What’s in it for me? Me-me-me. This approach is yesterday. I get nausea when I meet it. Self-interest is not our only driver. Humans have a deeply held desire to contribute. Are you in doubt? What’s more fun, to cook when you are home alone or when there are people to share your meal with? …
Coach your teenager The teenage years can feel like a shocking transformation – a turning inside out of the mind and soul that makes the person unrecognizable from the child they once were, both to themselves and those around them. There are uncontrollable mood swings, identity crises, and the hunger for social recognition. There may …
We get irritated, angry, offended. We lose focus, get bored, withdraw, or intervene. Do you recognize how other people's behaviors sometimes trigger reactions in you? Many of us have low tolerance for certain emotions: when someone – could be our child, partner, parent, colleague, or client – expresses this emotion verbally or through tone of …
I've written about it before: Shame. Shame as a shared human experience of alarmed aloneness, of exclusion. Shame eats souls The evolutionary purpose of shame is to have people behave within the frames of the tribe. Shame has also been used as a tool in the hands of those in power: Shame on you if …
There are probably many who will ask for that, because shame is such a corrosive feeling that if it could be removed operatively, there would be a queue at the clinic. The procedure exists, and even without a scalpel and anesthesia. Plus something you can do yourself, whenever you want, together with someone you trust. On the other hand, it takes…
Do you feel good with your loved ones and in other important relationships? If your answer is yes, then hooray! Then you probably often feel happy, because relationships are crucial for our quality of life. Our relationships shape our brain. In particular, our relationship with our most important caregiver as infants – usually the mother – is crucial to…
"She thinks she can decide everything." "Yeah, she's always busy saving her own ass." Do you know thoughts or expressions like these? Our brain has a built-in tendency to create meaning in what we experience, so that we can quickly orientate ourselves and find appropriate answers to what we experience. Therefore interprets…
As a Harry Potter lover, many unforgettable scenes from the JKRowlings books and movies based on them are still alive in me. The one that beats them all is the moment in The Prisoner From Azkaban where Harry, with the aid of a time-reversing gadget, watches himself on the edge of being consumed by a dementor. …
Cells, organs, individuals, communities, ecosystems, the biosphere. Clusters of units each with their own function. You and I are separate systems, yet connected. None of us would be able to live on our own, just as no cell in a body could function separately from the others. How do you treat your body? How do we treat our living earth? There is …
Shock and loss, that's how you talk about it without retraumatizing With the war in Ukraine going into its 26th day today, things have changed very suddenly for me. Like many others. You too? What I usually take for granted, I have begun to see through the eyes of displaced people. Wow – we…
