Cover photograph supplied by Anton Biletskyi-Volokh.
A thematic selection of translated notebook fragments.
Acceptance is an antidote to guilt.
Politeness and rules of conduct can stand in for emotional self-regulation that has not been sufficiently developed.
Guilt as a way of avoiding the encounter with being unnecessary in the family system.
Manic defence is a wild dance to the accompaniment of guilt, distracting us from the horror of loss.
Guilt is proportional to the sense of your own omnipotence. The way out of self-blame lies in relinquishing omnipotence.
The most important critical judgement concerns your own state. Attacking yourself is not critical reflection; it is self-directed aggression.
Sometimes we need to construct a negative character outside ourselves so that we can feel good by comparison.
When you begin to see the pain behind behaviour, it becomes much easier to relate to people.
“How many passive-aggressive people does it take to change a light bulb?”
“As if you don’t know.”
Emotional vampirism is not calculated manipulation, but a weak internal economy: an inability to exchange and a constant dependence on donors.
Dependency is a way of meeting needs and regulating emotions through merging with a substance, person or game, rather than doing so autonomously.
Character can help you overcome obstacles and pursue your own course. But weak emotional self-regulation is often passed off as character.
Our perception of a situation is always shaped by our internal context. If that context rests on emotional pain and woundedness, even a relatively neutral situation can feel destructive and unbearable.
One important sign of emotional maturity is stability in the face of feedback. Another person’s response may be unpleasant, but it will not be devastating.
Disrupted emotional regulation reduces adaptability: unregulated emotional states consume a great deal of energy and do little to help communication and interaction with others.
Without any stress, we become fragile and unstable. With too much stress, we become exhausted and weak. Adaptation means finding a balance so that what activates us does not begin to destroy us.
Dependency often develops around difficulty recognising your own emotions. Any emotion, pleasant or unpleasant, may be interpreted as craving: a signal that it is time to take something.
Banished feelings later return with reinforcements from their opposite. Banished rage, for example, returns with apathy in support.
Curiously, the more a person is preoccupied with guilt, the less able they are to apologise and forgive.
Emotions carry information. They matter for understanding ourselves and the world. But a strong emotional reaction to a familiar situation may indicate that adaptation has not occurred and the situation is still ranked as dangerous and destructive.
Psychology Notebook is a translated personal archive of observations, study and lecture notes, paraphrases, quotations and remembered ideas. A fragment’s presence here does not establish exclusive authorship or scientific consensus. These are notebook fragments, not clinical guidance.
About Psychology Notebook · Fragments from a Therapist’s Notebook