Psychology

In times of anxiety and insecurity, the ways in which we are encouraged to care for our emotional and mental health can become mere trends that come and go in waves, taking with them our money, time, and hope—and sometimes leaving us in a state which is at least as bad as what we were in originally.

Nobody likes to lose an argument. The feeling of being proven wrong is never a good one. At best, it might provide a slight dent to your ego or sense of self. At worst, it can be a thoroughly humiliating affair, or reveal that one of the foundations of your beliefs is invalid or misplaced. But no matter where it lands on the...

We know their stories, or we think we know them. Theirs are stories of success that earn the admiration of the entire world. We see the moment of victory and wish we could be in the place of the victorious ones, without realising the effort and sacrifice that are behind that moment of glory. If we truly grasped this, we might become more...

I open the window and breathe in the air, trying to guess the weather. Floating around, mixed, are scents and miasms alike; it's hard to decipher these intricate clues.

It is said that time makes us wiser. How wise have we become after a global pandemic with millions of deaths, a war on our borders, economic problems, and many personal tragedies in which we are caught as if in the grip of a great storm?

We are so familiar with complaining that we don't even recognise its presence in our interactions. It has become part of us—and, according to rumours on the internet, so have its consequences. The whining we are told we do every minute of every conversation has the power to destroy our neurons.

I was a young student looking for a good paying job to support my family and my studies. On that day, I found myself in the head nurse’s office at the nearby nursing home for the elderly.

Things happen anyway, whether good or bad. Why put extra effort into trying to respond positively when certain things happen? Why be grateful?

These days, we are free to believe anything and to be anything, at least in theory. However, if we gave history a closer look, we would realise that it is not beneficial for us to believe or be just anything. We agree with the biblical exhortation, often distorted by popular lore: "...test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Introverts are said to be shy, quiet, withdrawn people who like to spend time alone, or who don't like people. Most of this information is incorrect.

We’d been married only a few weeks when we discovered that growing our spirituality as a couple was going to be much more complicated than the instructions on the packet suggested.

"It was dark inside the wolf." Like a chef who reinterprets a traditional dish for an expensive urban restaurant, writer Margaret Atwood proposed to the students of her masterclass a reinterpretation of the story "Little Red Riding Hood", in line with the most current tastes and attention skills: a Little Red Riding Hood that lives in the present moment.

The TV-series Friends was recently reviewed in The New York Times as “enormously easy to watch”. This characteristic however does not make the show unique, nor can it account for its popularity today, more than 15 years since its final episode.

I must admit, I was a shy child. Shame is a lesson well learned. However, I don’t know if it is always correctly learned.

“You are always afraid people will judge you or know your weakness. It’s like being totally naked in front of a huge crowd,” says Bruno Feldeisen about the hidden struggle he had with anxiety.