Psychology

What if we weren't allowed to use more than 140 words a day? If we entered this game, among the useless words we would give up there would probably be words that convey encouragement too. The sad irony is that we use too few words of encouragement anyway, although the emotional and relational benefits are too important to neglect.

Love stories have a way of creeping into the foreground and convincing us that their effervescent debut is just the overture to a marriage that will always rekindle, in a different intensity, the same fireworks of beginnings.

Happiness must come naturally – and this is true for success: you must let it happen simply by not obsessing over it.

“How can we rejoice if we’re at war?” This was one of the questions that arose in my mind after reading a book comprised of testimonies of people who experienced World War II as children. Decades after this nightmare, and stricken by a crisis that casts its shadow over people and nations everywhere, the question remains: can we still be happy in times...

Among the greatest disappointments of life is having our expectations unfulfilled; not by politicians, or publications that promote false news or weather forecasts, but by those close to us—people in whom we have invested our confidence.

One night while checking on his patients in a palliative care centre, the therapist risked asking a confusing question to a person whose universe had shrunk to the size of his sickbed: “What brought you joy today?” The answer was immediate: “Being alive.”

Along with the rising death toll due to coronavirus complications, a usually latent aspect of our fear becomes harder to ignore. Despite the fact that it is the only certainty we all share, realising that our own end is a reality we might need to confront sooner than we had thought leaves many of us fervently searching for consolation.

A cold flash, like the strange, icy feeling after a burn, runs through his body with every breath. He feels his heart racing. It feels like it is counting down to the moment when it will explode—or, mercifully, to the moment when he will turn his pillow to the cooler side, and finally fall asleep.

Sometimes I think I was born with a magnifying glass in my hand, one through which I critically scrutinize everything I do and say and which relentlessly magnifies every imperfection.

Making any choice denies the possibility of at least one other choice. When confronted with this truth, young people often find themselves unprepared for life’s big choices.

Little over a decade ago, a highly acclaimed British documentary filmmaker, Louis Theroux, stepped into the midst of 500 paedophiles admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Coalinga, California, trying to find out if the complex treatment the convicts had to go through was really working.

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.

Besides carefree days, Christmas carols and traditional sweet breads, any respectable December also includes an evaluation of the achievements of the previous year and making plans for the future.

How did the phrase “time is money” come to steal the true meaning of time? Time is not money, it is life.

I don’t think I did anything significant the afternoon I saw the movie “Awakenings”. The feeling that I had reached the heart of the human condition strongly impressed me with the idea that we are born captive in a limited nature, and that gave me a heavy feeling of loss.