I have been meaning to write this blog for weeks. A multitude of thoughts and reflections were racing through my head, still I was finding it hard to put them down in coherent sentences even if writing was always a preferred medium for me to express myself. But that was before Covid-19 took away…
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Dedicated to the many who died for the greed of a few in Genoa. There are many of us who run away with the idea that to be healthy one needs to keep a balanced diet, exercise regularly and do regular medical checks. Likewise we regard health as an individual commitment to ourselves. But is…
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Dr.Moira Borg The one particular thing about children is that they are vulnerable. Being unable to take care of themselves at such a young age, they are totally dependent on their environment for their survival and thus their wellbeing depends on its stability and healthy dynamics of relationship especially in the family setting. Children…
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Moira Borg For many centuries, the family has been seen to be the backbone of society. Satir (1998) describes it as “a microcosm of the world”, while Minuchin (2009) depicts it as the “laboratory” where its members are “imprinted with selfhood” that is, “the matrix of identity.” Another central fibre in family dynamics, apart…
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Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Before you accuse me take a look at yourself – Eric Clapton Addiction to social media is one of the scourges of the 21st century. Many of us tend to run away with the idea that it is an affliction of our present day young generation, what we dub…
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by Dr. Moira Borg When roads started to be constructed, thousands of years ago, their main aim was to connect one destination and the other which eventually also supported trade and urbanisation. Likewise, there is no reference made in any historical document, at least to my humble knowledge, to roads being used for feuds,…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Many clients who come to therapy struggle to understand why the therapist makes it a point to stop the session after an hour even if they would be in the midst of an existential crises. Some believe it centres around financial gain while others claim it is related…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Whether we like it or not, we inevitably change along the course of our lives be in the physical, emotional or social aspect. Our bodies grow initially in size, then progressively age and wither till we again become as dependent as we were in the first days of…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist There is something particular about Christmas. Even though nowadays we are so caught up in its flashy commercial excitement and ‘cheer’, I believe that its true soul and meaning still lies in the ‘love one another’ spirit that He advocated so fervently more than 2000 years ago, this…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist It has been known and documented for decades that for a person to enjoy full health he/she has to be in a state of physical, mental and social well-being (WHO 1948). As a result, any factor that affects one of these aspects of our health will naturally…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist For some reason, the word abuse is usually coined with physical violence or addictions, totally overlooking the scourge of the psychological aspect. As a result the suffering of many victims of psychological/emotional abuse is left unacknowledged, unseen and unsupported. The lack of definition that surrounds this type of…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist There is something particular about therapy which goes beyond the talking or sharing exercise where a practitioner supports a client through a difficult issue. At times a particular experience stands out and comes to a head pressing for understanding and resolution, very often, in more than one client…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners. Laurence Sterne One of the basic behaviours we are taught from a very young age is the way we behave towards others, namely social behaviour or what are commonly described as manners. The importance…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Therapy is an process whereby the client and therapist work at building a therapeutic relationship with the threefold aim of creating a new experience in relationships different to the possible dysfunctional ones the client would have been used to, providing support to painful issues and situations at hand…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist In the wake of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, the crass divide and polarity in the public’s opinion of her was very striking – at times one would have been safe to doubt if people were talking about the same person at all. Perhaps this comes to…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Looking back, most of us would fervently insist that our adolescence was the best time of our lives, a time where our joints did not protest at every move, a time where we could smile and not have the skin of our face crack like dry mud, a…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist When 7 year old Jan* was brought to therapy by his mother he made it clear he was coming under protest and that he was not going to utter a word. However as soon as he entered the clinic his face broke into a shy smile and he…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist You want answers? The Truth? You can’t handle the truth – Jack Nicholson, A Few Good Men We are expected to say the truth, and nothing else, as soon as we can assimilate two thoughts into a concept. Failure to do so has been known to…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist To Doreen & Jerome – with much love I have been intrigued by death since I lost my maternal grandmother at the age of 5. As a child I could never understand how a person could suddenly become cold and lifeless and then simply disappear from our lives never…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist When John Bowlby put forward his Attachment Theory in the late fifties he brought to light the dynamics of a relationship that dates back to the inception of humanity that is the relationship between a mother and her child. Bowlby in fact believed that the primate infant had…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist In general, we tend to associate loss and grief with the death of a loved one. However it is not the case. A loss is experienced with any life event that we perceive as negative, and which results in long-term changes in our social situations, relationships, or way of…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist I believe that one of the most challenging situations for any human being is to be in the presence of another’s deep suffering. It brings up a hotch-potch of emotions and drives ranging from the need to make it better for the other to releif that the suffering…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Contrary to the general perception, human rights are not an outcome of modern society. On the contrary, their inception goes way back to half a century before Christ when Cyrus the Great, the first king of Persia conquered Babylon and opted to free all the slaves giving them…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist In geometry, the triangle is a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles. Outside our mathematics textbook the triangle symbolises ancient wisdom, mysticness, the Holy Trinity, the number 3 and the sacred feminine and masculine energies. In psychology , the triangle is found as a concept…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist In the norm, a parent is that person who brings up and cares for his/her child. Winnicott (1964) in fact describes the ‘good enough’ mother (parent) as the caregiver who in the beginning is totally there for the child’s needs and then starts attuning more realistically as he/she…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist When physicist Isaac Newton was exploring the effects of forces on objects way back in 1687 he discovered that for every action applied to an object there was an equal and opposite reaction (third law of motion). Forces and motion are not phenomena which occur only to inert…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist This story is “a story similar to many others” (Spagnuolo Lobb 2007:27). It talks about Jan (not his real name), a 25 year old engineer. When I met him for our first appointment, which he attended with his mother, he sat hunched with his arms wrapped around him.…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Ema was 15 when she was brought to therapy by her mother due to low weight and severe anxiety especially around her academic performance, appearance and social acceptance. At the time she had just started sixth form after performing exceptionally well in her Ordinary levels and her dream…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Nutrition, or the taking in and the use of food as a source of energy, is one of the seven basic functions of life. Without it our well-being and survival is severly compromised. In developed countries where starvation is a mere news item and food of all shapes and…
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by Shirley Galea ‘I do not want to add up to their troubles!’ this is what I often hear when I encourage a child to share her troubles with the parents. Some kids keep their lives secrfet out of a healthy self-interest to avoid fights or escape consequences. In some cases though, there is…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist 2pm, November 13th, 1895, Clapham Junction Station Author Oscar Wilde recounts his traumatic experience of ‘coming out’:”I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Chloe Abbott’s dream was to become a medical doctor since she was a child, and she did. Four years into her training, she buckled under the extreme pressure she was enduring trying to juggle long hours of training and studying and committed suicide. She was 29. Had Chloe’s…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist “How would you feel if you lost all your family in one day?” I confess that I was so deeply struck and moved by this question, posed to me during therapy by a 20 year old client, that I was at a loss for words as my…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist We tend to assume that people, who are for the great part sane, are fully aware of what they are doing and are left with full freedom to decide, at times even the outcome of important events or the fate of vulnerable people. Such are the basis of…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist It is a known reality in our everyday experience that we find it easier to connect with some people and not so easy or not easy at all with others. It is also true that the ease of our interactions may also be affected by particular experiences in…
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Much as we would like to, we cannot control everything that happens in our life and this is one of the issues that give us most of the instability and fear we experience. While reckoning that some happenings are beyond our control, others are within our responsibility and choice even though we might not be…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Honesty is a value we treasure. It gives us the security of knowing that we are receiving what we are perceiving and thus supports us to relate to the other fully, without reservations. Yet we all have to concede that there are many facets of us we do…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist Children are unique beings in that they are so spontaneous and creative and yet so dependent and easily moulded by their environment. Margaret Mahler in her Separation-Individuation Theory describes in detail how a child grows out from total dependence on the mother/carer in the first year through progressive…
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by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist No living organism can survive without contact with its environment in some form or the other. Human beings need air, water, food and shelter for their physical well-being and one another for the psychological and social one. In fact, the phrase ‘no man is an island’ has become…
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