We’re not as free as we think, even if we do live in a democratic country. People who have achieved substantial political freedom can still be sorely lacking in psychological freedom. We’re likely to feel like prisoners of fate when emotional conflicts limit our creativity and … [Read more...] about Achieving Inner Freedom
Search Results for: inner freedom
When Inner Growth Feels Impossibly Difficult
Some of us feel hopelessly bogged down, swallowed up daily in a mire of inertia and misery. We agonize in a sense of inadequacy and smallness, just tolerating whatever happens to us. This grim emotional infirmity is described by a reader who sent me this email: I found your … [Read more...] about When Inner Growth Feels Impossibly Difficult
The Difference Between Learned Helplessness and Inner Passivity
My readers know how ardently I put the focus on inner passivity. It is, I contend, the primary mischief-maker of the psyche, the largely unconscious part of us that keeps us from being at our best. Inner passivity, a primary component of inner conflict, is the straw house … [Read more...] about The Difference Between Learned Helplessness and Inner Passivity
The Hazards of Inner Conflict
For more than 100 years, psychoanalysis has been trying to explain the hazards and dynamics of inner conflict. Yet people still don’t get it. Unconscious resistance and denial hamper our ability to see ourselves more objectively. People are not only unaware of the dynamics of … [Read more...] about The Hazards of Inner Conflict
Notes to Psychotherapists on Addressing Inner Passivity
Earlier this month I received an email from a young psychotherapist, in practice for just a few years, who was struggling to understand how, despite his best efforts, a client of his had committed suicide. He wrote, in part: I recently experienced a therapist’s worst nightmare … [Read more...] about Notes to Psychotherapists on Addressing Inner Passivity