Luin vihdoin David Chapmanin tiivistelmän psykologi Robert Keganin sosiaalisen ja moraalisen kehityksen mallista, ja totesin että tämähän on yllättävän kiinnostava kuvaus monista nykypäivän yhteiskunnallisista dynamiikoista. (Ainakin mikäli pitää paikkansa.)

Mallin mukaan ihmisten moraalinen kehitys etenee viiden askeleen läpi. Askeleet 1-2 ovat ( Read more... )

So I went to my head to ask myself: what is the one thing that I’ve been trying to get from all of my romantic relationships? What is the common theme that unites all of my fantasies? What is the thing that I desperately find myself craving for even now? That one “if only I could have that, then everything would be fine” thing?

Initial associations ( Read more... )

I expect this to be my last breakup post (about this particular breakup, at least :P).

After having processed all the pains I’ve discussed in previous posts, there was just a final one left, one that’s in a sense the simplest.

It’s that I have tremendous respect and admiration for my ex. She combines a brilliant intelligence, a fiery loyalty to ( Read more... )

After I made my last breakup post, siderea left me with some excellent thoughts about it. While there were a lot of good points, these were the parts that resonated the most. She started by describing the reaction that many people have to her:

… a lot of people, male, female and otherwise, fall “in like” with me very quickly, because for a ( Read more... )

Writing about this seems to be useful, both for me and some other people, so more on breakup pain:

The fact is that I don’t have very much experience of long relationships, and that I haven’t had many deep friendships either. At this moment I feel like I only have one really deep friendship, and I don’t get to see that person nearly as often as I’d ( Read more... )

Dealing with breakup pain, part twenty million:

I mentioned in a previous post that dealing with loss seems to come in stages. Grief is not grieving after one thing: rather there are many different things one has to come to terms with, all tangled up with each other.

The most recent pain I had in the last few days involved repeatedly recalling ( Read more... )

There’s a popular narrative that goes roughly like this: most of human history has been dangerous and uncertain, and that’s the kind of environment our minds work the best in. The reason why so many people these days are bored and depressed is because we’ve made the world *too* safe, we would actually be healthier and happier if the world was ( Read more... )

A thing you’d think I’d already have figured way earlier, but only became obvious to me after this latest breakup, is that there are stages of grief (other than the anger-denial-etc. ones).

A number of times, I’ve felt like I’d already gotten through the pain… Only for it to come up again, with me getting increasingly frustrated - “didn’t I ( Read more... )

I really liked, and have gotten a lot out of, the self-compassion advice in the book The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness.

First, on the general attitude and approach:

When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they’re going to improve, which is a sort of subtle ( Read more... )

I’ve said a lot about depression, self-compassion, and breakup blues.

I haven’t said much about burnout. I have that too. Have had for years, in fact.

This is just the first time that I’ve had a chance to stop and heal.

I did a day of work last week, the first one I’ve done since the end of November. It went well. It felt good. So I thought I ( Read more... )