Relationships
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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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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.
Read ArticleCalm
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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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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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.
Read ArticleSelf-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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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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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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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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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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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.
Calm
Might I Be Feeling Lonely Rather Than Worried?
Might I principally, at heart, be lonely rather than worried?
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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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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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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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Some of us have a distinctive attitude to red flags in relationships. We can certainly see – if we push…
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Relationships
The Appeal of Rescuing Other People
We might assume that our great longing in relationships would be to be looked after by someone; an exceptionally kind…
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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…
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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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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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Self-Knowledge
What Is It Like to Be Mentally Unwell?
Our societies have become hugely more respectful of, and sensitive to, mental illness than any of their predecessors. We now…
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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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Relationships
People Pleasers in Relationships
It can take a while to realise what’s happened. For a long time, it simply seems that one has miraculously…
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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…
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Select themes
Relationships
The Appeal of Rescuing Other People
Calm
On Feeling Manic
Relationships
Daring to Love
Relationships
The Pains of Heartbreak
Self-Knowledge
What Is It Like to Be Mentally Unwell?
Self-Knowledge
How to ‘Grow’
Relationships
People Pleasers in Relationships
Self-Knowledge