Our world will never be the same again after Covid-19. There are many challenges in society like working from home, temporary unemployment, lack of physical contacts of family and friends, and the physical and mental health boundaries redrawn by the WHO board in Jan 2021 to safeguard humanity. Amid all these difficult situations, the mental health care sector needs to be given high priority to help integrate the personal life, family life, and social life in society by carrying out different phases of health care programmes.
There are two types of entrepreneurs in the healthcare industry, one who comes to improve the existing business and whose focus is mainly on the growth of the business. The 2nd type is an entrepreneur who is born out of pain in life and focuses more on the customer first and the business next. The success of mental healthcare requires the 2nd type of entrepreneurs. To successfully achieve the above services, caring and nurturing are the fundamental capabilities required for providing mental healthcare.
One such entrepreneur who is catering to the individual needs of the mental healthcare patients empathetically is Dr P T Sunderam, who is leading his company PTS passionately as its Managing Director and the Chief Mentor. He is one of the prominent relationships psychologists, Mind Programmer and the first married couple’s relationship expert mentor in India. He has been practising in this field as a mentor for the last twenty years. In an area where no one was exclusively catering to the needs of the marriage counseling sector in India, Dr Sunderam dedicated himself in helping couples to strengthen their marital life and enhance their relationship with each other on a core level.
Dr Sunderam has developed a unique system and stabilized the process. He first listens to his couple individually and then analyses his findings based on their first meeting. After analysis, he asks the couple to mail him separately what they expect from the mentoring session, which helps him identify the intensity of commitment of the couple for doing homework at every session to get the desired results. This process has not only helped him to weed out the halfhearted couples but also helped countless couples who were serious about improving their relationship results.
Dr Sunderam leverages his expertise in advanced subjects on mind programming from the psychology schools of Australia, Canada, and the USA. He has been felicitated in 13 psychiatric conferences and he has also taught various doctors and psychologists in India as well. Through consistent struggles and striving, Dr Sunderam has paved his way towards success by integrating Quantum Psychology, Silva Mind, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming with Mars-Venus relationship psychology for resolving the young married couples relationship issues of the society.
Since childhood, he faced a lot of challenges that made him the man he is today. He and his mother came back from the verge of attempting suicide when he was nine years old. Going through a lot of family issues, his mother, who was fed up with her in-laws and could no longer take the mental pressure left with Sunderam to end their lives.
As a child, it was difficult for Sunderam to understand the ups and downs of life. But a holy saint saved Sunderam’s life by enlightening him about life. He asked the young Sunderam to introspect a few questions. “Will anything change once you die? Will your mother’s problems go away? If not, then live! You are born on this earth to help countless other mothers who do not have a son like you.” This statement changed the young Sunderam’s outlook on life, and he made a promise of helping the suffering mothers and their child in the best way he can.
Sunderam became India’s first married couples’ relationship expert and mentor applying the mind reprogramming skills as an alternative to counseling session and saved many young mothers from the trap of negative thoughts that once consumed him and his mother’s life.
Dynamics of PTS
Given below is an excerpt from an Interview by Insights Success with Dr Sunderam, which reveals the stories and struggles that he faced in his long and hard road to success.
- We have understood your professional bio – can you describe your move towards a married couple’s mentoring?
The foundation of a healthy married society starts with newly married couples. Unfortunately, these newly married couples are walking out of these bonds for all the immature wrong reasons. The foundation of society is cracking. So I decided to rebuild the foundation of the relationship society.
I am in the field of helping newly married couples, for the last 2 decades from all across the world through online and offline coaching, mind programming and mentoring. I have also helped them in parenting skills to excel as an individual within their family. I want them to leave a legendary life for their next generation.
- What is relationship according to you?
A relationship is an emotional deposit that you make in another person’s heart with certain rituals. It can also be called unconditional love. This is like first depositing
money in the bank and then withdrawing it. We deposit emotional rituals like “good morning”, “thank you”, “sorry”, etc. in the heart of the other person before we expect them from others.
- What is the difference between Counseling, Coaching, and Mentoring?
Counseling is advising to introspect oneself. Coaching is helping the other person to set new goals. Mentoring is doing counseling and coaching with accountability. A coach
is a person who works on your “doing skills” with techniques like a swimming coach. I will say 1 Counselling = 100 Coaching, 100 Counselling =1 Mind Programming, and 100 Mind Programming = 1 Mentoring. A mentor is like a mother. He teaches from research and experience. I am a relationship mentor with high accountability for producing measurable results.
- How do you explain the success rate of your marriage mentoring session?
For me, the success rate with my young couples is 200% because both – the husband and the wife – are doing homework for every session separately. We call it, a Zoom Mentoring Club practice. In our mentoring club, we focus on a 3-step SAM process: “Subconscious Mind Programming, “Accountability” and “Morning Discipline Practices” every day for our young couples. We take young couples for a 30-days package, 1-month package, or 3 months package.
- Your mission is to reach 1 million young coupés on this planet? Why this crazy mission at this age?
I am just 32 years young in this field and I am telling the same story for the past 32 years. This is a GMS, (God Made Syllabus), a legendary message to the next generation. I attempted suicide many times with my mother when up to 9 years old. My mother had poor self-esteem and as a result, was not daring to talk any word against my army father. A temple Pujari saved both of us and in return, I promised him to save millions of mothers trapped in such innocence. It took 25 years for me to understand myself fully. I do not want any other person to suffer like me or like my mother.
- You were an Engineer heading the HRD of a corporate division. What made you change the focus towards relationship married Couples mentoring?
As a suicide survivor, I made a promise to my mother, “You have cried for all the mothers in this world, I will make sure that no other mother cries like you.” I never realized around that time that I would enter this counselling field.
I was heading BHEL (HRD). Annually, we used to recruit Engineers and MBA pass outs from the top universities of India. We used to train them for a complete one year before absorbing them into full-time jobs. As in charge, I maintained a good rapport with them during this training period. Some trainees got married after completion of their training period.
A married couple (both of them my ex-trainees) came for consultation on relationship issues to me. The wife complained that her husband was having an extramarital affair at the site. When I asked him, the husband behaved strangely and said there was nothing wrong with extramarital affairs and if his wife wishes, she can also do it. He even told me that he can help his wife to get another partner for enjoyment. This made his wife lose her temper and she threw her baby on my desk! She pulled her husband by his hair and slammed his head against the door. She then left my room crying.
This thought haunted me for three days as I felt morally responsible for this incident. Later on, when I enquired about the whereabouts of his wife, the husband denied knowing her location. Then I convinced him for an NLP mentoring session and gave him a few tips and that helped him realize his mistakes. He then ran to his wife and found her contemplating to suicide in a water tank. The very next week, his wife came to thank me and told me that if her husband had come half an hour late, he would have found her dead body.
All of these misunderstandings happen because couples are not educated to understand the basic personalities of each other and find themselves stuck up in their marital life This incident shook me to the core and I decided to share the NLP and Mars-Venus skills with all the couples who are trapped in such innocence of wrong relationship on this planet.
- What is your suggestion for youngsters who want to become like you?
If one works on conventional education, he will be on the road like his class mates. Teachers will teach you the knowledge skills, coaches will teach you the doing skills. But a mentor will mother you with accountability and produce 100% results in every session. A mentor teaches you from his experience. So, youngsters should choose and learn from a successful mentor if they want to come up in life faster than others. India needs more mentors, not teachers. I have 4 mentors guiding me in my work. Ron Malthora of Australia, Avi Arya for Canada, Dev Gadhvi paasionpruener, Siddrath Rajshekar freedom hub of India.
- As you are the NLP Pioneer in India, how did you integrate NLP into marriage counselling expertise?
Soon after completing my PG in counselling, I started my practice. Many of my clients reluctantly used to pay Rs. 10 even after hours of counselling. I approached many doctors for joint venture work but they refused, telling that I was not producing measurable results.
I searched for skills that give measurable results, but to my dismay, found that most application-based skills were not available in the academic world in India or abroad. But I came across a few role models who were producing fantastic measurable results. I realised that universities teach only knowledge skills, but practical skills can only be learnt from successful mentors.
I came across NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), a mind programming science from Dr Richard Bandler, founder of NLP and Dr John Grey of Mars-Venus psychology fame. I invested an exorbitant amount in 1997 and learnt these valuable, measurable and result-oriented skills. I became the first NLP state group practitioners’ president. I authored 1st NLP book of India 2003.
I used to call the weekly practice group meeting for 1 year regularly. Initially, the meeting was held in my house but as the group grew larger, we shifted our venue to Indira Park – a big public garden in Hyderabad city. The group members applied the NLP techniques to each other for strengthening our practice, skills, and insights.
I had a curiosity to know how the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) psychology would work in the Indian society, the Indian culture, and the Indian soil. I had an intention to do research in applying NLP psychology on a sample population and verify the research statistically. With this intention, I worked with the prisoners of the Central Jail Hyderabad applying NLP on them and found extraordinary results beyond my expectations. I submitted the same prisoners work as a thesis and I received the first PhD (NLP) in India. Armed with the practitioner group exercise and also with the real-life experience of working with the prisoners, I became more confident and took more and more challenging cases to get successful results applying only mind programmimg techniques without the use of medicine and counselling.
I was a voracious reader of self-improvement books from my childhood. I served as a voluntary national trainer with the Indian Jaycees movement and my passion for psychology became very prominent after seeing the work of my counselling mentor Prof. S S Padmakar of Vellore Medical College, who was the first to serve as the faculty to group counselling training to various corporate sectors in India. I was very much influenced by his dedicated work in this field.
I completed my PG on counselling and psychotherapy in the year 2013. Soon after, I started counselling students for 5 years, but that was not economically viable. I was also involved in treating the employees in the software industry. I undertook a corporate assignment along with Dr Padmakar, which helped me understand the unmet emotional needs of newly married couples entering the corporate ladder and suffering as a result of their inability to balance their personal, professional, and family success.
I completed my ACC (Associate Certified Coach) certificate under ICF (International Coach Federation), USA. I went into executive life coaching with corporate sectors but was left feeling unhappy with the coaching movement in India. As the organization did not support executive coaching in India unlike in the west, most of the assignments were halfhearted attempts between the business leaders, subordinates, and the HR team.
In most cases, executing coaching was seen as an instant performance improvement tool, rather than a holistic practical development movement. The employers were more interested in the how-to part of coaching without working on the why side of it. I was also a silent witness to the games played by the leaders and HR team in the executive coaching model.
Accountability was badly missing in the process. With my experience, I observed that every executive coaching session had an un-answered psychological issue for development. I once again returned to counselling and started training corporate employees. A few of my successful training programs are:
– Couples’ Counselling
– Proactive Parenting
– Post-retirement Challenges
– 7 Habits of Happy Family
– Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
– NLP Psychology for Relationship Improvement
As the pressure on working employees became relevant particularly in the software sectors and as the divorce rate among the educated young couples gradually increased, I started once again focusing full-time on problems of young married couples from the software industries. Another pattern emerged among married couples that indicated that the newly married couples were getting separated in the first five years of marriage, breaking the foundation of the society.
Most of my clients were working couples from the software industry. They had a shortage of time and they wanted quick results. So I integrated NLP treatment with marriage counselling, which produced 10 times faster results than any other school of psychology.
I envisaged the social media impact 2 decades ago and built my online presence with 700 YouTube videos in 4 Indian languages (English/Hindi/Telugu/Tamil), serving the youth of the entire globe (most of my clients are NRIs from Silicon Valley, Singapore, Australia, and the UAE).
- What is your message for the next generation?
In the Google era, one’s learning skills are getting outdated every 1 years.
Elders and Parents and In laws model of counseling is outdated and not suitable for Millennial Generation. They are but not based on latest research nor proven results. For a 30 years professional life one has invested 3 years of education. For 80 years of married life how much education one has invested to become a good spouse, good parent , updated skills to balance personal and professional life If you do not update yourself, your children will outdate you very fast!
My message to the next generation is–rewire your mind, reedit your heart, and re-write your own life story. You are one skill away to success, find it and master it.
