Many people arrive at their profession by design, with their inspirational journeys being the stuff of TED Talks. However, 42-year-old Dr. Teena Augustine Joseph (aka Teena) arrived at hers by fire.

Today, she runs Being Balanced, a psychotherapy practice based in Bengaluru that quietly challenges the noise and the performative nature of the mental health industry. She doesn’t promise miraculous healing in 10 sessions. She doesn’t chase virality. What she offers instead is rare: deep attention, anchored presence, and the kind of hard-earned empathy that no college curriculum alone can teach.

Teena doesn’t claim that her career began with a passion for psychology. It began with her brother showing psychiatric symptoms, her sister folding under schoolyard stigma, and her mother trying to hold it all together. “At 16, I saw a mental health facility for the first time. It was like something out of a movie. People shouting. Weird place. I was scared.”

Raised in Kuwait and newly arrived in India, Teena was meant to pursue a career in law. Her paternal grandfather had been a lawyer, and she planned to follow in his footsteps. But when her siblings failed to adjust to boarding school and began showing signs of psychiatric distress, her family’s plan unraveled. Her mother, still working at the time, asked her to stay back and care for them.

So she did.

In the chaos of a newly migrated household, Teena became caregiver, advocate, and reluctant adult. All before she could legally vote.

Trained in crisis, rooted in clarity

“I had to understand what was going on,” she reminisces. Her journey into mental health began through a chance encounter with a man who explained psychology to her in simple terms. Before that, there had only been whispers of black magic, the evil eye, and stigma dressed up as science to explain her siblings’ condition.

Young Teena started frequenting the local library to read case studies and dive deeper into Freud. As her siblings moved to open schooling and underwent long-term treatment, she immersed herself in books and questions.

She learnt about hysteria and conduct disorder and informed her parents that she wanted to study psychology. She did get through dental college, but hid the admission letter. “My mother had this huge relief when I told her I wanted to study psychology. I think she saw it as someone being able to handle the load in a different way.”

But what Teena found in her Bachelor’s curriculum disappointed her. Theory-heavy syllabi. Professors devoid of empathy. An institution unable to understand why a young woman might be attending family therapy instead of lectures, and penalizing her for attendance shortage.

“I hated the way psychology was taught,” she admits. But each such detour, each roadblock, each disillusionment, eventually shaped her practice. Two social workers who practised psychiatry steered her on course when she was feeling adrift.

“I realized that social work, the way politicians talk about it, is very different from reality.”

Channeling her hate for psychology into something meaningful, Teena pursued a Master’s in Social Work (MSW) with a focus on medical and psychiatric work. That decision changed her life. She worked with palliative care patients, in geriatric care, and with micro-enterprises for women. Her experience was further enriched by her interactions with her batchmates, who included priests, nuns, and students older than her. 

“I loved the discussions. It was a different space. I learned so much.”

Her father passed away during her MSW. With her siblings still unstable, and no option to leave the country, she stayed back and applied for a PhD.

“It was a stupid reason to do a PhD, but I needed breathing space.”

She later returned to psychology for her master’s, completing a circle she never thought she’d return to. Not for validation, but for closure.

Therapy that doesn’t sell you fairytale endings

Today, Teena works primarily with people from dysfunctional families, those navigating ambiguous loss, grief, and relational trauma. Clients don’t come to her for a script. They come to be witnessed.

She’s not interested in fast diagnoses or textbook definitions. “I’ve seen three psychiatrists give three different diagnoses for the same person,” she says. “What people really need is not just relief, but someone who will stay. Who won’t flinch at their pain. Who won’t rush them toward closure.”

Her approach is grounded in what can only be described as radical patience. Teena holds space without rushing toward answers. She lets clients repeat themselves. Linger. Rage. Grieve. Teena doesn’t interrupt with “me too” stories. She knows what it means to be spoken over. To be treated like a project or a ‘case’ instead of a person.

She isn’t here to “fix” anyone. Teena is here because she knows what it feels like when no one stays. 

A quiet rebellion against the industry

Teena is candid about her frustrations with how the mental health world markets itself. “This is an industry now,” she says. “And like every industry, there’s performance, power-play, and profit.”

She refuses to fall prey to easy labels like “clinical is best,” critiques over-reliance on assessments for profit, and raises uncomfortable questions about boundaries that feel more like business models than therapeutic ethics.

And her approach is to walk the talk.

Teena doesn’t advertise. 

The business focus of therapy is something Teena recognizes and has no illusions about. But her worry is about platforms that glorify therapy while underpaying therapists. And about new entrants who want therapy to fund luxury lifestyles. While she doesn’t believe financial ambition is inherently bad, she does recommend that new therapists do the math to calculate how to earn the magic six figures.

Even her stance on AI is layered. She sees its potential in supporting crisis de-escalation and emotional regulation, but warns against its misuse. “Loneliness should not morph into digital addiction. That is dangerous, but otherwise, technology is an ally.” 

Holding space for shifting pain

Teena’s work often intersects with intergenerational pain: children who never got to be children, adults who raised their parents, families that orbit around silence. Many of her clients, she says, “weren’t taught to feel joy, weren’t allowed to cry, weren’t given space to just be.”

For Teena, this isn’t abstract theory. It’s lived experience. Her own childhood was shaped by these same patterns. And while she’s quick to draw boundaries between her clients and her personal history, there’s an unspoken commitment beneath it all: What I couldn’t do for my family, I will offer to others.

One of the most significant shifts she’s observed is the growing presence of men in therapy. Men who were never told it was okay to feel. Men who were taught to fix, perform, and provide but never fall apart. Stoics. Men who believe tears make them weak. Men who believe in bearing pain with a smile, even when they are crumbling deep within.

Teena recalls a client terrified of marriage because of alimony jokes among male friends. He eventually opened up in a group of peers, and the conversation changed. What began as fear became connection.

“Men are opening up,” she nods. “Slowly. But meaningfully.”

She’s seen Gen Z treat therapy like going to the gym. Routine, regular, and not something that invites shame or embarrassment. But older generations still whisper the word, their voices slowing like a car going over a speed bump as they say, “Therapy.” Progress, Teena thinks, is uneven. But it’s happening.

Teena’s practice isn’t based on trends. It’s based on presence. She believes in staying when things get messy. In not fixing, but witnessing. In reminding people that even if the world has judged, misunderstood, or monetized their pain, there is still a place where they can be heard without interruption.

Her story isn’t one of dramatic transformation. It’s one of staying. Again and again. With her clients. With herself.

Conclusion

Resolutions. Fixes. Permanent solutions. The world seems obsessed with these. But Dr. Teena Augustine Joseph offers something far more radical: unflinching presence.

Where others would exit, she stays. Where others would diagnose, she listens. Where others would monetize, she humanizes.

Her therapy isn’t a ladder out of pain. It’s a comforting bench beside it.

And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.