Pity is the feeling of sorrow for another person’s suffering or hardship. The word has its origin the ancient Greek word piety, which can be understood to mean a devotion to goodness. Pity was central to ancient Greek thought: it can be seen as the true theme of Homer’s The Iliad, which is often considered…
Emotional reasoning is a cognitive distortion, or faulty pattern of thought, in which a person believes that his or her own emotional experience in response to a thought is evidence for the truthfulness of that thought. In a nutshell, emotional reasoning occurs when we think the following: I feel it’s true, so it must be true. Like…
All or nothing thinking (also known as black and white thinking) is a cognitive distortion that causes a person to see something as all good or all bad, with no in-between. This is is one of the most common cognitive distortions, and also one of the most damaging. Examples of all or nothing thinking When…
Friends bring an added layer of joy to life. Wherever we are, life feels richer and fuller when we have a close friend or two to share in the experience. A friend can help us celebrate our successes and commiserate in our failures, and a friend can help us endure grief, or just a bad…
Sir John Falstaff — he’s Shakespeare’s low-living, gluttonous, perpetually indebted senior citizen, who steals for a living, meets all outward criteria of alcohol dependency, and is called a coward by his closest friends the first time we meet him. This charge is only amplified when, a little later, he plays dead in battle and then…
The therapeutic alliance is the working relationship between client and therapist. According to a growing body of research, the therapeutic alliance may be the most important factor to a successful therapeutic outcome — more important, even, than the therapist’s theoretical orientation, or approach to therapy. So, what makes a therapeutic alliance successful? The key factor…