Psychology

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

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).

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.

Joaquín Carmona had 16,000 followers on Twitter, and his posts about Spanish athletics were appreciated even by sport professionals. None of his followers had ever met him in person, and when silence fell on his account for three months, people began to look for him, write to him and ask who Carmona really was.

After 27 years of marriage, billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates publicly announced their divorce in May, sending shockwaves across the globe.

The first time Judas's kiss was heard was in the Garden of Gethsemane. However, its echo is repeated whenever the trust of an unsuspecting soul is betrayed. Betrayal, especially when it wears the mask of faith, tears apart the moral fabric of those who are wounded by it.

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.

We often associate divorce with the unhappiness of adults who reprehensibly decide to go their separate ways. For under-age brides Noora and Nujood, however, divorce was their escape from a nightmare of domestic violence and abuse, into which they were thrown at a young age by their own families.

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

What we think about ourselves, over time, becomes our reality. This is a good enough reason to identify thinking errors left running in the background and to seek out strategies for healthier thinking.

"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.

A lack of conflict is not necessarily a sign of spiritual maturity, as some Christians might be tempted to believe. The way in which we manage conflict says a lot about how we understand the role of grace, forgiveness and reconciliation in a sinful world.

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, every nine seconds, a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States. Which means that by the time you reach the end of this paragraph, yet another woman will have tragically become a victim of violence.

Beginning with Cain and Abel, history has known famous and less famous stories woven around the devastating experience of envy.

“For the joy set before him he endured the cross” (Heb. 12: 2 NIV).