What is perspective? Most people would probably answer that perspective has something to do with ‘seeing things from more than just one angle’ – of being able to get the true picture, i.e. not just a one-sided or narrow view of what we are looking…
There is a hope that we all carry around with us, a hope that we never quite give up on, and that is the hope that – one day – we will actually ‘get things to work out the way we want them to’. Admittedly,…
If we say that psychological work is where we have the capacity not to automatically resist our own inner state (i.e. not to try to make it different to the way it actually is) then clearly ‘non-work’ is where we aren’t able to draw upon…
Emotional ‘shutting down’ (or closing off’) is something that happens automatically – it’s a reflex, a mechanical response. The complementary process of ‘opening up’ – on the other hand – happens spontaneously. What this means is that we can’t open up again on purpose, just…
One of the oldest, most fundamental myths is that of the conflict between the two opposing forces of Light and Darkness – the Eternal War. Every culture has its own version of this story – this is such a commonly encountered theme that we have…
We are so habituated to controlling that we try to apply it to everything – like Abraham Maslow’s story of the carpenter whose only tool was a hammer. For this lamentably under-equipped carpenter, says Maslow, the whole world is a nail. If the whole world…
We normally think pretty much automatically, which is to say we passively allow ourselves to be ‘taken over’ by whatever thoughts come along. This doesn’t usually seem a problem until we find ourselves being plagued by thoughts that we do not like. When this happens we…
If I am suffering from some kind of neurotic distress then the way that this is seen, both by myself and others, is as a problem that needs fixing. For me, the neurotic disturbance is a cause of mental pain and anguish that I want…
We have two usual ways of reacting to urges (or impulses), moods and thoughts, and both of them trap us and make us even more helpless the next time the urge, mood, or thought comes along. These two ways of reacting are called ‘acting out’…