Home

Couple Counselling

Relationship stability and happiness is something to be worked towards.

Learn More

Life Transitions Counselling

Prepare successful life transitions such as to parenthood to job change.

Learn More

Wellness Coaching

Connect yourself with inner resources to deal effectively with challenges.

Learn More

Stress and Anxiety

Stress helps you progress and perform better but be aware of burn-out.

Learn More

Family Counselling

Improve the quality of your family life by sorting out the challenges.

Learn More

Self Esteem and Confidence

Develop positive regard and love for self and faith in one's abilities.

Learn More

Since 1993

Smiles N More Team

Self-actualization is a desire "to become everything one is capable of becoming" - Abraham Maslow.

Self-actualized people are those who feel fulfilled and do all they are capable of. They focus on realising personal potential and seek personal growth. We believe every person can be a self-actualizer who will value self and accept responsibility to constantly unlearn and relearn to achieve self-fulfillment.

Counselling is a process that aids in this transformation. We like to reach out and do our best in this process.

528b3a3e-713b-4815-ad50-ddcc75c90598

Reach us at..

About Us

jina photo latest

Our Approach

Our Story

 

 

“I believe that every individual has an innate capability for happiness and with self-awareness and few skills can reach that potential. A self-aware person values self, accepts responsibility and constantly unlearns & relearns to manage problems in life. I feel counselling is an aid in this transformation and would like to do my best in this process.”

Dr. Jinashree Rajendrakumar is the first certified Gottman Couple Therapist (Gottman Institute, Seattle) in India. She is a certified NLP Master Practitioner (NLP Coaching Academy, American Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming & International Association of Professional Coaches, counsellors and Therapists) and NLP Trainer (NLP Coaching Academy & International Association of Professional Coaches, Counsellors and Therapists). She is certified in Science of Happiness (Edx, University of Berkeley) and Positive Psychology (Edx, University of North Carolina). She is a certified Stress Management professional (International Council of Stress Management Professionals, Sydney & International Stress Management Association), certified counsellor (Banjara Academy, Bangalore), certified Handwriting Analyst(Handwriting Analysts International) and Wellness Coach. She is trained in Client Centred Therapy, CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) skills, Hypnosis and Transactional Analysis (Year-1) and believes in an eclectic approach based on the client needs. Jinashree is part of Smiles N More Counselling center.

Jinashree has a PhD in Psychology from Christ (Deemed to be University), MA in Psychology from IGNOU, MBA from SJSU (San Jose State University), M.S from IIITB (International Institute of Information Technology) and B.E in Computer Science from Bangalore University. She has worked as a software engineer and technical lead for 17 years in companies like Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard and Wipro. She is the co-founder and Director of Techseed Systems. She is a writer and is fascinated by Vedic astrology and has a certification in same.

Testimonials

  “Meeting Jinashree was a pleasant and very helpful experience. She is very patient, attentive and helpful in her approach. Talking with her and receiving her guidance in my problem helped me to tackle it, and I will certainly recommend her to anyone who needs help.

She has a very helpful, sweet and understanding demeanour, it is easy to talk to her. It was relieving to consult her, I felt much better with her counselling.”

-Verified Patient, Practo

 “Thanks much Jina. My relationship with you has really infused life into me. It is surprising how well you understood me and supported me when all around me were not helping at all. I am a much stronger person all thanks to you. Hopefully will now be able to help others and will remember you most fondly always. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours and thanks so very much.”

– Sakhi, Dentist, yourDost

 “Mam I have no words to thank you. You were there in my bad times I used to trouble you a lot but you never got angry you are so beautiful soul mam. Thank you so much for been there. Thank you thank you thank you for everything. I will miss you. Wish you all the happiness and success mam.”

-Dory, Software Engineer, yourDost

 “Very much focused. She has clarity in mind and delivers the same to the patient. Invokes thought provoking and resolution oriented but still pleasant conversation.”

-Verified Patient, Practo

 “I was referred to her for CBT. She is patient, friendly and makes her point by giving examples in form of stories. She allows you to go at your own pace and gives straight answers if asked a straight question.

It’s been only a few sessions with her. What I am most impressed with her is her insistence to go to the roots of the problem. She knows where her intervention is required and where the client can work on his/her own self. That gives me confidence that I am strong enough to handle some things on my own. I am looking forward to my upcoming sessions with her.”
-Verified Patient, Practo

 “Sensible, friendly and approachable. Definitely recommend having a chat with Jinashree to sort through your thinking.”

-Verified Patient, Practo

 “Jina has been very helpful in counselling in matters of anger management and self-awareness. She is a great listener and her inputs in matters of professional and personal growth has helped me a lot. She has suggested some exercises and techniques that work like magic.”

-Verified Patient, Practo

 “It was a pleasure forming a tight friendship with you for the past couple of months. Thank you for your support I appreciate your kindness, generosity, and knowledge. I wish you nothing but success going forward. Take care my friend :)”

-Stan, Student, yourDost 

 

Gottman Couples Therapy

CGT Certificate - Jinashree Rajendrakumar-page-001

 

In 1994, Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Gottman developed the Sound Relationship House (SRH) theory and interventions based on John Gottman’s research. They designed Interventions to help couples strengthen their relationships in three primary areas: conflict management, friendship, and creation of shared meaning.

Conflict Management

All relationships, even the most successful ones, have conflict. Conflict is natural and has functional aspects that provide opportunities for growth. Research shows that it is not the appearance of conflict, but rather how it is managed that predicts the success or failure of a relationship.

Dr. John Gottman and Dr. R.W. Levenson researched on what is seen in a relationship that is going well in the area of conflict management. In longitudinal research that spanned 20 years, they concluded the following, “69% of problems are perpetual and not completely resolvable for couples due to personality differences.” These on-going problems need continuing dialogue that centers around acceptance of each other.

Dr. Gottman researched the question “What makes for a satisfying marriage?” He found that not all negatives are alike. Four of conflict resolution styles stood out as being the most destructive and biggest predictors of divorce and separation. Gottman called these, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, namely Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and stonewalling. While most relationships will have some of these, healthy relationships don’t use them nearly as often and do more to repair them when they are used.

The Four Horsemen

The Four Horsemen in the New Testament, namely conquest, war, hunger, and death depicts the end of the world. Similarly the metaphor ‘Four
Horsemen’ is used to describe the communication styles that depict
the end of a relationship.

Criticism: The first horseman is criticism. Criticizing is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint. The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an attack on the personality and is done using blaming, character-attack and over-generalized statements like ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘should’ etc.

Contempt: The second horseman is contempt. While criticism attacks the partner’s character, contempt assumes a position of moral superiority over the other. The target of contempt is made to feel inferior and worthless using mockery, sarcasm, and insults in verbal and non-verbal modes. Contempt is fueled by long-simmering negative thoughts and researched to be the greatest predictor of divorce.

Defensiveness: The third horseman is defensiveness, and it is typically a response to criticism. Defensiveness is self-protection by warding off a perceived attack and happens through counter-attacks, playing innocent-victim, giving excuses, etc. It will not allow for healthy conflict management as it maintains a state of conflict.

Stonewalling: The fourth horseman is stonewalling, which is usually a response to contempt. Stonewalling occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction and tunes out to their partner. Rather than confront the issue, it involves evasiveness, acting busy, or engaging in distractions.

The first step in effectively managing conflict is to identify and counteract The Four Horsemen when they arrive in the conflict discussions. And their antidotes were identified by the Gottmans as gentle start-up, accepting responsibility, expressing feelings and needs and, self-soothing. If not couples risk problems in the future of the relationship, propelling it towards divorce or worse, emotional disengagement. To achieve this goal, love is not enough and insights are insufficient. What is needed is skill-building in the couples so that they can translate the desired ideals of conflict management into daily practices.

The Antidotes

Gentle Start-up: The antidote for criticism is to voice the issue using gentle start-up. It involves talking about feelings using “I” statements and positively expressing specific needs, without any blaming.

Express Feelings & Needs: The antidote to contempt is to express feelings and assert needs as respectful requests, and enabling a culture of appreciation.

Accepting Responsibility: The antidote to defensiveness is accepting responsibility. By taking responsibility even for a part of the issue, couples prevent the conflict from escalating.

Self-Soothing: The antidote to stonewalling is to practice physiological self-soothing, and the first step of self-soothing is to stop the conflict discussion and call a timeout. If not a partner might either bottle up emotions or explode and neither of them helps in conflict resolution.

Friendship

According to research by Dr. John Gottman, friendship is what makes the relationship stronger and vital. As with any friendship, it is a bond that must be nurtured with care. Allocating cognitive space to understand your partner’s likes and dislikes, showing interest and appreciation, building a positive outlook, being attentive to our partner’s needs and playing a team strengthen your marriage.

Shared meaning

There should be an atmosphere that encourages a couple to talk honestly and nurture individual as well as relationship-driven dreams and aspirations. It includes spending quality time together regularly and getting to know each other better by sharing deeper hopes, values, thoughts, and feelings. This results in a happy and successful marriage in the long-term.

References:

Gottman Research. (2019). The Gottman Institute. https://www.gottman.com/about/research accessed on 03.03.2019

 

Contact Us

Get in touch with us. We look forward to hearing from you!

HSR Layout Branch:

Smiles N More Counselling

318/A, 24th Cross Rd, Sector 2

HSR Layout, Bangalore 560102

 

Kalyan Nagar Branch:

Smiles N More Counselling

#232, 5 A Main, Kalyan Nagar

HRBR Layout, Bangalore 560043

 

Phone: 080 2258 2929/+91 93410 78979

 

Let us know if any queries and we will get back to you.