Articles by The School of Life 

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Relationships

Why Some Of Us Are So Bad At Spotting Red Flags

We can put it like this: the ability to respond actively to red flags depends on having had a certain sort of childhood.

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Relationships

The Appeal of Rescuing Other People

We might say that everyone, at the start, longs to receive love. But when it has not been especially forthcoming, one way to handle its absence is to turn into a compulsive caregiver.

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Calm

On Feeling Manic

Many of us are prone to slip into states of mind we might call ‘manic’ – in which we run obsessively and at high speed away from something within us that asks for our attention.

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Relationships

Daring to Love

It might take some of us the greater part of our lives until we no longer hold it against someone that they can warmly adore us.

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Relationships

The Pains of Heartbreak

We should not try to be brave. This has to count among the greatest griefs of our lives. Only thereby can we give the love we had for them proper stature – and begin to let it go.

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Self-Knowledge

What Is It Like to Be Mentally Unwell?

Most states of unwellness are not radically different from those occasionally and briefly experienced by all of us; they are simply much, much more extreme.

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Self-Knowledge

How to ‘Grow’

What does ‘growing’ really involve? And, crucially, how might we train ourselves to grow a little more – and a little more quickly?

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Relationships

People Pleasers in Relationships

People pleasers are prone to initiating a variety of secret agendas in the hope of continuing to be liked.

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Self-Knowledge

Why It Can Take Us So Long to Understand How Unwell We Are

A lot about our behaviour doesn’t make sense until we can take on board a basic idea about the way we humans are built: that our biology privileges survival over self-awareness.

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Self-Knowledge

The Life-Saving Nature of Poor Memories

To never forget is to be permanently pressed up against the worst collisions between our wishes and the horrible course of reality.

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Self-Knowledge

Living Long Term With Mental Illness

The more time passes, the more we have to take on board a bleaker, unavoidable reality: this thing is here for the long term. In the one life we’ll ever have, this is us.

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Calm

Might I Be Feeling Lonely Rather Than Worried?

Might I principally, at heart, be lonely rather than worried?

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Self-Knowledge

The Impulse to Sink Our Own Mood – and Return to Sadness and Worry

We may have grown up to associate a low fearful mood with safety. Sadness means you don’t get attacked; it keeps you out of trouble.

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Self-Knowledge

How ‘Mad’ People Make a Lot of Sense

If we look with sufficient rigour at the behaviour the mentally unwell exhibit, we almost always find a logic within it that can be decoded, listened to and in many cases dealt with.

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Self-Knowledge

Why We Keep Repeating Patterns of Unhappiness

We aren’t here again by coincidence. We are – in an unconscious part of our minds – steering ourselves to a place of pain with hidden intent.

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On Feeling Manic

Calm

On Feeling Manic

Many of us are prone to slip into states of mind we might call ‘manic’ – in which we run…
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Daring to Love

Relationships

Daring to Love

Some of us are involved in a dynamic in love that, when it’s laid out squarely, sounds very strange indeed:…
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The Pains of Heartbreak

Relationships

The Pains of Heartbreak

For all the songs and poems and novels written in its honour, the sickness of heartbreak is unlikely to strike…
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How to ‘Grow’

Self-Knowledge

How to ‘Grow’

Our societies are attached to a phrase which it can be a bit too easy to assume we understand. The…
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