Anger, Sadness and Vulnerability: Navigating the Human Emotional Landscape
In this blog I aim to explore the complex interplay between anger and sadness from Gestalt, relational, existential, and literary perspectives, highlighting how these emotions shape human experience, relational dynamics, and ethical awareness. Drawing on clinical practice, literature from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Woolf, Morrison, Shakespeare, and Italian authors such as Elsa Morante, Calvino, and Moravia, as well as reflections from Primo Levi, Yontef, and Yalom, the essay examines how anger often masks underlying sadness, how societal norms favor the expression of anger over vulnerability, and how both emotions can be integrated therapeutically. Anthropological and evolutionary insights illuminate why anger may be adaptive in contemporary, fast-paced contexts, while sadness remains relationally dependent. The article offers relational Gestalt interventions, illustrating how therapists can create safe spaces for clients to inhabit both emotions, fostering emotional flexibility, resilience, and moral consciousness. Finally, it reflects on the future evolution of emotional expression in socially and politically polarized environments, emphasizing the necessity of attending to vulnerability, relational attunement, and ethical reflection. Literature serves as a guiding model, showing that characters who integrate anger and sadness positively shape relational dynamics and ethical outcomes, providing both inspiration and practical insight for clinical practice.
Anger and sadness are often cast as opposites in both social perception and psychological theory: one is outward, forceful, immediate; the other inward, reflective, and vulnerable. Yet a closer examination—through Gestalt therapy, relational psychology, existential thought, literature, and anthropology—reveals that these emotions are not antagonists but interconnected currents within the human experience, each flowing into and shaping the other. Anger frequently emerges as the visible response, while sadness, slower and relationally dependent, is often suppressed. The reasons for this pattern are complex, embedded in both personal histories and social environments. Anger can assert agency, defend boundaries, and signal moral outrage, whereas sadness requires vulnerability, relational attunement, and a witness willing to bear its weight.
Rethinking Couple’s Intimacy in Contemporary Society
This blog explores the changing contours of intimacy among couples, identifying how societal changes, technology, and personal identity are reshaping what it means to be close to another person in the 21st century—drawing from historical, anthropological, and psychotherapeutic perspectives.
How an existential experience of absence can be dealt with in psychotherapy?
The Phenomenology of Absence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Emptiness, Loss, and Presence
Absence is an enigmatic force that threads its way through our lives, often unrecognized yet profoundly shaping our emotional and psychological experiences. Whether it is the loss of a loved one, the longing for something unattainable, or the subtle emptiness we feel when something familiar fades, absence is more than just a void—it is an emotional and existential experience that colours our perception of the world. From phenomenology to neuroscience, from Gestalt therapy to literary exploration, absence invites us to reflect on what is missing, what we long for, and how we navigate the spaces between presence and nothingness.
Why is fear so frightening?
Fear is the shadow that flickers just beyond the candle’s reach, ancient and intimate, threading through the marrow of every human soul. It is not merely an emotion—it is a force, a whisper from our deepest past that echoes through the present. Born in the oldest part of the brain, it speaks in the language of instinct, not reason. A sudden noise, a silent stare, the unknown—all summon its presence. And once summoned, fear floods the body with a storm of urgency: heart pounding, breath tight, muscles ready to flee or fight, even if there’s nowhere to run. What makes […]