Cover photograph supplied by Anton Biletskyi-Volokh.
A thematic selection of translated notebook fragments.
Intrusive thoughts arise where it is easier to get wound up and let your head chew over the same thought than to encounter what you are really feeling.
Separating means no longer being under the supervision of an imaginary observer modelled on an actual parent.
- When I get something, I do not feel happy. I think: well, what comes next?
- If you think like that, what comes next is always the same.
- What?
- Death, of course.
People who grew up in relationships between objects reproduce them in adult life. For them, getting to know others as subjects rather than functions is a whole journey from the world of the dead into the world of the living.
Blame is the inability to acknowledge and live through a loss.
Parting with an illusion hurts because it means losing the hope that things will be as you imagined and wanted.
The less our expectations of reality are connected to it, the more painful it is to discover that books and films are one thing, while life may go this way or that.
When leaving an unbearable situation, people often get stuck thinking about the exit, although what matters much more is not how to leave but what to do afterwards.
On fears. Sometimes it is more absorbing to think about the most bizarre fears of a possible future than about what makes the present genuinely difficult.
Being under a spell and believing yourself doomed is usually a very rigid system of beliefs that formed as a protective response, but ended up isolating rather than protecting you.
You can greatly intensify the suffering of comparison by comparing yourself not with a real person but with a composite image. Nothing works out for me straight away, whereas the composite imaginary hero gets everything done instantly.
Suffering in love means inventing an imaginary image over a real person and suffering each time you discover that reality does not match your imagination.
Rescuing means lacking faith in the rescued person’s ability to cope and, essentially, failing to recognise their dignity. Rescuing is not sainthood or martyrdom; it is a kick in the balls for the person you are rescuing.
The best remedy for dramatisation is understanding that the heuristic of any recurring situation eventually runs out.
The greater the inner sense of danger, the simpler a picture of the world consciousness demands. A more complex picture is a good sign that the whole world is not being perceived as a threat.
Self-destruction often creates the illusion of a full and unique life, but actually takes life away and cuts you down. Life is a well-organised, steady everyday existence.
How does grieving differ from suffering? In suffering, a loss is not released but held onto and experienced anew each time. In grieving, a loss is mourned so that it can be acknowledged and, over time, lived through.
Not building closeness lets you remain within your ideal image without testing it against reality. Without live interaction, you can remain an invented character.
Emotional pain becomes a prison for someone who cannot find meaning in the present because their consciousness is locked inside a wound inflicted long ago.
A subject is an active bearer of consciousness who does not change through external observation and evaluation.