An Anonymous Girl

by Greer Hendricks

We all have reasons for our actions. Even if we hide the reason from those who think they know us best. Even if the reasons are so deeply buried we can’t recognize them ourselves.

When money and morality intersect, the results can illuminate intriguing truths about human character.

People are motivated to break their moral compasses for a variety of primal reasons: survival, hate, love, envy, passion. And money.

Every lifetime contains pivot points—sometimes flukes of destiny, sometimes seemingly preordained—that shape and eventually cement one’s path.

Presenting an unremarkable facade to the outside world is the norm; superficial conversations comprise the majority of social encounters. When an individual trusts another sufficiently to expose the true self—the deepest fears, the hidden desires—a powerful intimacy is born.

Sometimes an exquisite gift is actually a vessel utilized to issue a warning shot.

Uncertainty is an excruciating state in which to exist. A moral question that never appeared in my study continues to claim prominence in my mind: Is it possible to look someone you love in the eye and tell a lie without experiencing remorse?

We all have reasons for our judgments, even if those reasons are so deeply buried we don’t recognize them ourselves.

You will be in complete control and can back out at any time.

Subjects typically modify their behavior when they recognize that they are part of an experiment. This is known as the Hawthorne effect, named after the place where this result was first encountered, the Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works. A basic study to determine how the level of light in their building affected the productivity of laborers revealed that the amount of luminosity made no difference in the employees’ productivity. The workers increased output whenever the light was manipulated, whether from low to high or vice versa. In

EVERY FAMILY GENERATES its own particular dysfunction.

As a therapist, one often witnesses a client’s attempt to rationalize, to make excuses, as a defense mechanism to quash overwhelming emotions. However, those four words could not be ignored.

Often the person we judge most harshly is ourself. Every day, we criticize our decisions, our actions, even our private thoughts. We worry the tone of an e-mail we sent to a colleague might be misconstrued. We lambaste our lack of self-control as we throw away the empty ice-cream container. We regret rushing a friend off the phone instead of listening patiently to their troubles. We wish we had told a family member what they meant to us before they died. We all carry the weight of secret regrets—the strangers we see on the street, our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends, even our loved ones.

“The joy—the sense of completeness it can offer a person—is directly proportional to the amount of anguish one experiences when that love is withdrawn.”

A secret is only safe if one person holds it, I think. But when two share a confidence, and both have self-preservation as their main motive, one of them is going to give.

Communication is a vital component of a healthy partnership. It is a necessary foundational aspect of a romantic relationship, as well as a therapeutic one.

A napkin is passed to him.

When money and morality intersect, the results can illuminate intriguing truths about human character.

People are motivated to break their moral compasses for a variety of primal reasons—survival, hate, love, envy, passion, Dr. Shields wrote in her notes. And money. Her study has been terminated.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.