Children initially see reality as it is. Your child’s preschool teacher probably knows the unfiltered truth about your family—honestly spoken by your four-year-old.

Then, children start to learn. They realize not everything can be shared. There are right and wrong answers. Right answers are rewarded, wrong ones are punished.

This introduces a child’s first moral dilemma: the conflict between feelings, thoughts and actions.

The world always wants something from you.

And you try to keep up with all of it.

If you feel (consciously or unconsciously) like you’re losing the battle, anxiety shows up.

I start a series of blog posts on anxiety. A lot of people I know suffer from it. But when you google tips for anxiety, all you find is advice to reduce stress, sleep well, and eat better.

 Here, I’ll write about what anxiety is, how it happens, what types of anxiety exist, and most importantly, what can actually be done to decrease it.

Imagine a man coming home tired after a long day at work.

 His day was awful: his customers were difficult, and his boss was particularly erratic.

The man has already spent eight hours perceiving the world as hostile. His emotions fluctuated from fear to anger.

He goes home wanting peace, comfort, and rest.

The moment he gets home, his wife wants to share every detail of her day as a stay-at-home mom of five children.

All five kids are running around and screaming, and the barking dog joins the family.

What does the man feel in this moment? How does he perceive the world? Giving or hostile?

I’ve heard people say they prefer 'honest emotions”, comparing them to someone who is composed and controlled and calling that being cold.

There are two problems with this logic:

1. Being overwhelmed by emotions does not mean you’re being genuine or spontaneous. It simply means your emotions are controlling your life. You are like a sock in a dryer—spinning around, being taken places without choice.
   

2. Controlling your emotions doesn’t mean you don’t experience them. People who are good at emotional regulation experience emotions even more deeply. There is no hidden anxiety or fear of emotions. You enjoy riding the horse much more when you know how to control it.

What happens when you drink too much? The day after, you’ll feel like shit.

When you drink, a part of your brain responsible for reasoning and logic slows down. It feels good when it happens. After one glass of wine, life suddenly feels less intense.

This chemical reaction in the brain creates the feeling of loosening up. It happens as the frontal lobes—responsible for executive functions like planning and worrying—go offline.

It’s experienced as relief, like a burden being lifted.

What Happens During a Midlife Sexuality Crisis?

Symptoms of a midlife sexuality crisis may include:

• Decreased libido (loss of sex drive).

• Changes in sexual attractiveness (perception of personal sex appeal).

• Dissatisfaction and disappointment with sexual life overall.
  
  

While some symptoms result from hormonal changes, others are psychological, rooted in the conflict between self-perception and societal perception.

Your Emotions Are Not Random
The mood you are in right now is not an accident. And I don’t just mean that it depends on what happened to you earlier—this explanation is too simple and often misleading.
Because people react to the same event differently. As Clint Eastwood said, “We boil at different degrees.” What makes one person angry might make another cry.

Dating is easy when you’re 20. Hormones do all the heavy lifting, and your rational mind doesn’t even get involved.

There’s a Russian saying: Любовь зла – полюбишь и козла. Love is cruel; it makes you fall for the jerk.

If you are lucky to be older than 40, you know that it is. If you don’t, you may be in the middle of it.

Different people live their crisis differently: some change careers, some – divorce their long-time spouses, some get into love affairs, some – drop everything and start from the beginning, some – buy a Lamborghini. Whatever are the stories – emotional turbulence unites them all..

There are usually three main stages in a human’s life, each accompanied by rituals: 1. birth, 2. coming of age (into the reproductive period), and 3. leaving the reproductive period. Each stage marks a significant turning point in life. Our ancestors understood how critical it was for these transitions to go smoothly and how a person’s life depended on a good passage through these stages…

I want to talk about a phenomenon I've been hearing a lot about lately: how middle-aged women become invisible to society. There are a lot of conflicting feelings and confusion around the topic. Reflecting on it for myself, and talking to clients and girlfriends, I’ve come to the conclusion that, as a society, we are on the verge of creating a new age bracket for women. There is a desperate need for it, but no previous experience to rely on.

When people are in despair and looking for a last hope, they often see hypnosis as one of the tools. To many, hypnosis has a similar reputation to psychic readings, astrology, or shamanism: it sounds interesting but cannot be serious... yet, who knows, maybe there is something to it.

I have been studying hypnosis for about 10 years. During this time, I have defended my dissertation, published scientific articles, and presented at conferences on the topic of hypnosis and its effects on perception. Here is what I want to say, regardless of any specific events:

Hypnosis typically involves two people: a hypnotist (the one who hypnotizes) and a hypnotee (the one who gets hypnotized). This is the classic dynamic in hypnosis, where control is ceded to someone else, and commands are given by another person. However, self-hypnosis also exists.