Psychology

I was only 13 when I first experienced it. My three best girlfriends handed me a letter. It said they no longer wanted to be my friends. The only reason given was, “The guys pay you too much attention.” After delivering the letter, they simply shunned me.

Some people may feel particularly inhibited in social situations. Meetings cause them stomach-aches, conversations overwhelm them with shyness, and anxiety does not allow them to utter a single word.

As a teenager, I remember pasting a quote from Blaise Pascal on the wall of my room. It was a thought I resonated with, not without some arrogance: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

Amy Ainsworth is the mother of 5-year-old twin girls, whose appearance is both surprising and fascinating – how could it be any other way when you see a pair of big green eyes showing off from behind the brown curls of one of the girls, contrasting strikingly with the coffee-coloured eyes and black, straight hair of her twin sister?

When I ponder the statement, “Life holds potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable,” the story of an anonymous woman comes to my mind. She made a deep impression on me and taught me about two existential states: having, and being.

The importance of humour, including in the workplace, is often undervalued, as a series of studies suggest.

"When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself" (Milan Kundera).

Critical thinking is not a cure-all, but it proves very useful in dealing with, clarifying, and solving some decision-making problems, as well as the thought and belief disputes which occupy our minds.

One can hardly overestimate the role the relationship between a parent and their child plays in forming a matrix for the child’s future relationships, whether healthy or dysfunctional. The quality of the parent-child relationship is essential because it directly impacts the child’s social and emotional development, and its quality influences the child's ability to deal with future conflict.

Many families who feared that the new coronavirus would affect their health ended up dreading its effect on something seemingly even more difficult to protect: the well-being of their relationship.

Isaac and Rebecca, two biblical characters, had problems in their marriage. At first they struggled to fall pregnant. Then, when she eventually got pregnant, it was a difficult pregnancy, which affected them very much—so much so that they didn't know what to do. I suppose they had all sorts of discussions about the situation, but at some point the discomfort just became too...

A seemingly endless stream of needy causes compete for our attention and money every day. Our emails, mailboxes and phones are bombarded by charities asking for generous donations to help.

The American Economic Review recently published the results of the largest randomized study ever conducted to measure the impact on the quality of life that deactivation ones Facebook account might have.

I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.

How do you respond when someone asks: "How are you"? With a slight shrug and an unconvincing "Fine"? What else could you say, when you are not convinced that your daily life adds up to anything more than that?