Psychotherapeutic Commentary on Quotes and Aphorisms
In the 1990s it was fashionable at trainings to urge people: «Your life isn’t working, take responsibility for your life». That doesn’t work. You cannot take ownership of responsibility for a choice that is determined by trauma, by culture, by a reference...
WHY IT MATTERS NOT TO MERGE WITH YOUR INNER CHILD
The inner child is an important part of our personality. Different approaches call this part differently: a subpersonality, an archetype, a behavioural pattern. References to the inner child as a part of our soul can be found in many cultures. Which leads...
How to Tell That a Client Should See a Psychiatrist
For many, this is a thoroughly unpleasant topic. But it really does happen that therapy alone may no longer be nearly enough. Our responsibility as therapists — to provide the best possible help. The client’s health and wellbeing are our priority. And...
Does Everyone Who Has Parents Need Therapy?
Parents – the first and the main experience for children. From their parents a child receives the first messages about who they are, how relationships between people work, and how the world works. That is, at first the child sees through the...
About the Field Paradigm in Simple Words
Sometimes in psychological circles you can hear “…the field responds” or “…the field lets us know” — that is, there are clear attempts to turn the field into a thing, and even to bring it to life. Perhaps this happens because whatever...
We Are Different: How Not to Lose Yourself in a Relationship
— So why stay in this relationship at all? — Weeell… I’m used to it, and she seems to be hesitating about whether to separate. — To stay in a relationship, you need a space between you that is filled with shared...
The Inner Child and Shame
Every person carries different inner voices that shape our behaviour and our self-perception. Two such figures in our inner world are the inner child and the inner critic. The interaction between these two aspects of the personality can have a considerable effect...
The Body as a Map of Our Feelings in Times of Crisis
In Gestalt therapy we understand a person as a unity of body, emotions and awareness. And it is the body that is often the part which reacts first to trauma, loss or chronic anxiety. And it is often the very part we...
Letting People Think Whatever Comes Into Their Heads About Me
One of the happiest decisions of my life was to let people think whatever comes into their heads about me… After all, it is their head, their thoughts, and their time spent on whatever they saw fit… What has that got to...
The Choice to Live in Hard Times
Edith Eva Eger, a 94-year-old psychotherapist born in Hungary who survived the concentration camps, offered several practical pieces of advice. In 1944 the sixteen-year-old ballerina Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz together with her family. Just hours after her parents were killed,...