I grew up in a dysfunctional family, but I never realised that I, along with my siblings, had taken on dysfunctional family roles. There are many kinds of dysfunctional families. Parents can be addicted to drugs or alcohol, or they can suffer from a personality disorder such as narcissism or…
Would you like to have the advantage when you are meeting someone for the first time? Do you want to be able to de-code what people say, their body language, or the type of clothes they’ve chosen to wear? When we are meeting someone for the first time, we are…
Schema therapy was developed as a way to treat patients with longstanding problems that hadn’t responded to other therapeutic methods. Designed to help people with deeply-rooted personality disorders, schema therapy uses a mixture of: Cognitive-behavioural therapy Psychodynamic therapy Attachment theory Gestalt therapy “Schema therapy thus developed into a modality that…
A couple of decades ago, I went out with a guy that would regularly self-harm. When I first met him, I never thought he was the type of person that would cut himself. In fact, I only found out he was prone to self-harm after we’d argued and I caught…
What makes you angry? It’s an innocent enough question. But did you know that by answering it you could be revealing more than you realise? According to Carl Jung, knowing what makes you angry reveals important things about your personality and bottled up issues. He said: “Everything that irritates us…
We are all familiar with good old-fashioned jealousy. That green-eyed monster can pop up in all sorts of situations. But retroactive jealousy? Aren’t we just adding more negative character traits just for the sake of it? Well, no is the quick answer. It helps to understand retroactive jealousy if we…
There’s no doubt being intelligent has its advantages. But many studies have also revealed a disturbing link between intelligence and depression. Intelligence and depression is not an obvious correlation. In fact, intelligence has often been linked with positive things like educational success, good health, and high-income levels. It stands to…
As children, we look to our parents for love, support, guidance, and validation. But what if those parents are toxic parents? What if everything they do to us, tell us, show us or provide for us is damaging? Some children raised in an abusive environment will focus on surviving. Others…
