Meet Swetha Rangassami: A Therapist Who Believes Therapy Can Be Something You Look Forward To

A lot of people arrive at therapy braced for something heavy. Swetha gently turns that expectation on its head. She believes therapy can be exploratory, creative, and yes, even something you look forward to. Sit with her and you meet someone deeply curious, easily fascinated by people, and genuinely interested in figuring out, together with you, what actually helps.

She notices what has not been said yet

In the first few minutes with someone new, Swetha is reading more than words. How comfortable you seem, how you are sitting, the small non-verbal cues, the way you seem to want the session to go. She is just as curious about what has not been said. Often the thing someone hesitates to name, or the way they respond to a question, tells her as much as the thing they say out loud.

It is a quiet, attentive kind of noticing, the sort that helps you feel seen before you have even finished explaining yourself.

Therapy does not have to feel heavy

Clients are often surprised to hear Swetha say that therapy does not always have to be serious. It can be lighter than you expect. Exploratory, creative, sometimes even fun.

Depending on what works for you, a session might involve drawing, journaling, a small activity, something playful, or simply a conversation that helps you see a thing differently. The approach bends to fit the person, not the other way around. For a lot of people, discovering that therapy can feel like this is the thing that lets them keep coming back.

People change, and so do relationships

Ask Swetha what people tend to get wrong about relationships, and she points to a quiet assumption many of us make. That once you understand someone, you know everything there is to know. Or that once you have worked out how a relationship functions, that is simply how it will always be.

But people change, relationships change, and the dynamic between two people keeps shifting too. A big part of staying close, she believes, is staying curious about each other, and staying open to letting the relationship grow into something new rather than holding it to who you both used to be.

A question that keeps her present

The question Swetha asks most often is one she puts to herself: “What is happening right now?”

It keeps her present. It is easy, she says, to get caught up in where things are supposed to be going, and this small question brings her back to what is actually unfolding in the room. It keeps her curious and genuinely with the person in front of her, rather than a few steps ahead of them.

What a first session is like

A first session with Swetha is mostly about getting to know each other and understanding what brought you in. You will talk about what has been happening, what you are hoping for, and what feels important for her to know.

She is careful not to let it feel like an interrogation or a checklist. It is also about getting a feel for each other and working out, together, what therapy could look like for you. More than anything, she wants you to leave with a sense of what this space can actually be like.

A little of who she is

Tea is almost always within reach. Swetha has what she cheerfully calls a million hobbies, and she is forever picking up new ones. See someone doing something interesting and her first thought is usually, “Wait, how can I do that?”

On any given day she is likely reading, writing, journaling, taking photos, listening to music and singing along, or making something with her hands. She will attempt to befriend pretty much every animal she meets. And she is very easily fascinated, the kind of person who will happily disappear down an entirely unnecessary rabbit hole because something caught her attention for five minutes. That same curiosity is exactly what she brings to the people she works with.

Who Swetha is a great fit for

Swetha is a wonderful fit if you want to explore yourself and understand your patterns, relationships, and experiences a little more deeply.

She works with anxiety and overthinking, interpersonal and family relationships, self-esteem and body image, burnout, trauma, grief, life transitions, and that hard to place feeling of “something does not quite feel right, but I do not know how to explain it.” She especially enjoys working with people who like a collaborative, creative approach, where you can talk, reflect, experiment with different tools, and figure out together what genuinely works for you.

She is also honest about fit. If what you need falls outside her training or experience, she would rather say so and connect you with a colleague better suited to it. That honesty is part of the care, not a gap in it.

Training and languages

Swetha Rangassami is a Counselling Psychologist with a B.Sc. in Psychology from Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College and an M.Sc. in Counselling Psychology from Madras School of Social Work.

Her training includes Transactional Analysis, Psychosocial Rehabilitation, and Emotional Intelligence, and she is currently pursuing certification with the Trauma Research Foundation. Her work draws on person-centred therapy, CBT, and Gestalt, depending on what fits the person she is working with. She has completed more than 600 hours of one-on-one counselling and has worked across individual and group settings. She works in English and Tamil.

If you would like to begin with Swetha, you can book a session whenever you feel ready. https://www.hibiscuscounselling.com/booking-calendar/therapy-with-swetha?referral=service_list_widget