Traditional mental health treatment has long centered on developing cognitive insights and cultivating conscious awareness—talking through problems in detail, carefully identifying patterns, and intentionally building new belief systems. While undeniably valuable, such approaches often only scratch the surface of psychological healing. Emerging and groundbreaking neuroscience research highlights a deeper truth: our unconscious mind, together with the nervous system, carries the profound key to creating enduring change and lasting transformation.
Where Healing Begins
Picture this: you’re in therapy, sharing a painful memory, when suddenly you notice your therapist isn’t just listening—she’s observing how your shoulders have subtly crept up toward your ears and how your breathing has become shallow. Instead of pushing forward with the story, she gently guides your attention to these physical sensations, where your nervous system is signaling the implicit memory.
This is where true healing begins, explains Anitha D, Founder and Counselling Psychologist at The Mind Body Counselling Center, Chennai, formerly known as The Mind Body Foundation – Counselling Center (2019–2025). She shares, “The body stores implicit memories of lived experience, creating neural patterns that invisibly drive behaviors, choices, and emotional responses.”
She elaborates, “These somatic imprints operate beneath conscious awareness, explaining why traditional talk therapy often provides temporary relief without addressing root causes. Current research reveals a crucial truth: stress and trauma affect far more than our emotions. They create lasting changes in both body and brain, particularly in how our nervous system functions. Over time, chronic stress and trauma rewire our internal alarm system, leaving it stuck in a heightened alert state that manifests as persistent anxiety, depression, relationship struggles, chronic pain, digestive disorders, hormonal imbalances, and other physical symptoms.”
Expertise and Recognition in Trauma-Informed Care
At The Mind Body Counselling Center in Chennai, this understanding guides every therapeutic encounter. Anitha’s practice combines evidence-based cognitive work with somatic interventions that directly address nervous system dysregulation. This trauma-informed, neuroscience-sensitive methodology treats the individual as a whole system, recognizing that sustainable healing requires attending to both mind and body simultaneously.
Anitha holds an M.Sc. in Counselling Psychology from CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, a Postgraduate Certificate in Attachment Theory from the International Attachment Network (UK), and certification in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy from The Embody Lab (USA). Her private practice is built on ethical standards, measurable client outcomes, and years of rigorous professional experience. With thousands of therapy hours and hundreds of satisfied clients, The Mind Body Counselling Center stands as a recognized center of excellence in trauma-informed psychotherapy.
For these reasons, The Industry Insights Magazine has recognized The Mind Body Counselling Center among the 10 Most Recommended Psychotherapy Treatment Centers 2025.
A Collaborative Care Model
To provide readers insight into her professional philosophy, our editorial team invited Anitha to discuss the key mental health challenges observed in her practice.
“Clients commonly present with anxiety, depression, trauma impacts, relationship difficulties, burnout, and the lingering effects of adverse childhood experiences,” she explains. “Many also seek support for stress-related physical symptoms and the cumulative toll of chronic stress.”
A Partnership Approach
At The Mind Body Counselling Center, therapeutic intervention unfolds as a collaborative partnership rather than a prescriptive, top-down model. Anitha works alongside clients to reduce distress and restore healthy functioning through shared exploration. She integrates insights from contemporary psychotherapy, neuroscience, and somatic awareness practices to foster relational depth, emotional safety, and self-regulation.
Sessions are thoughtfully paced to preserve emotional stability while enabling the safe processing of difficult material—preventing nervous system overwhelm. This client-centered, body-informed methodology supports true transformation by addressing both conscious and subconscious patterns.
Personalized Treatment Planning
Care remains highly individualized, shaped by a detailed understanding of each client’s personal history, nervous system functioning, and present-day life challenges. “Treatment plans integrate evidence-based psychotherapy with practical applications—grounding techniques, guided reflection, and regulation strategies—ensuring clients actively implement these tools between sessions rather than merely discussing them during appointments,” Anitha notes.
When appropriate, she collaborates with medical professionals to address both psychological and physical aspects of well-being simultaneously, ensuring comprehensive healing that supports the whole person.
Real Results: A Client Journey
One of the many transformation stories from the practice involves a working professional in her late thirties who sought help for chronic anxiety, sleep disruption, muscle tension, and difficulty setting boundaries.
Through therapy, Anitha helped her understand how her amygdala—the brain’s threat detection center—had been in constant overdrive, creating hypervigilance and mental restlessness. The client learned to identify early warning signals such as shallow breathing and racing thoughts and was trained in regulation exercises to restore calm.
After eight months of consistent somatic and reflective practices, the client experienced restorative sleep, reduced internal agitation, and rejuvenated relationships. More importantly, she regained emotional clarity, self-trust, and the ability to set healthy boundaries—hallmarks of a rewired nervous system and authentic well-being.
A Vision for Prevention
Looking ahead, The Mind Body Counselling Center aims to move beyond therapy rooms to promote preventive mental health awareness. The center plans to conduct workshops in schools, workplaces, and community organizations, teaching simple, evidence-based nervous system regulation practices that can help people restore inner balance under stress.
This initiative, Anitha emphasizes, aims to shift cultural perceptions from crisis intervention to proactive well-being—transforming stress from an obstacle into a catalyst for growth.
Stay connected at themindbodycounselling.com and follow @themindbodycounselling on Instagram.
