Ritu Malhotra- The Cellular Alchemist

The saddest part of many arguments is that both people are trying to say, ‘I’m hurting,’ but each hears, ‘You’re the problem.’

A client came to me after weeks of tension with a close friend.

She said, ‘I keep trying to explain how hurt I feel, but every conversation turns into a fight.’

As she narrated, I noticed that almost every sentence began with ‘You never…’, ‘You always…’, or ‘You don’t understand…’

Her feelings were real, but the other person was hearing blame, not the hurt underneath it.

I see this often in relationships, whether between partners, friends, family members, or colleagues. We think we are talking about our feelings, but when emotions run high, we often end up talking about what the other person is doing wrong.

I asked her to try a simple exercise: Feel – Want – Willing.

Instead of saying, ‘You never make time for me,’ she tried this…

‘I’ve been feeling lonely and disconnected lately. I miss the ease we used to have in our friendship. I want us to understand each other better, and I’m willing to have an honest conversation and also listen to your side without interrupting.’

The difference was immediate.

The problem did not disappear overnight. But the conversation stopped feeling like a courtroom where one person had to prove the other wrong.

What I appreciate about this approach is that it is both simple and honest.

Feel asks us to name what is happening inside us.

Want asks us to say what really matters.

Willing asks us to take responsibility for our part in improving the relationship.

She stopped using the word ‘you’ while describing her feelings.

When someone feels attacked, they usually stop listening. When they hear honesty without accusation, they are much more likely to stay in the conversation.

If there is a relationship in your life that feels strained right now, pause before the next difficult conversation and ask yourself three questions:

What am I feeling?
What do I really want?
What am I willing to do to move us closer to that?

Stop trying to win the argument and start speaking from the part of us that wants to be understood.

When we hear the word addiction, most of us immediately think of alcohol or drugs.

But over the years, I have met people who were addicted to work, food, shopping, approval, relationships, achievement, even staying endlessly busy so they would not have to sit with themselves.

The forms are different... the longing underneath is often surprisingly similar.

Human beings do not become addicted because they want to destroy themselves… they are trying, in the only way they know, to soothe something that feels unbearable.

Those feelings are shaped much earlier, in moments of neglect, criticism, rejection, emotional absence, or simply not feeling truly seen.

As children, we do not have the language to understand such experiences. We only know that something hurts. Later in life, we search for anything that will help us not feel that hurt so intensely.

A close friend once asked me, ‘He has everything. Why can’t he just stop?’ She was speaking about someone in her family who was struggling with alcohol.

It is such a human question, and yet I have learned that judgment rarely heals anyone. Shame is often already sitting at the centre of the struggle. Adding more shame usually pushes the person further toward the very thing they are trying to escape through.

And, the opposite of addiction is not simply giving something up but feeling connected enough that you no longer need that escape in the same way.

The most compassionate question we can ask is ‘What pain are you trying so hard not to feel?’

This question does not excuse harmful behaviour, but it opens a door that judgment keeps firmly closed.

Healing, in my experience, begins only when a person feels safe enough to walk through that door and tell the truth about what has been hurting for a very long time.

A planet is spinning through space while we drink our morning tea.

A heart keeps beating without our supervision.

A body spends the night repairing what yesterday exhausted.

Breath enters and leaves us thousands of times, faithfully, asking for nothing in return.

And still, we move through our days as if wonder belongs only to sunsets, mountains, or extraordinary achievements.

Wonder has never been missing… maybe it's us.

We’re too busy measuring productivity to notice the miracle of being alive long enough to have another conversation, another cup of coffee, another chance to begin again.

Pause for the small impossibilities, my friend.
Being alive is far more miraculous than we allow ourselves to notice!

‘What if this goes wrong?’

It almost sounded like she was apologizing for asking it.

A friend I hadn’t spoken to in years called me out of the blue and said, ‘Ritu, I’m tired of being scared all the time.’

She wasn’t talking about anything dramatic.

Her children were doing well, work was stable, and life looked reasonably fine from the outside. Yet she described waking up each morning with a heaviness she couldn’t explain.

‘My mind keeps asking, what if something goes wrong? What if I miss something important? What if I make the wrong decision? I feel as though I’m always bracing myself for bad news.’

She wasn’t really afraid of one specific event… she was exhausted from carrying the responsibility of trying to control the future.

Anxiety is not always dramatic… it is simply the inability to rest in the present moment because the mind is busy rehearsing possibilities that have not happened.

Before we ended the call, I suggested something very small.

‘For one week, whenever your mind runs ahead into “what if,” bring it back to this question: What is the next gentle step I can take today?’

Peace does not come from solving the whole future. It comes from returning, again and again, to the small piece of life that is asking for our attention right now.

I think many of us need that reminder. ✨

One conversation can take five minutes. Recovering from it can take five days.

A colleague makes a comment in a meeting. A family member says something in irritation. A friend responds in a way you didn't expect. The conversation ends, everyone moves on, and yet something inside you keeps returning to that moment.

You may find yourself replaying the tone, wondering what they really meant, or thinking about what you should have said differently. By the end of the day, the actual conversation is over, but the emotional experience of it is still active within you.

What creates stress in such moments is often not only the event itself, but the emotional charge that becomes attached to it. When this happens, I often use a very simple calming practice.

Place one palm softly across your forehead and the other at the back of your head. Then take a few slow, natural breaths while allowing the stressful conversation to come to mind. There is no need to force yourself to think positively, justify the other person, or analyse the situation immediately. Simply hold these two areas and continue breathing for a few minutes.

What I have seen repeatedly is that the body begins to soften first. A sigh comes, the shoulders relax, and the mind gradually becomes less entangled in the emotion.

The conversation may not change, and the past certainly does not change. But your relationship with that moment can change. Sometimes a new interpretation appears, sometimes a calmer response becomes possible, and sometimes you realise that the situation was not as threatening as it first felt.

If you've been carrying a conversation in your head for days, perhaps give yourself five quiet minutes today. Sometimes that small pause is all we need for the mind to stop reliving the moment and start seeing it more clearly.

A lot of adults today are carrying a fatigue that has very little to do with how much they work.

It comes from constantly managing impressions, smoothing edges, choosing the acceptable response, keeping things looking functional, successful, and emotionally under control even when something inside has been asking for attention for a very long time.

At some point, we begin to live as caretakers of an image.

We maintain relationships that have become mostly obligation, continue routines that no longer nourish us, and keep smiling through conversations where we feel increasingly absent from ourselves. The exhausting part is... the distance that slowly grows between who we are and who we have learned to present to the world.

The truth that we are tired... tired of performing strength, tired of appearing fine, tired of treating ourselves as projects that must be endlessly improved, optimised, and packaged into a “better version” of ourselves, when sometimes that pursuit becomes another subtle form of self-rejection.

I have noticed that the people who seem most at peace are the ones who have become less afraid of being honest about their limits, their longings, their changing priorities, and the fact that they cannot be everything to everyone all the time.

I would love to know what this quote stirred in you, because I have a feeling many of us are reflecting on the same question...

What would become easier if we stopped trying so hard to appear fine and allowed ourselves to be fully, imperfectly human?