Campus Talk: This Mumbai college teaches students to deal with emotions, targets holistic personality development

Such situations are common on most college campuses in Mumbai. And most likely to get neglected as just another life problem. But Ramnarain Ruia Autonomous College in Matunga has found a unique way to help its students learn to deal with these daily emotions with philosophical counselling, a rather novel concept in the Indian context.

Dr Himani Chaukar, head of the department of philosophy, explained, “Philosophical counselling is a practice in applied philosophy that aims to use philosophical wisdom to help individuals deal effectively with their everyday life problems like decision making, procrastination, career anxiety, stress etc.” The college is empowering its students to enhance emotional literacy by offering credit-based courses on logic-based therapy (LBT) at graduation as well as post-graduation (PG) levels.

The courses are structured after studying a broad range of life problems that college students may face and training them to develop a new perspective. Dr Chaukar said, “All life problems are not psychological issues. But it does not mean that smaller daily life issues are not to be given attention. The inability to deal with these daily emotions, or neglecting these small issues results in a condition of burnout or any other stage of mental health which may require expert psychological interventions. The LBT focuses on these smaller-daily life issues.”

The courses are offered through the India Centre for Logic-Based Therapy set up at the college in collaboration with Logic-Based Therapy and Consultation Institute, USA.

Dr Chaukar said, “Most times we upset ourselves due to fallacious thinking which leads to unnecessary emotions. This impacts our responses leading to unfavourable outcomes and we end up in an emotional loop. The objective of the LBT is to regulate this by replacing irrational thoughts with rational ones.”

Talking about the importance of such courses, the principal of the college, Dr Anushree Lokur, said how this was ensuring holistic personality development among students. “Especially, in the case of students from science backgrounds who are unaware of aspects like identifying feelings and dealing with those. There were unhappy sighs from students when we started an additional course but as things are unfolding, we are seeing the change.”

Mihika Raybagkar, a third-year BA student at the college, shared how the course helped her in developing a sense of acceptance of self. “I was setting goals for myself based on fictitious characters I would idealise who were perfect in everything. The course is helping me learn how I can not be perfect and still end up being happy with myself,” she said.

Yashashree Jagtap, an MSc part-I student in bioanalytical science, is happy to have signed up for the course as it is helping her to not get overwhelmed with the stress of science practical after a two-year gap due to the pandemic. “It taught us that some stress is good in motivating you and it is important to identify it without getting overwhelmed,” said Jagtap.