“I am becoming who I always was : Dr. Itisha Nagar”

There's a visual in Dr. Itisha Nagar's mind — etched in memory; of her grandmother's hands, warm and reassuring. It's one of those childhood moments that seems small at the time but grows in significance with the years, shaping the way you see the world, the way you move through it. For Dr. Itisha, that warmth became a compass, pointing toward what matters most: authentic relationships, genuine connection, and the courage to show up as yourself in a world that often asks you to be someone else.

Today, Dr. Itisha Nagar is a psychologist who worked as an assistant professor at Delhi University's Kamala Nehru College for close to a decade, and now has a deeply engaged following online. But her journey to this point wasn't a linear climb up a career ladder—it was something more profound. It was, as she describes it, a process of "becoming who I always was."

And psychology, her profession, became the vehicle that enables it on the daily. Her work didn't create her authentic self; it gave her the language and framework to finally recognise and claim it.

Purpose, By Pure Chance
Like many great love stories, Dr. Itisha’s relationship with psychology began almost by chance. In high school, she was a science student. Not because she was particularly passionate, but because that's what "smart students" did. It was expected.

But there was psychology, sitting quietly in her class schedule. "While I could cope up and do really well, it was really the psychology classes that made me feel alive in a way that physics, chemistry, biology didn't," she reflects. The discussions about learning, memory, personality, motivation, and emotion resonated with something deep inside her. "A lot of my decisions are emotional decisions in life. If I felt happy, there were no two ways about it."

She then went ahead to focus on securing a spot in a good undergraduate psychology program. It was a decision that would define everything that followed because it aligned with who she actually was. Sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is choose happiness over expectation.

Shedding to Grow
The path through psychology education, however, came with its own set of myths. Perhaps the cruelest was the idea that as a professional, she didn't need mental health support herself. That she should be, as she puts it, an "empathy ki dukaan" for everybody. "How much did I have to unlearn that!" she says.

The realisation came slowly: Learning self-care wasn't indulgent, it was survival. So was learning to set boundaries, something particularly challenging for women socialised from birth to say yes, to accommodate, to fold themselves smaller to make room for others.

But here's what makes Dr. Itisha’s understanding of boundaries is revolutionary: she sees them not as walls but as foundations for healthier love. "Once you realise that not having boundaries not only hurts you but also the other person, it doesn't become difficult to have those in the first place." She also learned to distinguish between the people worth pushing her boundaries for: "These are people who would do the same for me”.

The Personal is Political (and Psychological)
What sets Dr. Itisha apart isn't just her academic credentials or her years in the classroom. It's her refusal to perform the lie that psychology can ever be neutral, objective, separate from the messy reality of power and oppression.

Her recent research examines the experiences of late-diagnosed Indian women with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), focusing on gender-specific challenges—work that reflects her bone-deep commitment to understanding how power structures don't just shape society, but colonise our inner lives, telling us what's normal and what's deviant, who deserves care and who deserves judgment.

"That's a myth. Psychology doesn't ask us to be objective," she says, her voice firm with conviction. Instead, she practices what she calls "being of a certain perspective without becoming it". This is about the ability to immerse yourself in understanding without drowning, to hold someone else's pain without losing yourself to it.

Her psychology is deeply personal and subjective, shaped by her experiences as a woman navigating a world where, as she puts it,

This isn't academic theorising. Its lived reality transformed into scholarly inquiry and public discourse. In her TEDx talk at IIM Sambalpur, she shared a deeply personal narrative on identity, difference, and collective healing, reflecting on her journey as a female child growing up in a society structured by patriarchal norms and expectations. She challenged the very idea of "abnormality," reframing it not as truth but as a construct of power.

"You don't become a feminist because you read a book," she says. "Your experiences, your pain makes you a feminist." And her feminism isn't the sanitized, corporate-friendly kind. It's the kind that talks about caste, about class, about all the intersecting systems of oppression that shape whose voice matters and whose doesn't.

Stories as Sanctuary
Ask Dr. Itisha about the heart of therapeutic work, and she'll tell you about stories as an approach to thriving. "We need for life to make sense," she explains, invoking Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. We're meaning-making creatures, desperately searching for the thread that connects our scattered experiences into something coherent. "We're looking for a moral of the story, for closures, for endings, for things to be tied up."

But storytelling in therapy isn't just about imposing narrative order on chaos. It's about creating what she calls, with devastating precision, "a resting place for our pain." Unlike defense mechanisms that protect us by denying reality—repression, projection, displacement—stories allow us to hold our pain in a form that's bearable. The kind that is shaped rather than raw and more acknowledged than denied.

When asked about the moments of uncertainty, burnout, and doubt in her journey, Dr. Itisha doesn't point to professional setbacks or academic challenges. "My childhood," she says simply. "People say adulting is so hard; please try childhood in an extremely dysfunctional family."

As an adult, at least you have choices, resources, some measure of control. But as a child? You're at the mercy of forces you can neither understand nor escape.

Her survival tools were simple: study, music, radio. "I studied the hell out of my life," she says. That childhood forged her understanding of healing in many ways she’s grown to understand.

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Owning Her Inner Landscape
If there's a through-line in Dr. Itisha’s story, it's this steady, hard-won progression toward taking up space: emotional, intellectual, and space in her own sense of self. "I own my emotional landscape that has always existed. That's the change. I am occupying more space by myself."

"I've become unashamed about my emotional depth," she says, and there's power in that present-tense verb. Not "I am unashamed" as if it's a fixed state, but "I've become", acknowledging the work, the process, the daily choice it requires. Perhaps most significantly: "Oppressive voices are not living rent-free in my own self." Not completely gone and she's honest enough to provide the caveat.

This hasn't been without cost. She talks candidly about the internal struggle of sharing authentic thoughts publicly with the voice that still is based on external perception. "I was someone who was chained, caught up psychologically, as we all are, by 'log kya kahenge' (what will people say), society, shame, others, their needs, their wants from you as a woman more specifically."

Now, she's learned to balance her truth with what she calls refinement. To create pockets of radical honesty in spaces that feel safe—her classrooms, her therapy sessions—while being more measured in public forums. "I play on the inside," she explains. "And I play when there is safety, such as my classrooms. But in public, I'm responsible, considerate, and refined in my thoughts."

On the outside, she's certain she's been labeled "too much of a feminist," the "wrong kind" of feminist. Opportunities have likely passed her by because of what she says, what she challenges. "I would never come to know that, and that's okay," she says nonchalantly. "By being my authentic self, I automatically get aligned with people who would be open and encouraging of the conversations I bring to the table."

Success, From the Inside Out
Ask her what success means, Itisha says: "Success to me means fulfilling my own potentials, having good, authentic relationships, having humor and peace in the day, and the resilience to overcome problems that life throws one's way."

It's a definition that would have been impossible for her younger self to articulate because she hadn't yet given herself permission to know it. Success, in this framing, isn't about external validation or meeting someone else's standards. It's about alignment between who you are and how you live, and between your interior world and your exterior actions.

"There is a continuity of self that I see," she explains. Not a transformation, but an unbecoming of everything that wasn't truly her — the conventional good girl, the accommodating woman, the objective professional, the person who said yes when she meant no.

A Question to Carry Forward
As she prepares to wrap up her thoughts, Dr. Itisha circles back to where her story began and offers not advice but an invitation, a question to sit with: "If social relationships were a currency—authentic, good, warm, genuine, healthy relationships were a currency—how rich would you be, or how poor would you be, and why?"

It's the kind of question that stops you mid-scroll. Because in the end, Dr. Itisha Nagar's journey reminds us that the measure of a life well-lived isn't found in degrees, publications, followers or any of the other external markers we've been taught to chase. It's found in the quality of our connections and the authenticity of our presence and in our ability to show up, fully and honestly, as ourselves.

It's about looking in the mirror and finally, finally, seeing yourself clearly. And then having the courage to live that truth out loud. The person your grandmother or anyone who you hold dear always knew you were.

If You’re Walking a Similar Path
For aspiring psychologists, therapists, educators, or simply anyone trying to live more authentically: