Articles At The School of Life

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Self-Knowledge

Why We Need to Go Back to Emotional School

We are not unwell as a result of some obscure biological quirk. We’re ailing because we didn’t learn certain things when we might have done.

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Self-Knowledge

How to Live Long-Term With Trauma

It is in the nature of most traumas that we will never — sadly — entirely get over them. But we can learn to sidestep their worst effects — and aim to infuse our remaining years with creativity and freedom.

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Self-Knowledge

Should We Forgive Our Parents or Not?

For many of us with troubled childhoods marked by trauma and distress, one of the major theoretical problems of adult life is: should we forgive our parents for the past — or not?

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Self-Knowledge

The Point of Writing Letters We Never Send

What may matter most in many situations is not, as we might think, that the person we need to speak to is actually able to hear what we have to say; but rather that we have a proper, in-depth chance to say it any way.

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Self-Knowledge

Reparenting Your Inner Child

We contain within ourselves a version of all the people we have ever been. No version of us entirely disappears, it is merely added to and buttressed, like an oak tree whose rings still contain the marks of all its former circumferences

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Relationships

Why We Love People Who Don’t Love Us Back

We are sometimes puzzled by how frequently we find ourselves in love with people we know are not going to be good for us, but who mirror the disturbing patterns of our attachments from early childhood.

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Self-Knowledge

On Suicide

It’s commonly assumed that people kill themselves because something has gone dramatically wrong in their life. But the truth is more nuanced and more psychological: people take their own lives because of the way they interpret events.

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