Reflections from the journey

Dear Dr. Saras Bhaskar,

At the onset, wish you and your family a Happy New Year and the very best for the year ahead.

It was a pleasure having you as Guest Speaker at our Diversity Day event on 18th December and would like to thank you very much for the time you took from your busy schedule to be part of the event.

We have received very positive feedback from our employees on your session of Conflict Management. Participants were very appreciative of the session for providing them insights to rediscover and respond in scenarios of conflict. I am confident that it would benefit us in the future.

Once again, thank you very much for your time and participation.

Thank you for conducting a session on Marital counselling for the one month trainees. The feedback was excellent – a lot of new information; very interesting; meaningful session.

Thanks a lot for sparing your time.

Dr. Saras Bhasker is a vibrant counselor who exhibits a clear understanding of teenage minds, cleverly addressing their intimate issues and she offers simple and lasting solutions. Her two group counseling program with students of MOP Vaishnav College in the last three years; one being the “Acquainting with Beginning of College” and the other “Finishing School” have won appreciation from students as well as parents of many of our students. Thanks Saras for sharing your knowledge and expertise.

As on organizer of the Childline South Regional Conference, I take pride in sharing my feedback. Dr. Saras Bhaskar was the facilitator for our 8th caseworkers conference held in Trivandrum on 5 Dec 2006 and 6 Dec 2006. She had designed the curriculum in a manner where the knowledge disbursement happened in a gradual and progressive direction. She engaged all the participants with several activities and games to impart better learning.

She started the Day 1 with an exercise on Teamwork that set a tone to the objective of the child line. In simple terms, she categorized simple and chronic mental disorders. She gave necessary information to identify mental disorders. She was thorough in teaching the group about the child growth and developmental needs and challenges that elicited audience participation. She was very knowledgeable in discussing about the behaviors in distressed children from the psychological perspective. Day 2, she covered the areas of creative thinking, communicating with distressed children, families, colleagues and team members. A simple exercise on creative thinking involved the participants to think to resolve any possible crisis or conflict situations. The participants shared enthusiastically their intervention strategies. Motivation and the types of motivation created was a great source of information and the audience participated in the case study discussion and presentation at the end of the second day. Overall it was a great learning experience for about 40 caseworkers who had attended the program from all over South. On any given day, I would recommend Dr. Saras Bhaskar for training programs for she takes great pride in what she does and is very committed to give the best the population she serves.

Varsha is well-organized, extremely knowledgeable, and strategic, while at the same time being compassionate, curious, and present. Varsha has struck the perfect balance for what my partner and I have been looking for in a couples counselor.

If you are looking for a supportive therapist that makes you comfortable and really listens to your needs and adapts their style to what works best for you, Varsha is it! She helped me work through some very difficult things and get to a point where I was able to tackle large parts of my life with the help of skills we built together! Before I met her I didn’t even know I needed CBT, and she guided me to it and her style of talk plus activity based therapy really worked well.

If you are like me and also need cultural familiarity, I have not seen a better South Asian therapist than her.

I worked with Varsha Swamy for almost a year after I had been diagnosed with anxiety and mild depression. Varsha is an extraordinary listener. She taught me how to pay attention to what I was feeling, saying, doing in ways that allow me to be much more self-aware and better prepared to deal! She creates a space for clients to speak freely and openly, and shares strategies that strengthen their internal capacities. Thank you Varsha!

My partner and I participated in couple’s therapy with Varsha for about 1.5 years, and it was hands down one of the best decisions we’ve ever made! Before working with Varsha, we both struggled greatly with recognizing and expressing our emotions. By introducing tools like parts work, she empowered us to navigate difficult situations as a team. Even though we did sessions as a couple, I learned more about myself and my nervous system than I previously had in individual therapy. We always rave about Varsha to our friends, and I would absolutely recommend her services to anyone looking for extra support!

Varsha primarily helped my husband and I navigate some very important decisions relating in the adoption preparation / pre-adoptive phase of our journey. She helped us immeasurably. I would highly recommend working with Varsha’s.

Varsha was the perfect couples therapist for us, and I mean PERFECT. I personally struggled with recognizing and communicating my emotions, which completely turned around after working with Varsha. She helped my partner and I communicate effectively and gave us strategies to help us cope with our past trauma and difficult situations in our lives. She taught us strategies to regulate and co-regulate our nervous systems that we use to this day. With her, we grew closer together as we prepared to get married and we feel the effects of the work we’ve done with her every day. She has truly transformed how we exist in our relationship. We referred a friend-couple to her, and they confirmed to us that sessions with her are magical and transformative. I cannot imagine a better fitting therapist for our needs, and we will return for more sessions with her as needed in the future.