All of these have roots in a sense of not having mattered enough to anyone over long childhood years.

Powerful emotions, therapy says, are triggered in the present by traumas and difficulties that began in a distant and usually largely forgotten past.

In the ruins, we may be able to ask ourselves new questions: What do I actually want to do? Whose opinion do I really care about? We’ll have slain the dragon of prestige and may now be ready to live on our own terms for the first time.

And, by extension, no one has ever fallen gravely mentally ill without, somewhere along the line, having suffered from a severe deficit of love.

If we do not allow ourselves frequent occasions to bend, we will be at far greater risk of one day fatefully snapping.

We cause ourselves a lot of pain by pretending to be competent, all-knowing, proficient adults long after we should, ideally, have called for help. We suffer a bitter rejection in love, but tell ourselves and our acquaintances that we never cared. We hear some wounding rumors about us but refuse to stoop to our opponents’ level. We find we can’t sl

The loving companion doesn’t get bored of instilling the same fundamental message: I am here for you and it will be OK.

More importantly, the loving companion insists that they will be there to personally ensure that the future is manageable. When things get terrible, they can be in each other’s presence and hold each other’s spirits.

But though outrage may feel liberating, it is no friend of love. In order to stand any chance of working, a relationship has to involve—on both sides—a continuous attempt to drill beneath difficult words and actions in search of their more complicated, and occasionally touching, origins. Perhaps our partner is feeling sexually insecure; maybe they