All posts tagged: enduring

The Enduring Heartache of Unmet Childhood Needs

The Enduring Heartache of Unmet Childhood Needs

Published by Jenni Sidey

As a trauma therapist, I combine a number of powerful, trauma-informed models into my approach, including schema therapy. And a key concept in schema therapy is that of “core emotional needs.” Dr Jeffrey Young, the founder of schema therapy, writes that all children have five core emotional needs to flourish and grow optimally—these needs apply in every culture and period of human history. Dr Young describes these needs as: 1. Secure attachments to others (includes safety, stability, nurturance, and acceptance) 2. Autonomy, competence, and sense of identity 3. Freedom to express valid needs and emotions 4. Spontaneity and play 5. Realistic limits and self-control1 The first need essentially means feeling safe, nurtured, and accepted by your caregivers. This is by far the most important need and was unmet if you experienced childhood trauma or neglect, because it meant a lack of safety and being rejected, hurt, and unprotected by those who were supposed to keep you safe, which is why it can affect you so deeply. If you can’t trust those closest to you, it …

What Is Behind the Enduring Appeal of Fascism?

What Is Behind the Enduring Appeal of Fascism?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Fascism is the troublesome political ideology that just won’t go away. It usually begins with great enthusiasm, only to end with catastrophe and regret. Despite this record of misery and failure, fascism continues to attract true believers. It typically gains traction when levels of frustration, fear, anger, and resentment rise a little too high within a relatively free society. People love answers, true or false, that seem to explain their unease. They demand change, and some especially want the kind of change that hurts groups of people they don’t like. Enter stage right, the grinning pseudo-patriot problem solver who promises to make it all better with a mild dose of fascism. Fascism lacks a concise universal definition, so it may be helpful to think of it as a kind of nebulous political religion. Or, more practically, consider it a cruel playbook for gaining power at the expense of others. At its core, fascism is an emotional, anti-democratic, and anti-intellectual slide into authoritarian rule. Citizens’ rights and the rule of law are trampled by fascism’s run …

An Enduring Assumption About Love

An Enduring Assumption About Love

Published by José Betancourt

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. For as long as people have been looking for love, many have been convinced that they know exactly what it looks like. We might talk about having a “type”: someone with certain traits, habits, beliefs, or quirks that we assume will add up to a successful match. But that certainty is often an illusion, Olga Khazan writes. Studies suggest that what people say they want in a partner rarely predicts whom they actually fall for—or whom they build a relationship with. Chemistry, timing, shared experiences, and the slow work of falling in love with someone tend to matter far more than the traits that some people screen for on a dating-app profile. This Valentine’s Day, explore stories that challenge the idea that love is about finding the “right kind” of person. On Love and Choice Most People Don’t …

The Enduring Relevance of The Brothers Karamazov

The Enduring Relevance of The Brothers Karamazov

Published by Jenni Sidey

A great book manages to speak insightfully both to the culture it was written in and to the present context. The Brothers Karamazov by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is such a book. The last novel ever written by Dostoevsky, it tells the story of three brothers, Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha, each with radically different approaches to life. Dmitri is passionate and worldly. Ivan is cynical and coldly rational. And Alyosha, a monk in training, is reverent, innocent, and loving. Ultimately, though, the book is about the problem of evil and how we can treat life as a gift in the midst of suffering. That’s one of the main reasons we keep going back to it. In one of the most famous chapters ever written, “The Grand Inquisitor,” a disillusioned cardinal complains to Christ how his incarnation has failed since evil and suffering have remained so rampant. How does Christ respond? By kissing the inquisitor in silence. The celebrated Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard recently wrote a new meditation in The New Yorker on Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, …