Building Resilience: How Failure Helps
We would all like to live a life where we didn’t fail at anything. We can feel that it’d really be ideal if everything we turn our hand to was
How to Understand Your Mixed Feelings
We sometimes have experiences where we feel more than one emotion. In these situations of mixed feelings, we can get confused by our responses, unsure about what we are feeling
Too Many Regrets: Living With the Uncomfortable Past
Many of us live our lives with strong regrets. We think about the things we could have done and didn’t do; we think about the things we did and wish
Creating Emotional Safety
At times, when our life is difficult, we can seek a place of emotional safety. When we find it, such a place can be comforting and can allow us to
How to Avoid Burning Your Bridges with People
Sometimes when we’re in arguments with people and are feeling strong emotions like anger and frustration, we can say and do things that go too far. When this happens, the
In a Bad Mood? This Might Help
We all have times when we are in a bad mood, and we’re not very pleasant to be around. We might not know the reason, and sometimes we don’t know
Strong Feelings: The Raw and the Processed
Sometimes we have strong feelings that trouble us, and we know we need to work through them. It would be a natural tendency to talk to people close to us
Power: One Woman’s Voice
Our simplistic view of emotions It can be tempting to think simplistically about emotions. We see people expressing emotions and we say, “This person is expressing fear, this other person
Hanging On: Why Change Is So Hard
Sometimes we find ourselves in very uncomfortable and difficult circumstances; we are challenged and highly stressed by aspects of our life. It can feel like it’s almost impossible to keep
How to Feel More
Sometimes we feel nothing. We can find ourselves in situations that others find quite emotional but we feel unaffected. Sometimes we can wonder what all the fuss is about. At
Our Drives: Satisfying the Insatiable
It’s a commonly held view that we want too much as adults because we were too spoiled when we were young. More particularly, as adults we focus excessively on compulsive
Relationships: Dealing with Our Partner’s Past
We all bring history into our relationships, and sometimes that history is difficult for new partners. For some, it is very difficult to accept the things that our new partner
Remote Control: Pressing Pause on Life
When we talk about changing our lives, we often use the analogy of a remote control. We talk of rewinding our life to a better time or fast forwarding to
The Uncontained: Being Out of Control
For some people, it can be hard to contain and control how they feel and how they act. This is extremely frustrating for the person and can cause difficulties in
People are Smart, People are Complex
Many of us face problems with our own behaviours that we find difficult to solve. Sometimes these problems have dogged us for years and we’ve tried for a long time
The Artist in Therapy
When artists talk about the source of their creativity they often feel it comes from their emotional side. This is especially true regarding the pain that they feel. When they
The Expression Expectation: ‘Show Your Feelings!’
Those contemplating counselling or psychotherapy start with the automatic idea that they should be working towards greater expression of what they think and feel. Whilst this might be right for
The Unconsious: Secondary Rationalisations
One of the difficulties of being human is that we have both a conscious and an unconscious. By definition, we are aware of what’s in our conscious and unaware of
Maintaining Your Emotional Fitness
We seem to have a pretty clear idea about what physical fitness is. I think that many people would also agree on what mental fitness is. However, when it comes
Accept the Negativity in Ourselves and Others
When we feel someone is being ‘too negative’, we can sometimes want to ‘correct’ this with positive thinking. However when we do this, we often find that our efforts are
Being Connected: Winners and Losers
Last weekend saw two finals; of the AFL and the NRL, and these games, like countless other games and finals. illustrate some important things about us and the way we
What Sort of Anger Do You Have? Red or Blue?
We all experience anger in our lives, but some people feel that they have way too much. They see the effect on the people around them; their anger is something
Book Review: Emotion and Culture
Kitayama S. & Markus H. R. (editors) (1994) ‘Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence’, American Psychological Association, Washington DC This was a book that I picked up for
Australians and Emotional Display: Nah, Mate
Although we sometimes find our emotions troublesome, we also to some extent take them for granted. We assume that the things we feel are the same as the things that