): No, I'm glad you are bringing it. It need not be all the time with youngsters or corporate. This adoption is something current generation is very eager to imbibe into their life, even if they can conceive naturally and bring a child into this world.
For the social cause, youngsters are open to doing adoption and yes, adoption counseling services is so close to my heart, because as parents, we often wonder when we adopt a child—by the way, I am an adoptive parent myself.
Thirty-six years ago, my life got changed due to the fact that adoption took place in my life and what I have noticed, both in my personal life and in the professional services that I offer for adoptive parents is: is this love enough or isn't it enough?
Am I giving enough love? The next question, the fears that they have is, what if my child never really feels that I am the parent, especially if the child knows. See, in our country, we have closed adoption. The parental identity is unknown. The child becomes a custody of the state, and so placement is made by the state.
What happens is anonymity causes a lot more anxieties for the parents. What kind of genes, what kind of personalities that the child is going to bring in? Will I be able to work with? Is there any DNA issue with regards to medical condition?
Although when we do the check-up before the placement, everything at that moment is perfect, still, we don't know the genetic dispositions. There is that fear. There is also a fear about others who is constantly observing you to know that if you're doing the right thing. If the child succeeds, that happens even in birth families: if the child succeeds, parents have done a good job. If the child doesn't succeed, parents have done a bad job. That burden is all the more for the adoptive parents.
Chethan K (Host): My final question is, if there's one emotional skill you believe every student should learn before entering adulthood, what would it be and why?
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): Psychological immunity. It is not shutting down emotion. It is building resilience.
Chethan K (Host): That’s a wonderful skill every student must carry. It was wonderful talking to you.
Dr. Saras Bhaskar (Guest): Thanks for your time.