Psychology

A global crisis situation, such as that generated by the current pandemic, is a complex picture with many variables bringing high levels of emotional distress. During a pandemic, many people will face a wide range of reactions and emotions, and the psychological impact will often be greater than the medical one.

It’s strange how popular the saying What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger is, when it’s obvious that it is not what hits you that makes you stronger, but the way you take the hit.

Although grief is a universal experience, we respond differently to its onslaught, so it's no wonder that words meant to comfort often add more suffering to an already heavy burden.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” said Nietzsche in one of his essays back in 1889. Easier said than done when you’re facing unemployment, illness, rejection, or a blank exam paper. We tend to see these as things we need to get rid of. This can’t possibly be the life we wanted.

11pm and I am worried my patient will not make it till tomorrow morning, says Dr Glenn Wakam. Twelve hours after intubation, the COVID-19 patient's condition deteriorates dramatically, and Wakam knows that an even more difficult intervention follows: to explain to the patient's wife, who begs to be allowed to say goodbye, that the hospital does not allow her this sad privilege.

Bridges seem to be the emblem of existential stress for Romanians. In the face of a difficult situation, even Romanian folk wisdom recommends: "Make a pact with the devil until you have crossed the bridge."

If optimism helps us get rid of problems more easily, too much optimism does the exact opposite: it amplifies them. Pushed to the extreme, positive thinking prescribed as an antidote to suffering prevents us from accepting reality as it is and starting to look for solutions that can make our lives easier.

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.

"Loneliness irritates me like a broken nail," says a line in a Romanian poem. The truth is, loneliness stings, pulls apart, and resembles the coffee dregs left at the bottom of the pot in which joy and love once brewed. Although the fear of loneliness is natural, we can choose to see solitude as something more than a "flowering wilderness" and embrace it...

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

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.

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?

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.

Facebook is dead! Long live Metaverse! So proclaimed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to thousands of followers who tuned in to a livestream last Friday announcing the company’s rebrand.

Many couples only realise after divorce the price they have paid for failing to find common ground, and a few even manage to rediscover the forgotten path to their partner's heart and to rebuild their relationship.