As mental health professionals having undertaken our own respective journeys in various professional spaces, we always carried a sense of dissatisfaction around how we wanted to exercise our skills and the way the field of mental health was being looked at. A lot of our own ideas of how mental health work should be done were felt to be restricted and suppressed under organizational policies and the various perspectives that people hold about mental health. 

The thought behind beginning ‘Beyond Words’ was to practice psychological work in a way that feels closest to how we want to see it. To make conversations around mental health understandable and accessible to everybody around, and not just to a select few (read those who are educated, can speak english, belong to an upper class or upper middle class section of society etc), because there is an inner world in all of us, the major difference being whether it is made to matter or not.  

Our effort has always been to reach out to people who belong to the margins and help them access their own emotional health, find words around it, make meaning, if possible, and know that their feelings are worthy of attention and care, and that their feelings can find a place somewhere in their lives.