May the New Year be your best friend! With the begin of 2016 the trouble may end! May you always get off on the right foot! May all prospects be a ‘CAN’ and not ‘COULD’! May your sparkling health serve you good! And may your soul always find the right food! Take care, Helena Smole, author of: – a fantasy novel with romance Vivvy and Izzy the Dwarf: A series about relationships – Balancing the Beast, a book offering a bright view of schizoaffective disorder ˗ bipolar or manic-depressive type ...

A dear friend of mine got a project at work, where he is required to speak German. He was learning German in primary school for 8 years and in high school for 4 years. But he has not spoken or read German for almost 20 years now. He was afraid that he could not speak it anymore at all. We tried together. The first sentence he built wrong at least ten times. I told him the right version later. He had to make about 5 attempts at repeating it, before he did it right. Nevertheless, we were not discouraged. We went on, trying to make casual conversation in German. We also tried to translate some sentences...

The image of serial killers with schizophrenia was so strong in my mind and my subconsciousness that I was truly surprised to meet patients in a mental hospital, who would not hurt a fly. And this type of patients were the majority. It seemed like it was submissiveness that had brought them into the hospital, of course combined with some type of a mental illness. I later met a psychiatrist, who was giving assertiveness courses in the mental hospital, where he worked. Thus my observation could not have been totally wrong. I also learned later that the percentage of criminal offenders among mental...

Until it is suffocating, I guess, but how do you know you are not just imagining it? When is close too close? Let us look at some examples. If by chance the couple read the same book and then talk about it, it is alright, I reckon. But I once heard about a lady who was putting pressure on her partner: ‘We have to read the same books.’ She was enforcing superfluous closeness, in my opinion. Of course it is very romantic to watch movies together, cuddled up on the couch. But there is also absolutely nothing wrong with a couple, who like different genres and have two TV sets. They can still be kind...