Latest Reflections
Learning to live with grief
Luba Kassova | April 27, 2022
A version first printed in dir.bg news publication in Bulgaria A defining characteristics of our lives during the last two years of pandemic has been the growing feeling of yearning intertwined with grief. Yearning induced by the multiple micro losses that...
Will Smith, Self-sabotage and the Shadow
Luba Kassova | April 12, 2022
Have you ever felt elated at having achieved something truly wonderful, something you have worked towards for a very long time, only to brutally quash it in a momentary act of self-sabotage? The shocking and violent incident instigated by Will Smith when he...
Transforming shame into dignity
Luba Kassova | March 30, 2022
One act of bravery can transform an ordinary person into a hero in the blink of an eye, disrupting the status quo and prompting admiration (or condemnation) from those who witness it. It can take just one act of courage by a lone revolutionary or a small...
Coping with powerlessness in a chaotic world
Luba Kassova | March 16, 2022
Day #20 since Putin declared war on Ukraine The war in Ukraine is gaining momentum: the Russian army is closing in on Kyiv despite facing unexpectedly strong resistance; Kherson has fallen; leading multi-national organisations have left Russia;...
The pendulum swinging between war and love
Luba Kassova | March 02, 2022
Day 1: Putin invades Ukraine This is an unfathomably dark moment that I personally didn’t think would come. I thought that Putin was bluffing, enjoying basking in the world’s full attention. But it has come, contrary to common sense, to...
When tough love is no longer love: Part 2
Luba Kassova | February 22, 2022
Why do people often believe that they need to berate someone to motivate them to achieve? I remember telling my father one day that I thought he had been hard on me as an adolescent when he repeatedly voiced his concerns so convincingly that my...
When tough love is no longer love: Part 1
Luba Kassova | February 09, 2022
I recently interviewed a wonderful woman, an executive coach and mentor, who is writing a book and whom I shall name Rose. She made me think about what drives us forward and about the psychological cost of achievement. In the 1980s and 90s Rose had broken...
How the books we read reflect the biases we hold
Luba Kassova | January 26, 2022
The books we buy are a window into our society’s norms and beliefs. The book choices you and I make offer a glimpse into our souls. In a December 2021 article in The Sunday Times, Andrew Holgate examined 2021’s best-selling books in the UK....
“I am in everything and everything is in me” From judgement to gratitude
Luba Kassova | January 18, 2022
We often spare our children the truth about the past, even when they are grown up. Our desire to protect them, and ourselves, from emotional suffering leads our own traumas and those of others before us to remain buried deep inside our family constellation....
Disrupting the cycle of pain which does not belong to you
Luba Kassova | January 05, 2022
Growing up, I remember having a persistent fear that I would be abandoned by my parents and lose everyone I loved. I carried this into adulthood, despite never being able to trace it back to any actual situation in my early life which had triggered it. That...
