Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art or music, through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening or the art of social discourse. The point is to honour the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so

Thus, assertion may be the very oppositive of action, not only in the narrow sense of refusing to do something we do not wish to do but letting go of the very need to act.

Assertion challenges the core belief that we must somehow justify our existence.

assertion: it is the declaration to ourselves and to the world that we are and that we are who we are.

Behind all our anger lies a deeply frustrated need for truly intimate contact. Healing both requires and implies regaining the vulnerability that made us shut down emotionally in the first place. We are no longer helplessly dependent children; we no longer need fear emotional vulnerability. We can permit ourselves to honour the universally

“A personal boundary,” according to Dr. Peterson, “is an energetic experience of myself or the other person. I don’t want to use the word aura because it is a new-age kind of word, but beyond where skin ends we have an energetic expression. We not only communicate boundaries verbally, but I think we have an energetic expression that is non-verbal.”

Without a clear boundary between himself and his parent, the child remains enmeshed in the relationship. That enmeshment is later a template for his way of connecting to the rest of the world. Enmeshment—what Dr. Michael Kerr called a lack of differentiation—comes to dominate one’s intimate relationships. It can take two forms, withdrawal and

Anger does not require hostile acting out. First and foremost, it is a physiological process to be experienced. Second, it has cognitive value—it provides essential information. Since anger does not exist in a vacuum, if I feel anger it must be in response to some perception on my part. It may be a response to loss or the threat of it in a personal

If a person unconsciously fears the power of his aggressive impulses, there are various forms of defence available to him. One category of defence is discharge, by which we regress to an early childhood state when we dealt with the intolerable buildup of anger by acting it out. “You see, the acting-out, the yelling, the screaming and even the