Archive for the ‘Self Awareness’ Category

Adriana Tanese-Nogueira

You have been living in this house called Ego for a long time. It has several rooms and you have your favorite spaces. Some corners of the house are constantly illuminated, because you spend much time there and know each detail of them. There are rooms where you only go sometimes, they mean sporadic experiences depending on opportunity and company. Each one of these rooms, with their furniture, sounds, colors and objects, tell about you. And you are accustomed to them.

One day, walking through the house, you notice a closed door. From under it you only see darkness. The door was unknown to you, and Read the rest of this entry »

Who hasn’t ever wished not having certain feelings and thoughts? Who hasn’t desired to eliminate questions and doubts that emerge in our mind without being asked for?

There are moments in which we would give anything to say, yes, we like to do this thing or go to that place, or being that person… It would be so simple. And, instead, it’s only with a great effort that we can repress threatening thoughts and feelings and concentrate all our will on what we believe others do or are in such easiness.

Just a single speck of difference may spoil everything, a mere oblique look, a smile that didn’t come out right, an uncontrolled gesture and the mask falls Read the rest of this entry »

Everybody knows that we have a plane geometry and a solid one. In the plane we count on two dimensions: height and width. In the solid, depth is added, which is what gives consistency turning an apparent and superficial object into a firm, massive, robust one.

In the human world, height is represented by thought and its ideals, either the church or the media’s, the new car or the perfect body. God and devil meet in the verticality of thinking, with their cardboard idols or the golden’s. The thinker rationality is the “height”, for he or she is engaged in the mental construction of elevated thoughts or unreachable goals. The patriotic or the family ideal, the dream to be a model or a football player belong to the verticality. Anything that leads upward, that abstracts from the daily and bodily materiality, from feeling and the real relations around us is “height”. Read the rest of this entry »

It may not be grand like pompous ideologies, it may not be attractive like fancying oneself as leaders of masses, but anybody possesses the power to change the world and right now. It’s a question of recognizing it and learning how to use it.

I believe that many have heard the famous quote, “You can only change yourself, not the others.” It’s a great truth, however it seems that it’s sometimes taken in a depressing sense. The common interpretation seems to imply that one has to give up the idea of altering anything outside oneself, and has to concentrate into one’s interiority. There, in the inner world, in the silence or in the chaos of the isolated mind it’s possible to obtain results. Changing the way one sees things and oneself… and voilà, the world has changed, although anything outside has been transformed. Read the rest of this entry »

Our identity is the consequence of a series of relationships, starting with the most important, with our mother, and followed by the one with our father. The way our personality, innate tendencies and attitudes are molded, find their way or limits, are developed or frustrated depends exclusively on the relationships in which we grew up. We are relationships.

Since newborns, we live inserted in a web of relations, the people around us relate to us in a specific manner and that will become the way we relate to people and mainly to ourselves. The way we deal with our emotions mirrors the style the adults who took care of us dealt with them. The way we interpret ourselves and the role we play are the effect of how we have Read the rest of this entry »

There aren’t many, but there are people who lie in therapy.  Lie to whom? To themselves, for sure. But who exactly does the therapist represent that it is “necessary” lying to him?

By the best of the hypothesis, the therapist stands for the patient’s consciousness. By the worst, for a mother (or a father). Because the parental figure has always been a child’s reference for good behavior, revealing the truth to a parent is like admitting something and becoming aware of what one has done. Therefore, the therapist is a mother of father’s vicarious.

There are therapist who in fact set themselves as big moms and dads of their patients giving them directions about what is “right” and “wrong”. Thus, these professionals occupy a place already prepared, only Read the rest of this entry »

“I love you and I don’t want to ever separate from you,” the lovers said to each other.

Years later, a steal hoop clenches the actions of both, a series of “can’t” is part of their daily life. They still love each other, but remained together thanks to many concessions and “mid-terms”. More years go by and the two of them are still together, their souls as gray as their hair. Their life is monotonous, the range of options and allowed experiences, with time, had been more and more restricted. They are tired, their thoughts and emotions partially numbed. They see only a small slice of life. They still say they love each other, as much as it is possible for a soul in restricted liberty.

The relation of such lovers is built on a dogma, not questionable by principle: the Read the rest of this entry »

There are people whose lives seem to be plotted by lucky situations, when opportunities allow the much needed movement forward. When telling their experiences, these people look to others as lucky or special: because they’ve got this or that chance, because they met that guy, received this help and so on. That’s an interpretation of the facts useful to continue sitting complaining about one’s own lack of favorable conditions.

There’s a saying in Italy, which most certainly must exist in English too, “Aiutati che Dio t’aiuta”, that is help yourself, do something for yourself and then God helps, does something for you. The first step is yours, always yours. You take the risk; the leap of faith is yours too; the attitude and the possibility to win or lose, always belong to you. God intervenes according to another schedule and after you have played your cards. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s be straightforward: bad dads and bad mom do exist. Nobody would like to have them, very few admit having them, but that’s reality. Generating a child doesn’t automatically make the parents better people than what they were before. It must be stressed that dads and moms are people, exactly like your neighbor, your colleague and your enemy. People.
Read the rest of this entry »

We have good news. Although our Earth is a speck floating in an endless dark universe, and we, human beings, are minuscule specks walking on the major one we call our planet, we are valuable. That’s right. As far as we know, we still are the center of the universe.

What makes us special is our complexity. Complexity belongs to the essential terminology of who wants to be up to date with the latest about the meaning of life. Complex things, like stars, planets, or living organisms, consist of diverse components bound into larger structures. These structures are patterned in very precise ways.
Read the rest of this entry »