About quality of presence
Quality of presence has to do with feeling heard even without saying anything....
October 08, 2025
Current Themes
When disappointment generates the sense of betrayal: a look from IBCT
In love relationships, the vulnerability of connecting deeply with each other involves an expectation of care, validation and safety. When we make room for the bond, we trust that the partnership will not cause us intentionally. When this expectation is violated, the emotional impact can be lived as a true betrayal....
September 29, 2025Yellow September, DBT and the role of family members: Taking care of those who take care also saves lives.
Yellow September invites us to talk about emotional pain, psychic suffering and the importance of preventing suicide with more empathy, information and action. In this scenario, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) stands out as an evidence -based approach that supports not only people who suffer, but also to their families - especially when we talk about adolescents and adults with intense emotional deregulation, self -harm or suicidal thoughts....
September 15, 2025The power of mindfulness in interpersonal relationships
There is no way to escape writing about the last weekend. Dear Manuella O'Connel was with us at CEFI leading the mindfulness workshop in interpersonal relations. It was an entire Saturday and an intense Sunday morning in practices. I am sure I left different from how I entered. This means being present in what I think, I feel or what happens to. My surrounding, without clinging, allowing thoughts and emotions to pass like clouds in the sky or waves at sea. Contextual therapies, mindfulness is an essential tool for change. The therapist exercises the presence to choose more appropriate interventions, observe the patient clearly or teach the patient himself to observe. This posture makes mindfulness not just a technique but a context of transformation. The news that the Argentine psychologist brought us was to use mindfulness as a vehicle of change! That is, use this attention to the relationship to transform the patient's relational standards. No matter what is so much "right" or "wrong" to say, but how the other's words resonate in me. I learned that if I am indeed connected with that relationship, in the "me, now," I can capture what can often not be said by the patient, and this enhances intervention deeply transformatively. It requires FAP (Functional Analytical Therapy) motto: consciousness, courage and love. When we speak from this posture, the connection with the other is inevitable. And how beautiful it would be if we could bring this to all our relationships, not just like therapists, but as people. This learning has touched something very valuable in me: the desire for peace between people and in the world. It was by this ideal that I chose to study journalism - I wanted to contribute to a fairer society. And after disappointment with the profession, psychology has opened me new ways to improve people's lives, albeit more individually. Psychotherapy need not be just intellectual. Marsha Linehan, creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy - DBT) already described the dialectic between rational and emotional mind, found in the wise mind. Being before the other in full attention is at the same time challenging and transformative. It is as if each silence gained meaning, and each word would finally come from the heart....
September 10, 2025Reflections on Living the Agora
I was preparing my breakfast, grinding some grains with the electric grinder - a dear gift I won from my sisters - as the water warmed in the kettle. I chose one of my favorite cups, a very special friends gift, and let the coffee filter straight to the thermal bottle I bought at times when I was two graduations and spent the day away from home. At that time, I used to carry hot tea to face the cold days of Porto Alegre on the bus....
September 02, 2025When will you realize that Vienna awaits you?
On a Sunday morning, while I drank my coffee, a quiet playlist played. A song with a calm and pleasant melody gained my attention. She said, "Go slow, your crazy child. You're so ambitious for a young man. But if you're so smart. Tell me why are you still so afraid?" (“Slow down, you crazy child. You’re so ambitious for a juvenile. But then if you’re so smart. Tell me why are you still so afraid?”). It was a song that some time ago a friend had referred me to me, and although I had heard her before, I had not stopped to hear her fully. Was named Vienna, Billy Joel, played by Gretta Ray. I kept listening to: “Where is the fire? For the hurry? You better calm down before you run out. You have so much to do and so few hours in one day” (“Where's the Fire? What's the Hurry About? Before You Burn It Out. that touched me and allowed me to feel every verse....
August 20, 2025Reflection with a bananas bag
the day before yesterday something interesting, it was Sunday, I was studying for the discipline that I will start giving this week. My study was surrendering, added to anxiety about the beginning of classes that made me dipped in the books at that time. I really like to teach, but it is also an activity that I charge myself a lot, because I want to deliver a good job. That day, I was sitting studying at the kitchen table, beside me, I had a banana bag that I had bought at the fair for my grandmother. My husband had loved the bananas I bought at the fair the week before and found them very sweet, so this weekend I had bought a bunch for my grandmother because I wanted to share this experience with her. But the weekend was run and I had not been able to visit her before. Now I was, one Sunday night, studying with the Bananas bag beside me. I looked at them , I thought “ I'm yielding in studies, if I follow here, I will be able to read a few more chapters today ” and my first impulse was to follow there studying and giving up the visit. This decision generated a brief relief, but then I felt a restlessness. If I didn't see my grandmother that day, maybe I would have to wait another week to see her, because with this week's super race routine, it would make it difficult to pass there. Did it worth it to stop having this moment with my grandmother to read a few more pages?...
August 05, 2025When love loses care: Why are couples to treat themselves less kindly over time?
...
July 29, 2025Winter and Emotional Deregulation
...
July 05, 2025The day I met with myself ...
When I stopped to meet this “self” in the early twenties, it seems that a portal opened. As if the time this a small fold and I could look into the newly graduated young man in journalism, not knowing that one day would become a psychologist....
July 01, 2025