PVLF 2025

Interview with Dr. Rajiv Mehta, Author of "For Rewire, Rework, Reclaim: How to Manage Stress"

Read our interview with Dr. Rajiv Mehta, author of "For Rewire, Rework, Reclaim," and discover expert insights on managing stress effectively.
on Oct 09, 2024

Frontlist: Your book provides practical solutions to managing stress, anxiety, and depression. What inspired you to create this guide, and how is it different from other self-help books on stress management?

Rajiv: The things which inspired me were:

1. My spritual guide who inspired me to write it for social welfare

2. being a psychiatrist it was my duty to write a professional guide based on two decades of my clinical experiences

3. My patients who after reading the first book advised and requested me to write on these issues which the 21st century generation is facing.

4. the idea to reach wider public who keep on struggling and are unable to reach mental health professionals

How it’s different :

The market is flooded with self help books. Every now and then there’s new book. Most of these books have been written by the authors who are not mental health professional. Some have been written by the ones who have undergone and overcome life troubles.

My book covers more than two decades of experience with wide variety of real life patients—how the stress impacted and what steps helped them shape their lives for better.

Frontlist: The RRR framework—Rewire, Rework, Reclaim—is at the heart of your book. Can you explain how you developed this concept and how readers can apply it in their daily lives?

Rajiv: Thoughts, emotions and behaviour are the crux of every stress. Thoughts and emotions are governed by nerves which are wire like structures. Modification of thoughts means Rewiring. Rewiring is followed by efforts to rectify the behaviour which is Reworking. Both these efforts lead to getting back the happy, stress-free self back which is Reclaiming. Hence the title REWIRE REWORK RECLAIM and the way forward for the readers.

Frontlist: As a psychiatrist, you’ve seen numerous real-life cases. How did those experiences shape the advice and scenarios you included in the book?

Rajiv: There’s always a difference between theory and practical. Patients are the best teachers. Their experience tell volumes. Rather than philosophically and idealistically finding the solutions, the real life cases helped to gather the practical stress solutions to the minutest of the details.

Frontlist: Technology and digital dependence are major stressors today. How do you suggest readers rewire their emotional responses to such modern triggers?

Rajiv: Now that’s a difficult one. Everyone is glued to the screen. The man is becoming a virtual prisoner. In contrast to drugs, digital medium is regularly required for the daily life activities hence stopping it from crossing the boundary from use to dependance is very difficult.

The caution begins very early in its use, For prevention We need to rewire ourselves accordingly to the notation that man is a social animal and without society man is equivalent to only an animal.

For cure, one needs to realise that digital medium is causing socio-occupational decline. There after the individual can rewire oneself towards other activities e.g. hobbies or activities requiring participation of other individuals like family and friends.

Frontlist: What was the most rewarding part of writing this book, and how did your own stress management practices influence your writing process?

It was fulfilling to do a bit towards the societial welfare. Almost all the major current life stressors and their solutions are covered.

The book dwells into multipronged approaches towards management of every stressor. So it not only inculcates my own stress managing techniques but it’s written with an open mind to include the practices followed by real life cases.

Frontlist: Were there any specific challenges you encountered when translating clinical knowledge into an accessible self-help format?

Rajiv: Yes there were challenges. The clinical knowledge is like a straight line going from A to B, if you do A you get the result B. But in real life the challenges are multi-factorial, several things interplay to produce stress and have to be handeled. Conveying how to handle all the dimensions together was not easy.

Frontlist: On World Mental Health Day, what message would you like to convey to readers about reclaiming their mental well-being in today’s fast-paced world?

Rajiv: Prioritise –Prioritise yourself and your physical as well as mental health. We generally take our health for granted. People rarely work on the preventive aspects and mostly its too late to work on the curative aspect of the health.

For preventive aspect, one should remember that the food with balance of all the spices tastes best. Similarly when the life has balance of all ingredients in it that is work, family, friends, hobbies, rejuvenation etc is the perfect life.

However it’s never too late to begin if the stress bug has caught you. Know your stress triggers and take help from RRR – Rewire Rework Reclaim- to overcome the triggers and lead a healthy life.