Ask Soniya

  How Journal Writing Can Bring Clarity and Change in Your Life... The Benefits of Journal Writing: A Simple Way to Understand Your Thoughts, Emotions and Yourself Let me ask you something. When was the last time you sat down and had an honest conversation with yourself? Not about what needs to be cooked for dinner, which bill is due next week, what your children need, or how you are going to manage another exhausting day. I am talking about a conversation with YOU . How are you feeling? What is bothering you? What is making you unhappy, restless or unusually quiet? And most importantly, what do you actually want from your life? We spend hours talking to people, scrolling through social media, replying to messages and fulfilling our responsibilities. Yet somehow, we rarely find a few minutes to understand what is happening inside our own minds. Sometimes we are angry without knowing why. Sometimes we feel lonely despite being surrounded by people. Sometimes we are so overwhelmed th...

Living With a Narcissist: When Love Starts Feeling Like a Trap There are some relationships that hurt loudly. And then there are relationships that slowly rearrange your mind. You do not notice the damage in one dramatic moment. You notice it in the way you stop trusting yourself. In the way you rehearse conversations before speaking. In the way you apologise for things you did not do. In the way you start feeling guilty for having needs. In the way one person slowly becomes the centre of the relationship—and you become the person constantly adjusting around them. Living with someone who shows strong narcissistic traits can feel exactly like that. And before I go any further, one thing is important. The word narcissist is used very casually these days. Someone being selfish, arrogant, insensitive or difficult does not automatically mean they have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. That is a clinical diagnosis that should only be made by a qualified mental-health professional. But whet...

  Clarity in Relationships: Understanding What You Feel Before You Decide What to Do Some relationships are given to us. We are born into them. Parents. Siblings. Extended family. We do not choose where we begin. And then there are relationships we build ourselves. Friendships. Love. Marriage. Business partnerships. Professional relationships. Mentors. Colleagues. People we meet unexpectedly and somehow allow into important parts of our lives. Some stay for years. Some stay for a season. Some bring comfort. Some bring confusion. And some relationships become so emotionally complicated that one day we realise we are no longer asking: “What is this relationship?” We are asking: “What am I actually feeling inside this relationship?” That is where clarity becomes important. Because sometimes the problem is not that a relationship is completely wrong. Sometimes it is that we have never clearly understood what we expect from it, what the other person expects from it and whether the two a...

There are moments when you think why should you talk about current political situation when its not my concern. I have hardly written any blogs on Political issues. My last blog on one such issue dates back to 2020 when farmers were protesting( Here is the link: https://asksoniya.blogspot.com/2020/12/farmers-aka-khalistanis-vs-govt-aka.html) in case you want to read. And then there are moments when you are just sitting in your cozy bed with a cup of warm coffee, thousands miles away from your country and your conscious tells you... What is the value of my education, career or future if I stop caring about the system that decides how my country is governed? That question seems to be sitting somewhere behind the protests we are watching in India today. Young protesters, student organisations, civil-society groups and opposition supporters have taken to the streets demanding accountability over the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, of electoral rolls, and many ...

  There comes a point in some relationships when the biggest question is no longer: “How do I change this person?” It becomes: “How do I protect myself without becoming someone I am not?” Because dealing with toxic people can change you. You may become quieter. More suspicious. More defensive. More anxious. You may start over explaining everything. You may lose confidence in your own decisions. You may become so busy managing somebody else’s moods that you stop noticing your own. And sometimes, without realising it, you start behaving in ways that do not even feel like you. This is why dealing with toxic people is not only about protecting yourself from them. It is also about protecting yourself from what the situation is turning you into. First, Stop Trying to Make Them Understand Everything This was one of the hardest things for me to understand. We often think: If I explain it properly, they will understand. If I stay calm, they will understand. If I give one more example, they ...