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...

For as long as I can remember I have been trying to help the less fortunate. I helped a classmate in primary school and she finished it. I helped a dyslectic high-school student and he finished high-school. I wrote a book about coping with mental illness Balancing the Beast – A Bright View of Schizoaffective Disorder, mostly because I wanted to inspire other people in a similar situation. Of course there were many cases, in which I could not help the person. I remember a mother who kept hugging her four-year-old son, whenever he had hit his younger brother, who was two. She explained to me that her...

How does fear really feel like? Do we ask ourselves this question or do we simply deny our trepidations? They are a nasty habit though. Just consider how much marketing is based on fears: the fear of getting ill, the fear of dying, the fear of having less than your neighbor etc. I can only describe how fear feels to me. It usually starts with a seemingly irrelevant thought. I try to send it away, but it won’t go. It is as if some dark power kept opening a dangerous computer program file. And then the thought grows. Pretty soon it fills the whole working memory in my brain. I can barely squeeze...

I have been wondering lately, why it is so hard to admit a mistake. Yes, of course, we have to face the consequences, like losing a friend or a job. By denying a mistake we hope to avoid it. And even if it is a tiny mistake without any serious ramifications, it is painful to admit we did something wrong. The feeling of guilt burns in our chest while taking on the responsibility. We all know all that, but let’s dig deeper. At the root of reoccurring mistakes is a conviction. For example, when we keep picking friends, who treat us badly, the underlying conviction might be: “I don’t deserve noble...