Many people come to therapy feeling divided inside. One part of them longs for change, while another part feels frightened of it. One part wants closeness, while another pushes people away. One part carries shame, while another works hard to keep everything looking strong and capable. This inner complexity is not a sign that something…
We are living in an age of manufactured noise, where the screens in our pockets act as spiritual narcotics, designed to keep us reactive rather than reachful. But beneath the crumbling institutions and the media spin, a deeper detoxification is happening. To survive the collapse of the old systems, we must trade our outrage for…
Originally written for the Lynn News, Thought for the Day Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist who was a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. He spent three years in the infamous concentration camp, Auschwitz. This experience led him to write a transformative book called Man’s Search for Meaning. The book describes how finding deep…
Originally written for the Lynn News, Thought for the Day When we think of the word compassion, we associate it with the attribute of kindness. Compassion does consist of kindness. However, it also consists of far more. Professor Paul Gilbert (OBE) is a renown clinical psychologist who has made significant contributions to the field of compassionate…
Originally written for the Lynn News, Thought for the Day The internationally acclaimed medical doctor, Gabor Maté, is a bestselling author, teacher and public speaker whose pioneering compassionate work with people suffering from addictions and their causative underlying traumas, has been a very important voice in the development of global humanitarianism and compassion. Gabor was born…
The pages of Twitter and Facebook have swelled with bile concerning the current Middle East crisis. Twitter especially is a toxic swamp. The grandstanding, often accompanied by ad hominem comments, misses the fact that human beings have, and are, dying horribly. Too many lives – Israeli and Palestinian – have been destroyed already. This alone…
Self knowledge is one aspect of human transformation. Integration is the significant next step beyond self knowledge (i.e., integrating insights of self knowledge into the psyche). The psychology of compassion is hugely important with safely facing our shadow material, including our rigid defence mechanisms which often become intertwined with our biases and prejudices. The activation…