A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life

We may have to go back as far as childhood to ask: What did I really enjoy doing? When did I feel most alive? There may be clues to what our future should be in the way we used to play as small children, when impressing and earning money were far from our minds.

And yet that is exactly where love should and must be deployed if relationships are to survive. True love cannot be directed solely toward those who are admirable and virtuous. It has to soften our judgments in relation to people who are at points undeniably maddening and plainly wrong.

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 really worried about right now?

They seem, remarkably, to love us in and of ourselves, for who we are rather than anything we do. They hold a loving mirror to us and help us to tolerate the reflection.

need you to accept—often and readily—the possibility that you might be at fault, without this feeling to you like the end of the world. You have to allow that I can have a legitimate criticism and still love you. I need you to be undefensive. I need you to own up to what you are embarrassed or awkward about in yourself. I need you to know how to ac

A healthy mind avoids catastrophic imaginings: It knows that there are broad and stable stone steps, not a steep and slippery incline, between itself and disaster.

Or someone might tell us: I don’t see why you jump to such unfair conclusions about me. Why can’t you believe that something just slipped my mind? You’re always accusing me . . . To which a reflective listener might answer: I’m sensing that you don’t feel trusted. You think I don’t have enough faith in your good nature and intentions.

We can continue the questioning: Why is this thing so worrying? And then: What could I tell myself to make this less bad? And finally, we can ask ourselves to complete a sentence: I feel compassion for myself because

We must make time, as often as once a day, to lie very still on our own somewhere, probably in bed or maybe in the bath, to close our eyes and direct our attention toward one of many tangled or murky topics that deserve reflection: a partner, a work challenge, an invitation, a forthcoming trip, a relationship with a child or a parent. We might need

And, by extension, no one has ever fallen gravely mentally ill without, somewhere along the line, having suffered from a severe deficit of love.