A Therapeutic Journey

How to bear the terror of failure? With Shakespeare as our guide, though the impulse may be to turn away from fear, what can calm us down is to sit with what scares us most. We should dare to investigate the terrifying scenario so as to drain it of its strangeness and stop apprehending it only through the corners of our eyes in shame. Shakespeare o

Those who can’t lay down boundaries have invariably not, in their early lives, had their own boundaries respected. Someone didn’t allow them to say when they were unhappy with a genuinely difficult situation; someone didn’t give much of a damn about their hurt feelings or distinctive hopes; someone insinuated that being good meant falling in line,

Honest, vibrant love is an encounter between two vulnerable children who otherwise do a very good job of masquerading as adults.

One of the most basic facts about time is that, even though we insist on measuring it as if it were an objective unit, it doesn’t, in all conditions, seem to be moving at the same pace. Five minutes can feel like an hour; ten hours can feel like five minutes. A decade may pass like two years; two years may acquire the weight of half a century. And

But we will, of course, never arrive. There is no true destination and there is definitely no end point. All there is is the journey—an idea which, though it has its tragic dimension, liberates us to make more of the true valuable increments of life: moments.

We must go to Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat, Astana or Montevideo; we need to find a way to swim with dolphins or order a thirteen-course meal at a world-famous restaurant in downtown Lima. That will finally slow down the cruel gallop of time.

But this is to labor under an unfair, expensive, and ultimately impractical notion of novelty: that it must in

The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott made a distinction between what he termed a “true” and a “false” self. In order to be healthy, a baby and developing child needs to be allowed to express and experience its true self: that is, it has to be honest about its actual wishes and desires, without fear of censorship or any pressure to compromise. If it i

To dare to be vulnerable involves a faith that whatever we are inwardly most afraid and ashamed of in our own natures must have counterparts in other people. We cannot be alone in our oddities and our symptoms. The only people we can assume are “normal” or “sane” are those we don’t yet know very well. But once we are past the flawless exterior, eve

We are sometimes like a high-powered aeroplane that can be grounded because a small screw is missing. We should be humble in the face of the ostensibly simple things that can ruin our lives.

With this caveat, we should step outside the ordinary flow of the anxious day for a moment, close our eyes, take a deep breath and ask ourselves this: What am I