How do you recognize though that a day . . . → Read More: Morning Decadence. A Perfect Day as seen by a Psychologist]]>

I lied. Perfection does not exist. But searching for it and the effort to create it are part of the recipe for a perfect day.

How do you recognize though that a day is perfect? One of the problems of being human is that we will always wish for more, for something else than we already have and we will fail to show gratitude and to appreciate what we already achieved.

1. A perfect day starts with paying attention, with being aware. This is not just another day of your life, but a special one. Try to pour attention into the little rituals of the beginning of the day. 5-15 minutes of meditation or reflection will give a peaceful start to the day. Use this time to reflect upon the day that is going to start. Draw a raw plan for the day, establish targets to achieve as well as little pleasures to keep you energized.

2. A perfect day is a day in which you love. It doesn’t matter if you do not have a partner. He will come to your life if you are an individual that exudes force and balance. It can be love for yourself, love for existence with its paradoxes and its obstacles, love as a general attitude. Therefore love, anything, you have no excuse to not do it, no matter how deep you’ve been hurt in the past.

3. A perfect day is a day in which you smile. With or without reason. Don’t take yourself and others too seriously. You exaggerate  the importance you give to other people’s opinions as well as the attention you give to your unpleasant moods. Self irony is a must.

4. A perfect day is a day in which you do something that you should have done a long time ago. For sure you have in your mind a list of things to do that you postpone for some time. Do one of those things and this way you’ll get rid of some of the guilt you carry with you.

5. A perfect day is a day in which you feel full of energy, of enthusiasm, in which your creative DNA forces you to action. For this you need a perfect night, without excesses, but of passion and tenderness.

6.  A perfect day is a day in which you feel generous. For that, give something: a smile, a candy, an advice, a hug. To give is the best action you can take in order to feel rich.

7. A perfect day is a day in which you like yourself, no matter how you look like, no matter your social status or your career phase. You have to acknowledge your qualities and your achievements, regardless of how little they seem to be when comparing to others. In a perfect day you do not not compare yourself with others anyway, but only with what you can become.

8. A perfect day is a day in which you do something for your evolution – either by hitting the gym, or reading a few pages or learning something new – anything you do for your evolution has a positive impact.

9.  A perfect day involves a bit of adrenaline as well. It may come from flirting, from planning a surprise for your partner, from doing something daring – the vibe of intensity will give you the feeling of aliveness and of passion.

10. A perfect day is a day in which you feel it’s a celebration day. I don’t know for what reason, for no reason at all or for everything. A day in which you stop from your rat race to happiness and you decide that here and now is a moment as good as any to feel an intense joy and fulfillment.

11. A perfect day is a day in which you share your joys or your sorrows. With someone close to you, with your journal or with your preferred divinity. It is a day in which you live a state of communion, of unity, either with a person, or with an activity or with spirituality. Is a day in which you don’t feel separated and isolated but an important and vibrant cell of existence.

The roots for this confusion/ curiosity/ maladjustment may lie in a bipolar relationship with one of the parents.

If a mother treats her . . . → Read More: Gender identity online therapy]]>

More people than you may believe have gender identity issues.

The roots for this confusion/ curiosity/ maladjustment may lie in a bipolar relationship with one of the parents.

If a mother treats her boy like a girl, walking naked around the house, showing off her feminity without being concerned of her child’s reaction,  a boy can develop mixed feelings regarding his own sexuality.

Abuse by an older teenager or member of the family can set up the path towards gender identity confusion.

  Physical inadequacies  – poor masculine endowment for boys and lack of feminity for girls, rejection they get regarding their main physical sex role, may push them as well into exploring the other side.

A poor attachment mechanism to parents – one that translates love through guilt, shame, being humiliated or abuse will set up the individual on a later path of looking specifically for these emotions in his future relationships. Homosexuality can gather all these feelings.

Some myths about homosexuality:

1. You were born gay and you should accept this. Not true. Science doesn’t have yet a clear verdict. Homosexuality can be both inborn and/or socially induced.

2. If you are attracted to the same sex  you disobey God and attract his anger. Conflict between religion/spirituality and a deep reality of your life – sexuality, can intensify guilt and shame pushing thus deeper into inadequate ways of punishing oneself.
You need to clean up your spiritual values, otherwise you will always live in shame and guilt.

3. Coming out of the closet is the best way to adjust to society. Wrong. Society is a construct that will never accept things that threatens her orthodoxy and stability. Control of sexuality and it’s myths is one of its main ways of existence.

4. Motivation is the only thing you need in order to free yourself from homosexuality. Wrong again. Sometimes the effort to inhibit your homosexuality can take up your whole life and still not be fulfilled with the result.

5. Homosexuality can be waved away if you deal with past traumas.  True, past traumas has to be dealt with in order to invest your whole energy in present and future satisfaction seeking. Past traumas though are not the sole responsible for gender identity issues.

And even if you identify in the past the reasons for your sexual identity crisis, that doesn’t mean it will resolve them anyway. The past cannot be changed. It can only be forgiven.

Living with the confusion of not knowing where you belong, what you like and ultimately, who you are, can generate depression, anxiety, suicide and self-mutilation.

Find a therapist who is specialized in these issues, confess your confusions, fears and inadequacies. Sexuality is one of the main engines of your personality, intertwined with mind and emotion in an inseparable way.

Don’t wait for support from sources who cannot be neutral. Seek counseling from a professional who can lead you on the path of self discovery, of healing, transition and ultimately, of becoming the best version of yourself, free of guilt and shame, adjusted to only being yourself.

Except situations where children are involved, the reasons belong usually to . . . → Read More: Toxic relationships. Relationship advice for giving up on the wrong relationship]]>

Many times you find yourself in relationships that are not what you want and you know it. Ant yet, you stay. Why?

Except situations where children are involved, the reasons belong usually to these three categories
1. Because you love some part of him / her
2. Because you’re afraid of loneliness
3. Because you live by proxy – you fulfill your life through something that the other has: beauty, money, success, talent

You love your partner for certain qualities that attracts you and on the other hand you reject him and you suffer due to the mismatches between you two. The things that you love keep you stuck in this relationship.

Most often you live with the following illusions

•    Your partner will change if you manage to make him understand. Or he will have an epiphany by himself one day, especially as women expect men to understand them without them to communicate their complaints directly and clearly.

•     You try to convince yourself that what keeps you in the relationship is sufficient and that you will not find what you have in another relationship.

•    You are anyway better in the relationship than by yourself.

Rational, you probably know you should quit. The needs and attachments to your partner keep you stuck yet. Your rational ego and your emotional ego have different opposite needs. These conflictual feelings can create in time depression, anxiety, panic attacks.

You will feel weak, confused, and you will be disappointed with yourself because you can not make the decisions that you know you should take. The longer the time spent in this indecision, the more your self image disintegrates, the less you are certain of what you want or what you need.

How to overcome these serious errors of thinking?

1. You need to understand deeply that people change very difficult. Usually they do it as a result of an intense suffering. Very hard they do it after quarrels or reproaches. If you go to a (good) psychotherapist there are more chances  to negotiate the differences between you 2 in a satisfactory compromise. But few couples do.

So most likely your partner will not change if he / she does not understand deeply that they are in the wrong and if they don’t really want to stay in this relationship. Sometimes, the partner may be even addicted to the drama you have together.

Even if he wants to change sometimes the change may have to be huge. Sometimes too much. Sometimes people evolve in different directions in a relationship or simply the effort to change in the way desired by the partner is too much.

When you enter in a relationship, don’t do it thinking that your partner will change. An extrovert will never become an introvert, a stingy person will not metamorphose into a generous person, a messy person will  never be obsessed with order, as a philosopher or an artist will never become very pragmatic.

Of course, you will learn to manipulate and to emotionally blackmail to get what you want. Tears, threats, jealousy, control though sex, all are  good methods, although temporary and ultimately ineffective. And you may get sporadic, partial and bitterly tasting satisfaction. But for how long can you continue to do so?

Analyze carefully the differences between you two and decide with which you can live and which are unacceptable. You will not be able to lie to yourself forever.

2. What keeps you in the relationship, besides the love for the beautiful qualities the other one has, it’s the needs or deficiencies in your life that the other one fulfills.

They may be material needs, the need for social status,  the need for the emotional comfort given by having a partner, the need to not be alone. All are equally strong, if not sometimes more intense than the love you can have for your partner.

In many relationships where love is harassed by quarrels and inconsistencies, the partners remain together due to the attachment, due to fear of losing in general, and due to the fear of solitude and unknown following a separation.

Many think it’s better to remain in the relationship until someone new enters their life to form a new relationship.

The likelihood for this to happen is much smaller, since the illusion of the relationship you have blocks you from feeling the intense need for love which would drive you further to find the right partner.

You will have sometimes good moments in the present relationship that will make you forget the real problems and give you hope that maybe, maybe, things will fall through eventually.

As more time passes while you indulge in the relationship, the harder it will be to make the change. The longer until you make the right change, the more you, your partner and your relationship will degrade.

But people often prefer to destroy first the love and the relationship they are in in order to finally give up on it, just because it has reached the most humiliating possible level.

The fight between the two and reproaches alternated with sporadic moments of tenderness and harmony, will create an addiction to the partner  similar to a drug dependency.

Fear of the unknown and of loneliness can make you lie to yourself, either that it’s not so bad, either that you will not find someone else, or that things will change. Especially that many times, when faced with the ultimatum, desperation will make your partner to promise that he/she will change.

But you have to learn to say no.
You have to learn not to offer a thousand chances.
You have to learn to overcome your fears.
You have to learn to love yourself enough to see that you deserve more than a second hand relationship.
You have to learn to not give up on your vision about love.
You have to learn to read the telling signs that shows you early if your partner is or is not what you need.
You have to learn to take your strength and validation from multiple sources so that the need for a person in your life is not greater than the love for that person.
You have to learn not to make compromises that make you unhappy.
You have to learn to have higher expectations from your life and to not settle for crumbs from the feast of the gods.

Depressive illness stays there though. . . . → Read More: How to Deal With Depression. Depression and Love]]>

Depression is a reality often ignored of our lives . We all have occasionally sad, melancholic feelings but usually they wear off in the fast lane of life.

Depressive illness stays there though. It doesn’t go away for days and shadows every activity, feeling or thought you have.

Many people who experience depression never seek treatment. Which is wrong. Depression can disappear by itself but often lies there, in the background of your life, keeping your mental energies stuck.

Treatment for depression can involve medication in the first acute phase, always followed by psychotherapy where life issues are addressed.

   Depression can be due to a chemical imbalance in the brain, but when you get to analyze people’s lives, you realize that their life is not at all a happy place, that would exclude any psychological reason to get depressed.

Going to therapy it’s not going to unveil issues which weren’t there in the first place. That’s for conspiracy lovers. Going to therapy will help you bring into consciousness feelings you’ve denied. Feelings of guilt,  shame or regret or a general state of in-satisfaction with your life.

Life it’s complicated and it’s normal to cause depressive episodes at some point in your life. Most likely, depression is a result of a combination of some chemical conditions of your brain and some challenging situations of your life.

  Depression and relationships

Many people carry the depression with them which becomes a lifestyle. Some are addicted to it, using their blue moods to manipulate people around them in order to get attention, or to make them feel guilty or to force them to show their feelings.

Depression has to be treated by addressing both the biological and psychological issues that caused it.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the best ways to treat it. Most often we entertain automated negative thinking patterns that gets us depressed. Generalization, guilt, exaggerations, fear of death, fear of loneliness, fear of responsibility, all these can create depression.

Fear is one of the main psychological cause of depression. Fear of change, fear of loneliness, fear of unknown, fear of not being enough or fear of not being loved.

Most of our decisions are not taken due to love or to progress our life, but due to fear, trying to avoid pain and the irrational fear of losing.

All these are  psychological mechanisms embedded by evolution in our brains. We are predisposed to negative thinking, because this is how we protect ourselves, by anticipating bad scenarios and exercising attitudes for when the bad strikes.

It’s an evolutionary remaining of our becoming. Some theories suggest that dreams and especially nightmares are also ways our brains try to elaborate and exercise attitudes for bad scenarios.

Same time, studies showed that depressed people tend to be more realistic actually about their own abilities and generally about life. Optimistic people are sometimes in denial, overestimating themselves and reality.

Some depression is unavoidable at a point. Your goal should not be to avoid pain and depression at all cost, but to learn to tolerate temporary melancholia, to face your fears and heal past traumas.

To learn to identify thinking errors and to replace them with new, more positive attitudes. It will take time and effort, have patience, don’t wait overnight results.

  Depression can be treated. It may involve big changes, but change  is welcomed and at a point you have to embrace change and take responsibility for your own happiness.

And you have to master the art of not taking yourself so seriously. A good sense of humor and self irony will help you tolerate your blue moods. Same time, depressive episodes can be productive for artistic spirits.

It is well known that creative people have higher inclinations to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and overall, inner drama.

When depression steals all your energy though and you remain caught in a negative vision of yourself and your life, seek help, seek therapy. Change is possible, I’ve seen it happening, I’ve helped making it possible in people’s lives.

Don’t live with depression, life has many sunny shades, many smiles to share and beauties to create and you can have this kind of action too.

I know the inner void that the end of a . . . → Read More: After the break up. Relationship counseling]]>

Latest research conducted in the laboratories of life come to confirm: yes, there is life after you break up with him / her!

I know the inner void that the end of a relationship brings. I felt it in the tears of the clients sitting in front of me, looking desperately for solutions and answers, as I personally experienced it as well. Personal experience matters as much as qualifications in order to be a good psychotherapist.

Probably no theory or therapeutic technique compares with the  experience and personal journey of understanding and healing that makes a psychologist to better understand her patients.

Breakups turn your world upside down and bring with them a host of painful feelings and anxieties. But even in the midst of sadness and stress you have the chance to learn from experience and grow into a  more powerful, wiser being. I would actually say that most of our learning comes through pain but why it happens this way, that’s another story.

Healing after breakup

   Why breakups hurt so much, even if the relationship wasn’t working anymore? Separation is   painful because it represents the loss of not only the partner but also of shared dreams and shared commitments.

Romantic relationships start always with great expectations and hopes for the future. In love,  banality is transformed in greatness and imagination often triumphs over reason.

Separation annihilates all ennoblement and transfiguration you felt and steps you down in a reality voided of any of the dreams of the future, surrounded only by the ghosts of the past.

Breaking-up is a stepping stone to the unknown, in an uncharted territory. Everything is broken: the ritual of regular days, responsibilities, home, relationships with partner’s family and mutual friends, your very core identity.

Breaking-ups bring uncertainty about the future. How will  life be without your partner? Will you find someone else? Will you remain alone? These unknowns often seem worse than an unhappy relationship.

Rebuilding your life after a separation is difficult. It is important to know and remember that you can and that you will get back on your feet stronger. Time is the great magician in this process. Healing will come to you in the rhythm given by the actions you are going to take.

Be good to yourself and internalize these few essential ideas

    

* Accept the turmoil and conflicting emotions that will overwhelm you. It is natural to feel sadness, anger, anxiety, frustration and confusion – those can be felt very intensely. You may feel anxious about the future. Have patience, these reactions will diminish over time. Even if the relationship was not healthy, venturing into the unknown can scare you a lot.

* Give yourself a break. From the usual standards you’ve used to function. You may not have the same performance at work or the energy to have close relationships at the same level. Give yourself time to heal, to regroup your forces and to find new sources to support your functionality.

* Do not isolate yourself, do not go through this stage alone. Share your feelings with friends and family. Isolation may born emotional monsters: sadness, negative obsessive thinking, anxiety and ontological loneliness. Get your loved ones as allies and build a shield from their feelings of support and love.

Losses brought by separation are multiple

  

* Loss of partnership and of shared experiences – even if they were not always happy.


* Loss of support, whether financial, intellectual, social or emotional.
    

* Loss of hope, of plans and of dreams – loss that can be even more painful than the losses related to the material aspects. 

The pain of this loss can trigger a primal fear. Fear of loneliness, fear of death, fear of loss of identity, fear of disintegration of the habits that made up your life and which offered you comfort and certainty.

Specialists in emotions have encouraging news, however: we tend to overestimate the pain that the loss of a partner may cause us. Although it is impossible at the moment to imagine life after he / she, however statistics shows that only in poems we die due to the lose of love. In reality, consolation appears much faster than anticipated.

It is extremely important that you visualize how your life will be when you will get over this phase, when you will be freed from the past and you’ll rebuild your life.



How to get over a breakup easier

    

* Do not fight your feelings. You’ll go through extremes, from the joy that it ended to the tearing of loneliness and uncertainty. Embrace these feelings, do not deny them nor ignore them. Passing through their fire is a part of healing.
* Talk about your feelings. Do not hide them, do not try to keep the appearance – no one believes you anyway that you are as indifferent as you want to appear. Knowing that the others are aware of your feelings will ward off loneliness and speed up healing. Keep a journal of your thoughts and moods, it can be very helpful. Writing is very therapeutic and helps enormously to objectify and integrate your experiences.
* Remember that the goal is to overcome this difficult stage. Excessively analyzing or amplifying your feelings of hatred or revenge will keep you trapped in the past. Anger, contempt or looking to blame your ex partner  will consume precious resources and will keep you stuck. Immortality has yet to be confirmed, so it’s better to invest your time wisely in positive feelings that  ennobles you.
* Remember that there is still a future for you. Do you think that 2 years from now, you will be suffering as much as now or that you are never going to meet somebody else?

When you get involved in a relationship, dreams and hopes factory gets very productive. It is very hard to give up on them. In the difficult times after the breakup, think that it will come a time when you will build other hopes and other dreams, this time with more solid fundaments because you’ve learned the previous lesson. Imagine how much maturity you will have in choosing a new partner and how different positively things will be.

Creating various sources to give you support is vital at this point. This is how:



Invest time in relationships that inspires and energizes you. Choose wisely the people around you so you do not feel judged, criticized or forced to do things you don’t want to do.
Find a psychologist or therapist that will make you understand and help you get through these moments.

Make new friends. Discover new hobbies or interests, join groups whose activities interest you, invest your thoughts and energy in a constructive activity.

An important step is to learn to love yourself. You’ll have to rebuild your confidence and self-image. One of the devastating effects of a breakup is that you are not confident anymore in your  abilities, in your value, in the ability to communicate to the world your inner complexity. Avoid falling into the trap of cynicism and generalization. Not all men are insensitive and not all women are crazy ….

In this period of recovery,  act like you are sick. Rest plenty of time, diminish any source of stress and don’t take too much responsibility at work.

How to love yourself more

    

* Take time every day to treat yourself – take a walk in the nature, listen to the music you like, take a hot bath, schedule a massage, read a good book or enjoy a cup of exotic tea. In a word, pamper yourself.
* Establish a daily routine to follow. Separation can bring chaos into your life, from diet to sleep. Do not indulge in excesses designed to numb you. It works only for short periods of time.
* Take a break. Do not try to take major decisions in the first months after separation. Most likely they will be bad decisions.

Seeing the positive side of a situation is not a way to fool yourself. It is a decision of a wise person who does not want to waste the time invested in that relationship and doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes.Therfore, make a list with the positive things due to the break-up.

Some questions you can ask yourself



1. Take a step back and look at the situation objectively. How did you contribute to the relationship’s problems?

2. Do you tend to repeat the same mistakes or to choose the wrong partners?


3. Analyze how you react to stress and how you deal with conflicts and insecurities. Could you react more constructive?


4. Ask yourself if you accept people for who they are, not for what they could or should be. Do you enter into the partnership with the hope that the other one will change or you love them enough for who they are?



You should try to not fool yourself at this stage of the healing process. It will be difficult, but the prospect of repeating the same mistakes and sufferings should be sufficiently undesirable to make you choose to be honest with yourself. If you can understand the reasons that made you choose your partner and above all, the reasons for which you’ve remained in a non-functional relationship, you have more chances to make better choices in the future.

Last but not least, accept that pain and disappointment is part of life as well. We were fooled that life is easy, that love always wins or that it lasts forever. Free yourself from the known and from great expectations and embrace the compromise.

Get friends with uncertainty, learn to get up with a crazy courage even if you fell off from the very top, love to forgive the past while weaving a future more real, more tolerant, more aware. Love always comes. Always! That’s the only certainty.

Client Centered Therapy Rational Emotive Therapy Cognitive Behavior Therapy Psychodrama Therapy Transpersonal Therapy Family Systems Therapy Hypnosis and Neurolinguistic . . . → Read More: Certifications and experience]]>

I have a master degree in psychology and I have had certified trainings in:

Client Centered Therapy
Rational Emotive Therapy
Cognitive Behavior Therapy
Psychodrama Therapy
Transpersonal Therapy
Family Systems Therapy
Hypnosis and Neurolinguistic Programming
Strategic Communication
Multicultural Sensitivity
Meditation and various Behavior Modification methodologies

All of these are incorporated into my eclectic and flexible approach to Solution Focused Therapy. I draw from multiple therapeutical approaches to custom tailor the knowledge and wisdom to the clients needs.

My friends, colleagues and several clients have often remarked that I have a novel, holistic and creative “out of the box” way of  explaining things, nevertheless liberating and uplifting.

This can work to great advantage for those who want a different, sometimes radical but always healing approach to their issues and dilemmas.

I have provided successful treatment to various types of clients with challenging issues:

* recovering drug abusers and alcoholics
* domestic violence victims and perpetrators
* individuals with personality disorders
* depression, anxiety, stress, obsessions and compulsions
* relationship issues
* communication issues
* sexual issues and inadequacies
* negative habits and defeating thought patterns
* spiritual dilemmas, faith questioning, spiritual development
* personal development to maximize ones potential.

In our sessions I listen genuinely in an empathic and non judgmental manner to your concerns, to your needs, and to what is troubling you.

Wisdom, knowledge, humor, experience and love of people combine together to deliver the best approach to solve your issues.

Working together, I can assist you to:

* get unstuck and move on
* expand your options and make the right choices
* gain clarity about what you really want and need
* foster inner healing
* regain a sense of balance, calmness and focus
* find balance within yourself between extremes and contradictory needs
* discover meaning and reinvest with enthusiasm areas of your life
* build healthier relationships
* gain self-esteem and learn to love yourself
* forgive yourself, others and the world for being as it is
* develop your own life philosophy, discover your beliefs and personal meaning

What makes a good therapist is not only the knowledge accumulated or various . . . → Read More: My therapeutic approach]]>

My personal approach to the human nature comes from the marriage of personal experience to years of studies and trainings.

What makes a good therapist is not only the knowledge accumulated or various techniques learned but the ability to really understand the mechanisms of humanity beyond personal and social hypocrisies. To understand what drives us forward, what makes us fragile, how to embrace our inherent dark side and same time how to reach for our  better self – these are vital realities in order to be a good therapist.

I have an original approach to human problems. Even unorthodox. I sometimes preach depression in certain limits – we are all a bit manic depressive and understanding and exploring humanity can take you places that will change you forever.

Same time, getting disturbed is the first step to personal transformation. Depression can be sometimes a sign of too much realism, or a sign that things needs to be changed.

I also encourage sometimes my clients to embrace their dark side, to not try to fit a certain standard of normality. We are very much a social construct with general definitions of happiness and normality. Finding your own formula of happiness and normality is an essential quest which requires a lot of effort.

I also preach satisfaction instead of happiness, which I see it more as a peak experience of our existence.

Fulfillment and satisfaction comes from a harmonious combination of some attitudes that needs to be consciously cultivated: gratitude, positive thinking, novelty, positive stress, healthy lifestyle, control over one’s own life combined with surrender to the unknown, holding on and letting go – of people, situations, possessions.

My articles reveals more of my vision on things. I hope you will find relief, smiles and even healing between their words.

Knowledge and understanding are the beginning of the real structural change of your personality and of your life.

You need to embrace the effort of becoming you, you need to give up on hoping that you will find a quick fix to things: no, things are not easy but you can learn to find beauty in challenge, you can decide what is worth investing with feelings, you can learn to make the distinction between what is a figment of your imagination and what is objective reality.

You can learn to be fascinated by your own quest of finding balance, you can learn to forgive yourself and others, you can learn to paint the canvas of your life both with shadows and lights.

Happiness is always an inner process of reflection upon our past, present and future.  Healing the past, understanding the present and planning the future can help you get the feeling that you are in control of your destiny, that you are forging your own life.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results ….

If you tend to repeat attitudes and behaviors in relationships, and yet you expect . . . → Read More: Mistakes women make in relationships]]>

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results ….

If you tend to repeat attitudes and behaviors in relationships, and yet you expect your new relationship to be different from the ones you had, it’s time to stop.

Perform an honest analysis of your pattern behaviors and try to change them. Your desire to love and to be loved, combined with your emotional past, can determine you to make some repetitive mistakes in your relationship.

The fear of losing him, lack of knowledge, the woman’s nature who tends to over accommodate the partner – all these things can determine behavioral mistakes.

Mistake no 1:  The woman is wrong when she tries to change her partner.

At first, the woman is attracted by some obvious essential qualities, hoping that her feminine spells and intellectual prowess will help her change the rest of him.

HINT: If you want a cat, don’t get a dog that you’ll train to be a cat. Do not get in a relationship hoping that he will change. Most often this does not happen.

When people are satisfied with themselves, they are not prone to change. How many people wake up in the morning asking themselves: how can I improve myself today? … Exactly, very few, and those who do, they usually live in monasteries or in the pages of some inspiring books.

No, change usually comes after a deep suffering, comes from dealing with stress and from lack of understanding toward self, others or life.

Learn to love or tolerate the aspects that you want to change in him. Have a very honest discussion with yourself and decide if what you love in him it’s enough to help you get over the aspects that he, most likely, will never change.

HINT: Reproaches made, even though based in reality, will erode the romance and the passion. Gradually you will be  in a love/hate relationship, addictive and hard to manage.

Mistake no 2: The woman is wrong when asking herself too early what’s the direction of the relationship.

A relationship has its stages of development. The excessive need for security will determine the woman to desire for a rapid evolution of the relationship. Other reasons, unrelated to love, but to various other calculus, can make the woman to want too early a plan for the future.

HINT: Let the relationship blossom by itself, don’t force him to make  plans for the future too early in the relationship. When a woman has her own plan for her life, she no longer feels so dependent and doesn’t need anymore for the man to make a plan.

Nothing is sexier and more attractive than self-esteem. When a woman loves and respects herself, this reflects in actions and attitudes that imposes respect and admiration.

Respect is always enforced by who you are, it shouldn’t be asked for or begged for.

Mistake no  3: The woman is wrong in a relationship when giving up on herself, on her passions, on her sources of vitality and richness.

The temptation is very strong to become totally absorbed in a relationship, especially in its beginnings. You are inclined to do everything with your partner, to give up your hobbies or friends in order to spend time with him.

On one hand, these action are necessary to strengthen the couple. On the other hand, he may be suffocated by your excessive attention.

If a woman gives up her activities outside the couple, she somehow loses her identity.

HINT: Don’t give up on your sources of joy even if, out of jealousy or desire of control, he will ask you to.

Keep your separate interests, create an identity outside the couple. Being a complex human being with various hobbies and interests will give you verticality in a relationship.

Often, a woman will tend to be fulfilled through her man. And men have this particular talent to induce the idea that it is the duty of their women to unconditionally support them.

You can either be a slave in his empire or a queen in your own kingdom. Any kind of independence  – emotional, material, intellectual, is very seductive for your partner. Because independence means power, and power is the greatest aphrodisiac.

The pathological absorption in the other one has a weird power of seduction, giving the false illusion of security. In reality, it is a selfishness in two augmented by passion and exclusivity.

Such relationships, however, most often cannot face reality’s tests. The fact that  you find yourself in such a relationship shows that you need to balance an extreme aspect of your personality.

Mistake no 4: The woman is wrong in a relationship hoping and projecting in the future.

What does this mean? To hope that things will resolve by themselves. To hope that the future will bring a magical resolution to the couple’s problems.

The hope that he will change by himself makes a woman to live in the future, ignoring the present dissatisfaction in the hope of future solutions.

If the couple does not have a plan for change and for improving the relationship, agreed by both of them, the chance for evolution is almost null.

What you can “hope” for is that time will bring anesthesia,  indifference, that you will compensate for your unhappiness with other stimuli that bring you  instant, short term pleasure. This is how overeating, drug dependency, affairs and other compensatory behaviors such as excessive shopping occurs.

To extract yourself from a love-hate relationship is extremely difficult.

HINT: An agonizing end is better than a never-ending agony. Draw the line, cut your losses and learn from your mistake.

It’s always a negotiation of compromises, you just need to choose the smallest compromise you can live with.

Mistake no 5: The woman is wrong in a relationship when she lies to herself.

Fear of loneliness, fear of losing comfort or status, fear of change, are some of the reasons that determines the woman to lie to herself regarding the motives to remain in a relationship.

HINT: Do not fake orgasms, do not fake happiness, do not mime indifference. Because eventually you will fake your own destiny.

Sometimes, the differences between the two of you are too big. Even if you are compatible on some levels, there are other deep level communions that are missing.

Remember the ingredients of a fabulous relationship:

1. common values, common aspirations, similar interests
2. similar  pragmatic plans for the future
3. similar energy drive
4. shared sensuality and passion

When one of these aspects is missing, the relationship will get into a crisis at a point. Do not lie to yourself that your relationship is fine.

Yes, you can lie to yourself for short periods of time. The conflict within will burst at a point, either through a psychological crisis or through psychosomatic processes – you can actually get physically sick.

Mistake no 6: The woman is wrong by criticizing his friends and his choices regarding social relationships.

It is impossible to agree with all his choices. Same time, to know how to communicate what bothers you is a true art.

Rather than blaming him directly, create contexts and situations to show him that he can make better choices. Introduce to him other kinds of people, show him the satisfaction of these superior kind of relationships.

HINT: You won’t like all the time the same things, the same place, the same people. Similarities are the foundation of a relationship but the differences are the necessary spices to spark the passion.

Happiness is a personal duty, not the partner’s. What your partner offers you is a different kind of happiness, another dimension of being, a richness of sensations, feelings and understandings, possible only through communion with another being.

As long as a woman has  multiple sources of fulfillment and validation outside the relationship, she will continuously attract the admiration of her partner.

Admiration for your partner for who they are as a person, as existence, is an essential aphrodisiac in a loving relationship.

There are relationships formed on the basis of common fears, of complementary traumas, and relationships formed on the basis of mutual admiration, with he desire to share the happiness within, the fulfillment and the becoming of their destiny.

What kind of relationship are you in? …

I remember when I first fell in love. The following verses expresses perfectly these ecstatic feelings:

“The words were rotating between us, back and forth,

and the more . . . → Read More: What is love? Freud, divine madness, complementary traumas or narcissism?]]>

I remember when I first fell in love. The following verses expresses perfectly these ecstatic feelings:

“The words were rotating between us,
back and forth,

and the more I was loving you

the more they 
repeated

in an almost seen matrix

the structure of matter, from the beginning. “

Meanwhile, the matter has disintegrated and reintegrated many times and only words have remained, richer, wiser, doubled same time with uncertainty – in a word,  experience.

The fall from heaven, unavoidable for every soul in loved, led me to seek to understand what is  love.

Our brain has a weakness for stories. From an evolutionary perspective, the stories are the ones that have passed the knowledge through time. Hence, the weakness for them.

Neuroscience makes the difference between emotion and sentiment with an almost dry precision, devoid of romance but who brings the healing specific for understanding.

Emotion is the chemical reaction to a biological stimulus, while the sentiment is the story our brain creates to translate that emotion. 

Love can be such a case, of complete story, with meaning, that we weave around a bundle of conflicting emotions that generates both ecstasy and abyss.

All the poetic descriptions of love, glorification of the mating ritual on one hand, and expression of the nobleness offered by love on the other hand, are the result of this need of man to order what he feels in a story with sense.

Often in a love relationship, one of the two partners takes a masochistic role and the other a sadistic, with the specific attributes of each role.

At a deep level, the difference between the two roles is not so high, symbolizing the fusion without integrity. But very few think of integrity when they are in love …

The exclusive absorption in a love relationship, in which the individual becomes insensitive to the rest of humanity and is unable to feel affection for someone else than the subject of his passion, is a form of symbiotic attachment, of augmented selfishness in two .

Real love is what ennobles you, what makes you discover unknown generosities and what gives you that heroic aura which may seem naive for someone outside of that love relationship.

Love is a narcissistic process as well, because the individual falls in love with this enriched version of himself, full of existential tenderness and spontaneous kindness.

You  love what you become loving that person.

You fall in love with what you discover about yourself, with the upgraded version of yourself, as well as with the idealized vision that the other has about you.

Braking ups hurt not only because we lose the other one, but because you lose yourself too, you lose the enhanced version of yourself, enriched by love that you’ve discovered.

Neuroscience of love

The way love is seen on the scanned map of your brain is identical to the way that cocaine and other drugs affects the brain.

In essence, love is a natural drug, causing the same effects as drugs.

What are the symptoms of love?

* State of hyperactivity – you can live without food and sleep for a long time

* Being obsessive about the other person

* Irrational behavior that contradicts logic and even the survival instinct

* Depression, anger

* Inability to concentrate, the desire to daydreaming

Sounds more like a disease, right? One whose healing it is yet felt like a disappointment, a loss of a divine madness.

That is because love is similar to a drug in terms of the neurochemical mechanisms involved, a sudden separation from the beloved being very similar to a withdrawal.

A love relationship that is dismantled shockingly, causes a real withdrawal, the body and mind reacting violently to the loss of the stimulus that fed the body with the chemicals of happiness .

The functions of love

Great loves are never sterile. They forces you to transform, to become, they make you to get out of yourself. In spite of you, despite fears, selfishness or narcissism.

Love is probably the best tool for self-knowledge. Her magic comes from the fact that you can project into another self, that you experiment reality through an augmented reality.

Transcending of the present, this sense of being tangent to infinity are poetic expression for the important function that love fulfills: namely, annihilation of the fear of death or at least, the amnesia regarding the impermanence of life.

The feeling of well-being generated by love, the double validation of your existence as an individual – “I am loved, therefore I am” and ” I love, therefore I am” significantly mitigates the existential anxiety of passing the time.

Love, the savor of discovery of the self and then the dance of the two personalities preoccupied to maintain and explore the love between, occupies the individual’s  entire psychological space, therefore a pleasant amnesia about the prosaic of the existence instals.

Love, in essence, is an obsession in two, a welcomed process of self-hypnosis, without which existence seems poor. 

The need to get out of yourself and to inhabit another self is actually the need of the altruistic genes perpetuated by evolution.

Love is a phenomenon promoted by evolution because it favored the adaptation of the species: the individual who was protected by someone else, who has someone to care for him when he is sick or in trouble, is an individual who survives, therefore his genes are passed on and thus, altruistic individuals are those who become predominant.

Does similarity attracts or the opposite?

The theory according to which opposites attract each other is actually a myth. Long-lasting relationships are based on similarity.

The stability of a relationship is given by similarities such as:

1. common values, common aspirations

2. similar pragmatic visions for the future

3. similar energy rhythm

4. shared sensuality and passion

Attraction actually involves both components: similarities and differences. Similarity is what welds a couple, while the differences are what spices up the relationship in the first phase.

In a relationship must be satisfied both needs: the need for safety and the need for uncertainty. The similarity gives security, the pure feeling of love, and the differences provides uncertainty, creates passion.

When two different people are attracted to each other, is because each admires at the other one a quality that, through proximity, he wants to assimilate: therefore you will meet couples in which one is sociable and the other one is introvert, one is pragmatic and the other is bohemian, one is rational and the other emotional. Or a relationship in which he is rich and she is beautiful …

In the first phase, the attraction between the two involves these two opposing elements. If the two partners, over time, don’t assimilates what admires at the other one, if they don’t meet in the middle,  in the end what drew them together will break them apart.

I repeat: exactly what attracted them in the first place, the opposite and complementary qualities, is what will ultimately push them apart.

The extrovert one will  reproach to the introverted that he is silent at all times and is not communicative, while the introverted will reproach that he cares more about the others and that he prefers them to him.

The practical one will reproach the bohemian the clutter and lack of organization, and the bohemian will reproach in turn the aridity and lack of romance.

We are attracted by those who give us the possibility of self expansion and evolution.

 Basically, those with complementary traumas are attracted to each other, the relationship itself having a healing potential. But the lack of understanding, tact and diplomacy in negotiating the differences will break them apart eventually.

It happens as well that only one of them will heal, thus becoming a more complete human being than the other.

In this case, if the partner doesn’t  have the same rhythm of evolution, the separation is again a possibility, because the one who become more complete feels now that he can attract a new partner more appropriate for his qualities and new-found ideals.

It is therefore vital for them to evolve in the same rhythm and in the same direction. If only one grows personally and professionally and the other remains at the same level, there are big chances for breaking off.

There is a repetitive pattern of how we fall in love and the kind of partner that we all choose.

Was Freud right?

Psychoanalytic theory says that we fall in love unconsciously with the same kind of partner – the woman chooses as her partner a man similar to her father, and a man is looking for a woman similar to his mother.

We all heard the story: she marries an alcoholic and abusive man who strangely resembles her father in behavior. Yes, he is taller or shorter, makes more money or dresses better or worse, but his emotional attitude is similar to her father.

She eventually gets a divorce and finds another man, who, this time, does not drink at all. But after a while she discovers that he is dependent on gambling and that he also treats her bad.

The saga continues. Her third husband seems to be a man with backbone: a man with his own business, does not drink, doesn’t go to casinos and comes home every night.

But this man works 84 hours a week and when he gets home he is too tired to pay attention to her. They get into fights and she cries, unsurprisingly, that she doesn’t feel fulfilled, that she is not getting the love she wants.

The familiar feeling of wanting and not having is recreated thus “successfully.” The emotional desire to want love from someone who is emotionally unavailable is satisfied. In fact, it is the recreation of the relationship she had with her father.

Playing devil’s advocate, I will ask in your place: why, of all the features of her father, who certainly had some good character traits as well, she will only seek to recreate the suffering she had in that relationship?

As a psychologist, my answer is that in our future relationships with our partners, we seek to heal the traumas of the past. 

Love between the two partners has the potential to heal the complementary traumas that attracted  them in the first place.

Thus, neuroscience confirms what psycho-dynamic therapies have been advocating for some time: relationships can bring healing!

The attraction mechanisms are more complex than perhaps you imagined. Or than you want.

Up to a certain point, love is an abstract notion, a myth, a social and cultural construct. Movies, songs, novels, all of these builds a false image, idealized, excessively lyrical about love.

Only in poetry people are dying for love though, in reality we learn to console.

The problem is that people do not shed light on the unhealed wounds of the past, they don’t heal the traumas of the past by understanding the mechanisms that led to mistakes. But they just throw themselves blindly in relationships repeating the same  emotional patterns.

Love is the process by which a person’s identity merges with another person’s identity, creating a common personality, a shared, new entity through which each of them is enriched, thinks and breathes.

Protecting this new being that is born involves psychological sentimental archeology – identifying negative patterns, trauma that must be healed, understanding, forgiveness and the aware building of healthy attachments.

Because we need poetry as well as reason, ecstasy as well as abyss, certainties as well as uncertainties. The secret lies in knowing what to keep and what to let go from the past and from the present.



Whether it is the triumph of imagination over reason, whether it’s the supreme drug, shared madness or the gift of the gods,  love defines you as a human being. You love, therefore you exist. The rest are just shallow distractions meant to occupy your mental space until you find love.

Perhaps you think that your past holds no psychological trauma. Perhaps you think that you are fully aware of the motives of your actions or non actions.

However, most times, your background . . . → Read More: Psychological traumas of the past. Online counseling for your issues]]>

Perhaps you think that your past holds no psychological trauma. Perhaps you think that you are fully aware of the motives of your actions or non actions.

However, most times, your background is populated by traumatic experiences that have guided from the shadow your choices and attitudes.

A childhood devoid of the parents love will lead to attempts of compensation in future romantic relationships, with a huge need of protection and affection that can be a burden to your partner.

Sexual abuses in childhood or adolescence can make you reluctant and to have excessive sensitivity in a normal relationship.

Traumatic disappointments in love relationships can make you avoid to truly open yourself anymore toward someone else and to maintain  mediocre, second hand relationships, depleted of the flavor of full communion.

The man’s need to perpetually seduce, may be the consequence of the fact that the first woman in his life, the mother, didn’t showed him love.

A woman’s ambivalent attitude towards a man – a type of attraction-rejection attitude, may be the expression of an abusive relationship with her father. The way to love is learned in childhood. The relationship between your parents creates an image of love and marriage that will be in the back of your mind without you even realizing it.

These are unpleasant truths that we tend to deny, wanting to believe that we our the absolute aware creators of our destinies. To be a creator and a master of your life is a status that can be achieved only after you first heal your past.

Unresolved, traumas of the past can influence your love relationships, social integration, career choices, relationships with friends, religious or spiritual attitudes. Trauma occurs after an event of great intensity that exceeds the individual’s ability to adapt. This event  excessively sensitizes the person to future contexts.

When trauma causes post-traumatic stress, the nature of the changes are at a more profound level, involving neurochemical mechanisms and it profoundly affect a person’s ability to cope with stress.

Which are the traumatic events?

* Parents’ abuse in the childhood
* Shocking breakups from partners
* Emotional or verbal abuse
* Sexual Abuse
* Witnessing violent events happened to a loved one

Defense mechanisms of the brain can cause you to forget some of these events, trying to diminish the memory or even deny their existence.

Self-medication often involves excessive drinking, drugs abuse, overeating, sexual addictions – virtually anything that can offer a feeling of comfort can be abused. I will mention just two cases to illustrate how unaware we are of our actions.

First example is about the case of individuals with “split brain” syndrome. When communication channels between the two brain hemispheres are severed due to accidents, the individual will not be aware of what half of his brain is doing. For example: when a patient with “split brain” sees an image in his left field of vision, he will be unable to name what he saw.

Why is that?

The visual information perceived in the left side is decoded in the right hemisphere, and the center that controls speech is located in the left hemisphere. The links between the two hemispheres being interrupted, the information cannot be transmitted from the right to the left hemisphere and therefore one cannot verbalize what he saw.

But if he is placed in front of a series of objects and asked to choose an object, he will choose the exact object that he was shown but it was impossible to “see” – in fact, to be aware of seeing it. If asked then why he chose that object, the subject will develop a totally false theory, meant to justify his own behavior, a phenomenon called confabulation.

In fact, the brain has unconscious mechanisms for receiving informations that determines subsequent behavior but who are given then an entirely different causation.

Another relevant experiment involved a patient who suffered from a severe case of amnesia that made him forget any new information within minutes.

The patient could not recognize his doctor, although he saw him every day for several months. At one point, the doctor decided to conduct an experiment: when he shook hands with the patient, a hidden needle in his sleeve stung the patient.

The patient withdrew his hand following the sting. By the next day the patient, due to his amnesia, totally forgot the incident. But when the doctor extended his hand as usual, the patient did not want anymore to shake hands. Asked why, he invented an explanation to justify his attitude, but far from the truth.

What happened? His brain had recorded the physical trauma suffered and guided him unconsciously to avoid that situation. Unable to recall the motive, he just invented an explanation without being aware of that.

These are cases in which the subjects have suffered physical traumas to the brain. I used them to show that we have in the brain mechanisms meant to cause us to act on the basis of information stored at the unconscious level, actions thought to have a different motivation though.

Many of us suffer blows to the head that we do not treat seriously – from falling from the tree in the childhood to skiing accidents, soccer accidents and other cranial micro-traumas that we tend to treat shallow unless they have obvious effects on the moment.

Over time these can change our personality without realizing it. The psychological traumas that we suffer can also change brain neurochemistry. Each event of high intensity has its own neuronal pathway.

These psychological traumas, the same as the physical traumas to the brain, can change your personality making you act in ways apparently contradictory with your conscious will.

Why are you very irritable at certain events apparently neutral, why do you have very low tolerance to certain habits of your partner, why do you overreact to violence, lying and other inherent events of life?

Betrayal in love is a trauma that we often overcome (or not) in time. Future choices will be profoundly influenced by past experiences, although we will be attracted to the same kind of partner. This is the genesis of the conflict – the simultaneous attraction and rejection to a partner that will create deep tensions within you.

How can you heal?

Cognitive therapy works because it helps to identify erroneous mechanisms of thinking, most of them unconscious. Cognitive therapy helps you to develop instead other cognitive attitudes, which by repetition create their own neuronal path in the brain.

With time, the old thinking patterns lose their intensity in favor to the new positive cognitive habits. Traumas must be unveiled and understood. Forgiving those who hurt us is part of the healing process.

Without letting go of the past, you cannot build a solid future. The past will influence you in unexpected and unfair ways for you and for the loved ones.

What are the steps to overcome the trauma?

1. Self healing
2. Seeing the world as a safe and welcoming place
3. Reinvesting others with trust
4. The organization of thinking in order to take the right decisions
5. Avoiding emotional exploitation in any kind of relationships
6. Therapeutic approach with a good specialist

It’s never too late to shed light on past painful experiences and to offer the needed healing to your soul. Because a day of genuine love for yourself, for your life, ennobles you with the power to forgive and gives you the enthusiasm for a new beginning.

The beginning of another You, delivered from the past, who no longer looks in the rear-view mirror but ahead, toward the  potential magic of every day.

Online counseling can e very helpful in this situation, because it is much easier to open up about past traumas, abuse, violence, all the things we judge ourselves or feel ashamed to talk about.

Many of them are, yet, real. I confirm: many of psychologists are unfit for this profession. I say unfit to be gentle. In reality, . . . → Read More: What or who is a good psychologist?]]>

I have many times come across misconceptions about psychologists.

Many of them are, yet, real. I confirm: many of psychologists are unfit for this profession. I say unfit to be gentle. In reality, many make the patient feel worse than it first came to the office.

What is made of a good psychologist?

Life experience – the therapist must have passed through various difficult moments himself to see what truly works and what does not in the healing process. To understand the human essence with all its darkness and splendors.

Culture – the ability to understand the multitude of personalities, situations and contexts, to provide examples, metaphors and comparisons that help the client to have a better understanding of his situation.

Talent - as in any profession, in order to be a virtuoso, an outstanding professional, you must have a vocation for this job. It actually has to be a calling, not a job or a career.

Many of those who chose this profession they’ve done it because they did not knew what else to do with their own life.

Others because they wanted to know or heal themselves. They learn some theories and techniques which they furthermore try to apply  yet without understanding much of the problems of his patient.

Empathy – the main quality of this profession, it’s not possible if the therapist does not have the cognitive and emotional  complexity required.  Yes, you can feel empathy toward the pain but it does not help too much if it stops here.

That does not mean that you have to be  manic depressive in order to understand somebody else with this symptom. We can find arguments both ways in this situation, but to understand another Self, different than yourself, requires a big capacity of migrating into another mental and spiritual existence.

To be able to get out of yourself is a damn hard difficult quest. The therapist has to be familiar with this action, to have mastered the ability to ignore his own limits and to feel what is, what can and what cannot be the person in front of him.

No matter how poetic and corny it may sound, a good psychologist is a person who loved a lot. For love is the action that makes you get out of yourself. Love for a partner, for children, for friends, love of knowledge and ideas, love in its many dimensions, love for human.

A good psychologist is a person you can admire because through awe you can learn a lot.

A psychologist is a person with a warm personality, charismatic, with a good balance between reason and emotion, in whose presence you feel that you can think and you can feel yourself with all the vulnerabilities, fears and your faults.

A good psychologist is someone who helps you find your resources and inner wealth, who knows how to bring to light the correct motivation, who knows to give yourself back in a version which you can love.

A complex personality, rich culture, anchored in reality - are also very necessary qualities. Many psychologists are overly seduced by an excessive humanism, a cult of suffering and childhood victimization. Which is good to a certain degree – it gives the ability to empathize, you feel it’s a sensitive person who listens. In excess though it can taint the therapeutic relationship.

A psychologist, in addition to the fact that it’s required to have healed his own traumas, should be in continuous personal development – especially that psychology is a young science and each year new discoveries are made, old theories collapse and new ones are proposed.

Evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, neurotheology are some of the sciences that helps to identify the psychological genome in all its shades, from which a psychologist has to extract his knowledge.

There is no unified theory of the human psyche. Some do not even recognize psychology as a science and psychotherapy is regarded by others as a charade.

These are radical views that deprives man of the right and hope that healing and balance are possible. Which experience confirms: change is possible!

It requires effort and determination but the alternative to live only the shadow of what your life might have been, is not an alternative that deserves to be considered.

In some cases, therapy can work regardless of how good is the psychologist. Why?

1. Because you express yourself, because you have someone to talk about your issues. Sometimes, this simple fact, to hear yourself speaking, helps you objective yourself and to give yourself answers.

Because sometimes you are burdened by secrets that you could not tell anyone, and the “confession” itself  helps to relieve some mental tensions.

2.  Because you feel listened by someone who is neutral, non-judgmental. Because someone has patience with you.

3. The placebo effect – because going to therapy itself, accepting the fact that you have a problem and the effort to solve is a step forward.

Any form of therapy works, in varying degrees and for limited periods of time, because any effort you make has its value.

For many, it’s a whole adventure until they get to meet the right psychologist, the person with whom they feel intellectual alchemy and their interaction gives birth to real progress.

Often, a first bad experience with a psychologist (and I know of many such cases) can make you avoid at all costs to even try again.

But, as you do not give up finding your life partner, the right friends and the right job that brings you satisfaction, it deserves as much effort to find that right therapist, that person who you feel it can coach you on your path to fulfillment and harmony.

I even dare to say that finding a good psychologist can help you meet all the other important dimensions of your life, from love, to relationships with others, to career and self-knowledge.

Look for him, find him, use him. And then be!

Fact: You are made up of many “egos” and happiness comes from meeting the needs of . . . → Read More: Myths about you and about happiness]]>

Misconception: You are a single unified person and your happiness comes from being content with your life.

Fact: You are made up of many “egos” and happiness comes from meeting the needs of all these egos.

Have you ever been so sick that you had to stay for a week in bed? What do you remember from that period? Almost nothing, right?

During your life, large segments of experiences will be completely forgotten. How disappointing it is when you realize that the summer had passed and you barely noticed it?! Or even worse, that whole months of your life had passed without having a clear image or memory of it?!

To get to understand yourself better, you must first understand  the difference between experience and memory of experience.

Your self-perception is exactly that – a perception. Most times, an imagination.

What you think you know about yourself is just a story you tell yourself and others. This story is changing over time just as your memories about yourself are changing with time.

At any moment there are two egos in action  – your current “I” and the ” I “who remembers.

The current “I” is the one that is experiencing life in real time. It is the one who you are in the 3-4 seconds as your sensory memory lasts, and the 30 seconds that follows, in which your short-term memory is juggling with perceptions and thoughts.

Example: you eat peaches and you like them. Then you remember that you ate peaches. In three years, there’s no recollection of the moment “Peach, 21 of June 2011″. Unless something accidentally happens that makes the short-term memory to be be moved into the long term memory.

Think now of all the times when you ate peaches. How many actual memories you have which seems to be more than just dreams, holograms of the past who have no real significance for your present well being?

The “I” who remembers is composed of all the memories that are important enough to belong to the long-term memory.

When you’re running the movie of your life, you can not relive all the moments you have experienced. You can only access those events which, due to their significance, have passed from the short-term memory in the long term memory and gained their special pedestal in the gallery of remembering.

To savor some peaches does not creates sensational memories. It signifies only temporary pleasure, for several minutes. It means instant gratification. Happiness derived from such experience is ephemeral.

The “I” that makes decisions in your life it is “I” who remembers. The current “I” is determined by the remembering “I” to hunt for new memories, anticipating their impact on the basis of old memories.

The current “I” has a limited control over your future. It controls the daily automatism and presides over the fulfillment of basic needs – food, shelter, sex,  rudimentary physical  and emotional delights. He is pleased when you enjoy a good dinner at a nice restaurant, when you watch a good movie or when you play the Wii.

The current “I” is happy to be in the here and now, experiencing different things.

Important decisions are taken by the “I” who remembers. He is happy when you step back and reflect on your life and you feel satisfied. He is happy when you share with people around you the things you’ve done and lived.

Here’s an ingenious experiment designed by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman meant to show you how you function.

Imagine that you are getting ready to go on a vacation for two weeks. At the end of it, you will drink a potion that will erase the memories of those two weeks.

The strange feeling that you have at this moment thinking about this experiment is the very conflict between the experimenting current “I” and the “I” who remembers.

The experimenting “I”  chooses easily what activities will enjoy during the holidays: sex, beach, restaurants, entertainment, clubbing.

The remembering “I” is in dilemma though. Rather he will be visiting the Loire Valley castles or would go on a car trip through Europe.

This experiment showed that there are two ways to determine if you are happy or not.

The current “I” is happy when you experience things. The remembering “I” is happy when you look back and have many beautiful memories.

The 2 weeks holiday will provide you with a sum of memories. Memories that you will bring into consciousness at a certain point and that will make you happy. It is a great imbalance comparing how long it takes to create those memories and how much time you spend enjoying them in the future.

The current “I” does not appreciate to stay in an office, he feels imprisoned. Would rather do a fun activity that delivers instant joy and pleasure.

The remembering “I”, though, does not like to not have enough money to create new memories, therefore resists and does “the right thing” in order to be able to create some memorable moments in the future.

Happiness is a state that you are constantly looking for and which seems to perpetually elude you. Happiness is not a state that you attain and then stays with you forever. It is a state in constant change, which involves novelty, diversity, experimentation.

Therefore, happiness specialists recommend to not buy goods which brings limited happiness that quickly dissipates. Rather buy experiences whose memory always brings joy.

Of course, if the BMW 7-Series that you’ve bought it’s not just a car but an experience that you are aware of it  every day you use the car,  you have the psychologist’s blessing to invest your money that way.

Happiness is a state in perpetual change that you touch through the daily little joys while creating memorable memories to be enjoyed later in life.

In order to be happy you must satisfy both egos: to be satisfied in the here and now while building memories for the future.

That means, enjoy your peaches, but do it in a way that creates a long-term memory.  Maybe on the roof of your house while watching a beautiful sunset or something alike.

Go to work to raise money for later in life, but do it so to experience joy while working too.

If you live in the moment, looking only for instant gratification, the present moment is all you will ever have. You won’t be able to sit in a cafe with your best friend and run stories in front of a steaming cup of tea because you won’t have real memories to recall.

On the other hand, if you hope that happiness will come when you will reach a certain goal, status or will take possession of something, you will be disappointed both before and after fulfilling that purpose.

Sometimes, anticipation itself brings more happiness than its actual fulfillment.

Sometimes it’s better to live with the desire, as the anticipation of satisfaction is more intense than the satisfaction itself felt by fulfilling the desire.

That’s why, many times love can be better in imagination, at distance or unfulfilled. Purified by routine and prosaic, enriched by imagination and projection.

Just as, reinvesting with magic and awareness the mundane activities of everyday life can bring you joy and the feeling that has not passed yet another day, but you managed to steal precious memories to ephemeral.

Be aware more often of the small joys in your life, rediscover the glory of the routine and choose to see the full half of the glass – there is no other choice, you need to alchemize your daily moods and to stop the mad rush after getting stuff. You need to realize that this is your life, here and now.

And if the thought that this is your life does not bring you joy, do something, anything. Just do not wait passively for things to happen by itself. Heal the past, plan the future, forge your own destiny!

21st Century. Genetic engineering, free energy, cloning, anti-gravity and many other wonders  generated in the human mind laboratories. And yet, the understanding of love, the primary and ultimate wonder of the world, . . . → Read More: What is love? Part 1]]>

21st Century. Genetic engineering, free energy, cloning, anti-gravity and many other wonders  generated in the human mind laboratories. And yet, the understanding of love, the primary and ultimate wonder of the world, remains still in the stone age.

What is love?

There are many theories about love, some who see love as the divine supreme instrument for self-knowledge, and some non-romantic theories that explains that oxytocin with vasopressin, multiplied by two, plus norepinephrine = love.

I’ll skip the theory, not necessarily false, which says that when two people love each other it means they have the same kind of neurosis. Instead, will discuss an explanatory model of love that can be identified in all the relationships around us.

This model involves three components

1. Passion is the motivational component, reflecting primarily the interpersonal attraction.

2. Intimacy is the emotional ingredient and is reflected in the desire to be with each other, to want to share the happy and less happy experiences with your partner.

3. Commitment is the cognitive component – that includes the decision to be with each other, the commitment to continue the relationship, reaffirmed even in times of crisis.

Depending on these parameters it results different forms of love.

You can identify your own relationship as belonging to one of these profiles and you can figure out what you have to add to your relationship in order to have a fulfilled love relationship.

The interaction of these three parameters leads to the following forms of love.

1. Passionate love - it means passion and intimacy without commitment. Many relationships belong to this profile, with the consequent problems – when one of the two doesn’t assume the relationship, the other one does not have the certainty and security of their relationship.

The lack of certainty can deeply erode the magic of love, because insecurity is the most devastating aspect of a relationship. Uncertainty of the fidelity, uncertainty of the exclusivity, uncertainty of the future signifies the uncertainty of your existence, because in a love relationship you learn to live through the other one.

2. Friendly love - partners feel a strong spiritual connection, emotional warmth and closeness to each other but nor the passion nor long term commitment are present.

Friendly love happens often when one of the two had just emerged from a long term relationship and needs healing, this kind of easy relationship having its advantages. It is a short term relationship because it is difficult to enjoy a glass of water after a glass of sparkling champagne …

3. Crazy love – means only passion without intimacy and commitment. The genesis of romantic relationships is often in this crazy types of love and it can grow into passionate love as intimacy builts between the two.

Without the development of intimacy or commitment, passionate love is quickly lost in the ephemeral sands of time.

Adventures lasting  a night, two or three belong to this pattern of love. Especially men have this fantasy that they are in love and can easily declare intense love, when in fact they are overwhelmed by passion and instinct.

4. Dry love – is the combination of passion and commitment without intimacy, intellectual or emotional  communion. It is quite common in the long-term relationships in which the two have common interests plus intense physical attraction.

Time erodes the attraction though, and without the flavor of friendship and admiration that chains two minds, it remains just a dry mechanism.

5. Perfect love – is the love that we all dream about. Is that type of love in which your partner is your best friend, a complete lover who offers you also the certainty that he will go with you (or after you) to the end of the earth.

It is that kind of love in which the dance of the minds is entangled harmoniously with the dance of the bodies.

The emotional certainty that the other one is the best thing that can happen to you translates into a mutual commitment to strive to overcome the inevitable gaps of a life lived together.

Many times though, the two partners of a couple live each another kind of love.

It happens also that they evolve in different rhythms so that the initial shared intellectual communion falls apart because their interests have become divergent.

The love profile evolves with time and it’s an art and science to learn to keep the main three ingredients alive: passion, communion and commitment. Do you know?….

You can play with your mind (and it’s better . . . → Read More: Boost your brain power]]>

Dear reader, today I have good news for you: your brain is not unchangeable. Or bad news: not many excuses left not to change!

You can play with your mind (and it’s better to do it yourself than let others do it), you can even increase the number of neurons, to create new neural circuits, to change negative habits and thought patterns.

The brain’s interaction with the outside world creates your reality every day. I will not give in to the temptation to comment philosophically on the nature of consciousness and do not intend either to provoke discussions about the metaphysical nature of the soul and inner life.

Neuroscience does not intend to destroy the corolla of wonders of the world, but rather, the more it reveals, the more it deepens the mystery of “being”. Your brain can be changed for the better. Any experience, thought, habit and behavior has a dedicated neural pathway in the brain. Neuroplasticity is the quality of the brain that gives you hope that you can overcome yourself, that you can upgrade to a better version.

What you can do starting with today to be more successful in being YOU?

1. Exercise
No, it is not overrated. Few people know that exercise is good not only for body and psyche, but for your brain fitness as well. Exercise increases blood flow to the brain, intensifying the exchange of oxygen and nutrients necessary for neuronal activity.

Love is blind. We all know the cliché. But science confirms: the brain of a man in love is similar to the brain of someone who takes drugs.

Neuroscience, l’enfant terrible of . . . → Read More: Are you in love with a narcissistic?]]>

Love is blind. We all know the cliché. But science confirms: the brain of a man in love is similar to the brain of someone who takes drugs.

Neuroscience, l’enfant terrible of modern science tells us that love is, not only metaphorically but also literally, a drug.

Beside the fact that it seems that we are all drug dealers – true, some very poetic and priceless drugs, we must reconcile also with the idea that choosing the right partner is a very complicated mission.

Most times, your choices are dictated by unconscious mechanisms and archetypes. Unveiling them requires a trip into the soul workings assisted by a good sentimental archaeologist (aka psychologist).

The narcissistic profile is one of the most difficult ones you can be with in a relationship.

Narcissism is a personality disorder, the individual exhibiting a chronic pattern of grandiosity, a fierce need for admiration, combined with an acute lack of empathy. Besides empathy towards himself, of course.

The narcissistic is intoxicated by a great feeling of self-importance, he often imagines that he has an important mission and has a “royal” attitude that requires obedience and devotion from others, whose ultimate goal should be the fulfilling of his desires.

The narcissist always exaggerates his achievements and talents. His efforts have just one goal: everyone’s attention and full recognition.

Arrogant, self-absorbed by its own special destiny, the narcissistic will indulge in opulent fantasies about power, success or beauty, being dependent on the attention and admiration shown by others. Snobbery is among the qualities highly appreciated.

Narcissistic sees himself as a masterpiece of creation. Rather complicated than complex, he will have big difficulties in empathizing with another person. He cann’t escape from the kingdom of his own personality and as such, no matter how intense you’d explain your point of view, he cann’t understand it,  he won’t be capable to put himself in your place and most often, he doesn’ even want to feel what another person feels.

The narcissistic will transform his partner into a beggar – she will beg for attention and understanding. Many successful people are narcissistic – because narcissism will motivate him to gain power and the need for continous validation of their talents will make them reach many purposes.

Many successful people have a healthy dose of narcissism – or self-confidence, but the healthy narcissism will not ask from the world to reflect their hyperbolized ego and self-image.

Relationship with a narcissistic requires huge energy consumption and work because they need constant support and appreciation. Nothing is ever enough for him and he will look for validation in every possible way.

The genesis of this type of personality is in the childhood. Often, he will be the only child of a family where the parents either ignored him or had high expectations of him.

Thus, the child becomes obsessed in winning their appreciation, his ability to understand the needs of others remaining undevelopped, because his own needs weren’t understood and heard in childhood.

How to detect a narcissistic?

1. Pay attention to those who advertise themselves too much. Being in a constant search for validation, they will take the floor and will monopolize the conversation and action.

2. Lack of empathy for the rest of the humans. Narcissists want all the love, attention and goods for themselves and they will be jealous on the achievements of others and often will minimize them.

3. They do not stand criticism - it awakens memories from the childhood and they will reject it with all the power. If you are guilty of lese majesty and criticise him, beside the fact that he reject the criticism, he will feel hurt and unloved. He will never accept any responsibility for any mistake and will constantly seek a scapegoat for his mistakes.

4. Many of them will be workaholics – being motivated by a huge desire to achieve, they will be entirely dedicated to success.

Narcissists can be very charming and interesting as personalities. The best is to keep them as friends, in relationships without great expectations and only when you feel an irresistible need to give endlessly, without receiving much in return, you can engage in a relationship with a narcissist.

Remember though, a narcissist will never change: he has a too good opinion about himself and he will always find new fans to feed his self-image.

Unhappy? Single? Looking for love? Overweight? Broke? Self Help Inc. seems to soothe all your shortcomings. Seems!

Bookstore’s shelves groan under the  intellectual weight of hundreds of books about “how to help . . . → Read More: The right to be sad and furious]]>

Unhappy? Single? Looking for love? Overweight? Broke? Self Help Inc. seems to soothe all your shortcomings. Seems!

Bookstore’s shelves groan under the  intellectual weight of hundreds of books about “how to help yourself”. Although, it seems that they did not helped that much since people are still suicidal, still unfulfilled and overweight.

Have you ever thought that self-help literature is not food for mind, but rather drugs for mind, meant to get you drunk with beautiful but unrealistic ideas?

The ideas from the books seems to make sense and inspiring towards discovering a better, more functional version of you. The problem is that it only works as long as you read the book. The initial euphoria is followed by the withdrawal determined by the reality of your real aptitudes.

After all,  personality is not so easy to change as some authors try to make you believe.

Pop psychology, because this is what we are talking about it, can be described as a utopian enterprise, inspired by the protests of the 1960s and early 70′s. Pop psychology marked the transition from political activism to the direction of self-absorption, self-focusing.

Philosopher John Stuart Mill said: “Ask yourself if you’re happy and you will cease to be so.” And somehow it makes sense: don’t you feel sometimes  that life used to be simple until we all started reading about how to live it?!

The last two decades have brought a whole invasion of self-help books. Each one promises everlasting happiness, reconnecting to the healthy rhythm of the universe by triggering the inner power (sounds familiar?)!

I call it the industry of hope. They try to sell happiness, but in essence they sell the perpetual hope that things are really that simple: read a book, apply two visualization techniques, breath correctly 2 times, throw in some positive thinking that you are the master of the universe, and there you are, the harmony is guaranteed. For the next 10 minutes that is, until the profound mechanisms of your personality are back in place.

The huge success of this industry is the result of the combination of two conflicting goals that people have always wanted to unify in a congruent vision: financial success and spiritual transcendence – in other words, you can have your big slice of cake and to have same time a transcendental experience with reduced calories, if possible, negative calories. Sounds delicious, right?!

Self-help industry has flourished on a background of continuous search for meaning, for ways to achieve fulfillment in a society that creates only desires and proposes new models of happiness every so often.

The naked and indecent truth is that, in fact, sometimes we need guilt, we need anger, we need sadness and sometimes we need to no longer express ourselves – sometimes the censorship is healthy.

I know, I defy “the happiness laws” of this decade, but to become aware of your true nature, to free yourself from the burden of being always happy, of being perfect, it brings liberation and self-love, it gives back yourself in a way that no technique of positive thinking will ever succeed.

Self-help literature has been successful because it offered the illusion that things are simple, that life is simple, that transformation is so easy.

No, I am not taking away the right to hope, but I propose instead a correct calibration of expectations and more than that, I suggest you embrace your blue moods, I suggest to free yourself from the perpetual search for happiness and fulfillment. Because life is polarity, lights and shadows, vulgarity and sublime altogether.

I don’t know if we have a divine nature or not, I can speak only about the human nature. And human nature involves as well exploring a less charming side of yourself, human nature is fragile and ephemeral, human nature is influenced by chemistry, by the past, human nature is in conflict with itself.

The self help gurus preach that we always have what we deserve and that all we have to do is to calibrate on the correct vibration. Questionable. Sometimes, the guilty ones are the others. For both our happiness, and our unhappiness. Sometimes, the choices are not our own.

What else do they teach us? That love should be unconditional. Wrong! Love, the subject of most of these books and of our lives, is never  unconditional.

Except parents love for their children, love has to be won and deserved. You are loved because you are in a certain way. And if you want more, you have to be more. The right to love is not innate but is acquired by the magnitude of your personality. If you have one, that is.

Love is an active verb, it means action, becoming, transformation. But of course, it’s more comfortable to be yourself and wait for the universe, by some magic means, to deliver at the castle’s gates, your other half which whom you’re going to reign over the land of eternal youth.

Another law of the self help gurus postulates that you have to live up to your true full potential. Agree, be all that you can be, but at the same time don’t try to be something else than who you are.

Gratitude for what you are and what you have is a basic emotion in orde to be in harmony with yourself. Some people though are motivated more by dissatisfaction than satisfaction.

The secret is to find balance between the two states. It won’t be an easy task, but the evolution is given by this oscillation between satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

Some prefer the tango, others flamenco and some others are only spectators. Recently, a friend of mine, also a psychologist, told me that she wanted to start doing tai chi with swords. I’ve suggested a range in the other hand.

“Express your anger”  is another self help law. No, no and no! Leave the cushions in their place and the plates intact! Occasionally it’s good to swallow your anger, to internalize it and let it become fuel for real change.

Anger is a necessary emotion – of course in small, controlled doses. The key word here is control.

Its opposite, serenity, is a drug available only for limited periods of time, when we allow ourselves to escape from the daily routine and responsibilities, when we dive into the beautiful craziness of being in the here and now, when a ray of sun is enough to make a smile blossom on your face.

The offer is generous: anger towards you, towards life or towards the divinity. Alchemyzed in motivation, it can be the spark for change and evolution.

“Take care of your inner child” they advise. No, ignore it! Do not be prey to the siren call of victimization and self-pity.

True, many had difficult childhoods and the past leaves psychological marks more than you realize, but the healing of childhood traumas does not come from the naive interaction with an hypothetical inner child, actually the fruit of projections and imagination.

Taking a psychotherapeutic approach assisted by a specialist has a greater impact and can really help transform. The analyze if your past with a focus on solving your present issues will bring understanding, relief and evolution.

Grow up, go to therapy!

Depression is a very serious disease, which should not be treated with indifference. According to statistics and studies, it doesn’t heal by itself! Contrary to social myths, depression affects also men, although . . . → Read More: Depression and men]]>

Depression is a very serious disease, which should not be treated with indifference. According to statistics and studies, it doesn’t heal by itself! Contrary to social myths, depression affects also men, although not as much as women.

Why I chose to speak in particular about depression in men? Because the man, intoxicated by certain social myths, besides the symptoms of depression, has a few other symptoms as well.

Such as denial – he does not want to admit that he has problems: “Who, Me?? Is this happening to Me?”. He postpones dealing with his weaknesses, considering that he needs to be strong and ignore the symptoms.

Depression does not “choose” its victims according to social status, bank account, marital situation or charisma. True, some circumstances may favor the onset of a depressive episode: stress, break up, loss of a loved one, chronic illness, spiritual crisis, etc.

Diagnosed correctly and at an early onset, depression can be treated to bring back the person to solid grounds. He can regain, under the supervision of specialists, zest for life, the will to live, performance at work, meaning.

Subjects describe symptoms of depression using terms such as “sad”, “restless”, “empty” and so on. A depression is a constant “endless sadness” that makes subjects apathetic and anxious, with a diffuse general fear.

Here’s how Andrew, a 37 years old man, talks about himself: “It was like I was numb, like I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything, I was just walking through the city, getting to the periphery and watching the forest … One day, returning home, my wife asked me if the weather changes and I wasn’t able to answer. I had seen nothing but me, walking through a deserted city. I could see only my sadness. Only sadness existed, nothing else. ”

Constant feelings of deep pessimism, despair, sadness are common symptoms of depression. Anxiety associated with these feelings, without a specific reason  is also a tell tell sign.

Here are the main symptoms of depression in men:

1. Feelings of undefined guilt, hopelessness, helplessness, weakness. All these on a background of self-esteem degradation. The subject responds increasingly difficult to urgent requests, marked by the verb “you have to”.

A 43 years old teacher describes his situation in these terms: “… I felt useless. I was telling myself that everything I do is worthless, the others don’t care … I really thought at one time, to change something in my life, to move out, to leave town, to get a divorce. However, I couldn’t have done it! I knew I was unable to make a decision nor translate it into action. ”

2. Loss of interest, lack of mood, lack of desire to do something (anything). Having ahead a project that had to be completed, the subject fails even before starting it.

He is not interested nor in the daily activities which previously he completed without effort nor in the activities previously considered as pleasurable.

Michael, a 31 years old man, expresses his condition this way: “I do not like anymore going to the stadium, I do not want to meet friends downtown anymore … I’m terrified  when I wake up in the morning and realize that I have to go to work … I don’t want to have sex anymore either. I started drinking more, alone, at home. ”

3. Lack of energy, fatigue. Intellectual activity becomes slower, as well as the reactions and movements. The lack of energy that characterize the subject is associated (augmented by) with deep persistent fatigue.

4. Attention difficulties, decision making problems, memory issues. These symptoms complicate the personal and professional life of the individual; he has a hard time trying to work, to perform more complicated tasks. He gets his job done without real involvement, in a state of absence, putting his job in jeopardy.

5. Difficulties to wake up and to fall asleep. Insomnia becomes a chronic symptom, often accompanied by other sleep disorders.

The subject can wake up in the middle of the night and obsess about his situation. Another subject can sleep up to 12 hours to wake up more tired than before.

6. Changes in appetite. There are many possible situations – subject says that “food has no taste”.

When the feeling of anxiety is overwhelming, the subject does not even touch the food. Therefore, the depressive loses weight rapidly. Other subjects end up eating more than usual. An increase in appetite is mostly seen in women rather than in men.

7. Agitation and irritability. To men, depression can be manifested by bouts of anger, through feelings of irritation and pronounced agitation . The subject simply can no longer control himself.

Ravaged by dark thoughts that haunts him, he tries to escape frustrations blaming always vehemently others.

Here is how Paul, a man of 44 years, describes himself: “I had no vision of the future, I couldn’t do anything, I could not change anything. I was not able to think what I should do in the next hour. I didn’t liked anything! I didn’t liked myself or others. I was furious. I was switching from anger to grief and from grief to frustration. One night in March, I went out in the back yard and started hitting the trees with my feet. Then I returned home, I took the hunting rifle and I shot a few bullets in the wind …. ”

8. Persistent physical symptoms. Stress, tension, fatigue is often associated in depression with physical symptoms like stomach pain, indigestion, headaches, difficulty breathing, etc.

9. Suicide thoughts. It may even reach suicidal intent and suicide attempts. The risk is even more serious for men because, usually, they try to take their life by resorting to violent methods, more “definite” than women. Suicidal intent is an expression of chronic depression and it looks as a hypothetical cure.

Treatment modalities vary depending on diagnosis, severity of symptoms and options (from medication to short term psychotherapy).

If the doctor prescribes him medication, often the subject is tempted to drop it quickly, which is a mistake, because the signs of depression return soon.

Usually, short term psychotherapies lasts between 10 to 20 weeks. For convenience, it happens that some subjects prefer (or even require, if possible) medication.

Family, friends and colleagues can be a support for the individual, their encouragements can be very useful.

Emotional support given to a depressed man involves a lot of understanding, patience, affection, the ability to outline his qualities, to attract him in family,  group, or social activities.

Online counseling can help tremendously as well. Especially for men who are much more into maintaining a self image, online therapy can work better because this is the place where they can open up anonymously about their issues.