Search Results for: identity

Advice for Valentine's Day: Amplify the Romance in Your Relationship

…behaviors, the couple was able to re-establish their own separate sense of identity. Taking the action of stepping back and respecting one another as independent individuals enabled them to start experiencing their excited and loving feelings for each other again. They were, once again, able to express genuine appreciation for each other’s unique attributes. Break Routines Another deadening effect on a relationship results from falling into routin…

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Are You Tricking Yourself Out of Love?

…estroyer of close relationships is the first step in breaking free from an identity that is not really you. We can start to have compassion for ourselves and our partners. And we can begin to pursue a healthy and fulfilling relationship. Challenging these critical inner voices and taking actions that go against their prescriptions is key to differentiating yourself, yet it simultaneously allows someone else to get close to you. Separating from the…

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Lindsay Lohan & The Media’s Take on Suicide

…eir favorite activities and anything that was formerly a big part of their identity. Extreme Self Denial, Lack of Pleasure: A suicidal person seems resistant to pleasure. According to them, everything is bad and not worth it. They can lose the ability to find happiness in anything. Extreme Self Hatred: When a person is contemplating suicide, their thoughts often become incredibly self-destructive, and they start intensely hating themselves. They m…

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The Price of Being Strong: Risks to the Mental Health of Athletes

…g, athletes may experience a sense of loss. They may lose touch with their identity and purpose. They often face new financial pressures or struggle in their search for a new career. Many athletes are used to experiencing life as part of a team. On their own, they may feel disconnected. After years of build up, praise, and applause, athletes face an unfamiliar and unknown future. NFL player Brandon Marshall recently opened up publicly about his ow…

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Rihanna and Chris Brown: The Abusive Cycle

…ted. Rihanna, on the other hand, flourished with a new strong, independent identity. She became a woman that wouldn’t take any bullshit from any man. And the media loved her for all that she’d been through. However, she recently reduced the restraining order, giving Chris Brown a chance to reconcile with her and get back in the industry. Everyone thought she was being civil so he could perform at the Grammys and go to industry events that she also…

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What’s Behind Emotional Overeating?

…givers lead us to form a positive sense of self and helps us to create our identity. Yet, no parent or person is perfect. Even the best parents are only attuned to their child’s needs about 30 percent of the time. This means that, as children, each of us was inevitably left lacking certain things we needed. We may have felt rejected, isolated, unseen, or unheard. Conversely, we may have felt intruded on, overly controlled, or intimidated by our pa…

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Intimacy issues, alive to intimacy, the fantasy bond, Psychalive

Staying Compatible by Staying Yourself

…WHAT TO DO The goal in a relationship is to be close and still maintain an identity as a separate person. When people are in an individuated state, they are happier and more optimistic. They have a stronger sense of themselves so they are capable of more intimacy, love and passion in their relationship. The only way to stay yourself in a relationship Maintain your interests. When two people fall in love, they experience themselves and each other a…

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Keep Love Strong This Valentine’s Day and Beyond

…maintaining intimacy. Getting close to someone shouldn’t mean fusing your identity or losing respect for our innate separateness. We should always respect that our partner has a sound mind separate from our own. Becoming a “we” should never mean losing the “you” and “me.” It should be a matter of complementing and supporting each other to become our fullest selves instead of merging together to become something else. Author and neuroscientist. Dr…

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Eight Ways to Actively Fight Depression

…from our daily lives. When depressed, people tend to accept this negative identity as a true representation of who they are. Many people fail to recognize that this sadistic point of view is actually the voice of a well-hidden enemy within, what my father, psychologist Dr. Robert Firestone refers to as the critical inner voice. Internalized early in life, this inner voice functions like an over-disciplinary parent holding us back and keeping us i…

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Regret, death anxiety,

Living Free From Regret

…ring and repress the existential dilemma, we suffer a loss of our personal identity, freedom, and autonomy. As Paul Tillich asserted, “One avoids being so as to avoid nonbeing.” In The Politics of the Family, R. D. Laing commented, “I consider many adults (including myself) are or have been, more or less, in a hypnotic trance, induced in early infancy: we remain in this state until—when we dead awaken, as Ibsen makes one of his characters say—we s…

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