Across the course of any close relationship, whether with a partner, friend, parent, or child, there will be moments when people misunderstand each other, get defensive, feel hurt, or say something clumsy. One common misconception is that a healthy relationship is one where there’s little to no conflict, as though love should somehow remove irritation, […]
Most of us would prefer life to offer more certainty than it does. We want to know whether we’re making the right decision, whether our plans will work out, and whether the future we imagine will be the one we end up living. The difficulty is that life rarely gives us answers to those questions […]
Many people come to therapy with the worry that they’re too sensitive, perhaps after years of feeling affected by things that other people seem to move past more easily. It might be something small on the surface, such as a friend replying with a shorter message than usual, a colleague using a sharper tone in […]
In a lecture titled Against Self-Criticism, the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggests that, if our self-critical voice were a person who followed us around, we’d find them boring and wouldn’t want them around for long. We’d soon find out that our self-critic was “impoverished and cliché”. In other words, it says the same things over […]
Have you ever found yourself in a spiral of silence? You might not recognise the term, and yet there’s a strong chance you’ve experienced it a few times. In many ways, silence is golden. When we’re sitting by the sea, quietly driving alongside someone we know well, or spending a few minutes in reflective stillness […]
When you hear the words “self-harm”, what comes to mind? For many, there’s a feeling of discomfort and a preference not to think about it. There might also be some misunderstanding about why some people choose to physically harm themselves. March is Self-harm Awarness month, and like any awareness month, it invites us to learn […]
