Alexandra Petrova

Stephen Hawking died last night. After not only living a life that contributed in a unique way to the advance of science, but also outliving the portion of existence predicted to him by the daunting diagnosis of ALS some half a century ago.…

Abandonment trauma is a condition of hyper-sensitivity about things like deserving and keeping love, feeling safe, having a stable sense of a worthy self. The trauma is usually created by early experiences of affective deprivation, painful…

In the mid 70s a psychologist named Dorothy Tennov invented her own word to describe intense and brainless infatuation. The word she crafted was limerence: a blind and total surrender to the tsunami of illogical passion, of involuntary,…

Love can be stomach-wrenching, head-spinning, dumbstrucking, spellbinding. But apart from being intoxicatingly sweet, love can also be damn hard. And hurt. And mark. And drive mad. It depends on one condition only. Whether you searched…

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, understand, and constructively manage emotions. The positive results emotional intelligence can bring to our relationships are a sense of connection, mutual understanding, solutions to…

Manipulators are part of the life of almost everyone. Their most usual prey though are kind-hearted people. They need someone who needs closeness and love, someone who gets hurt and needs validation, so they can play on that strums and…

When it comes to connecting with others, we all use certain (unconscious) techniques to magnify it or avoid it. Even if it feels natural to do these things, they are a learned response that protects us against pain - in the form of…

At one point our unhealed anxiety, our unfulfilled dreams, and our stress - that we hide from the world - slowly but surely start rotting inside of us. The denied and hidden emotions we keep bottled inside gradually turn into poison that…

Depression may come for various reasons. From being treated unfairly and never gotten over it, to being heartbroken, having lost your job, feeling inadequate in terms of meeting social or personal standards, etc. Depression can also be…

Some call oxytocin “the cuddle hormone” or the “love molecule” ascribing it almost magical powers to create affection, trust, and love. These nicknames may not even be an exaggeration of the bonding power oxytocin possesses as a…