Relationships: What are they*/them*? Stories for May 

One evening in October 2013, I were in my bedroom with  dim light on, completing a last minute case study on my Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) module for a programme of study accredited by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapies professions (BACP) at Birkbeck College, University of London – I could see on my side left corner of my laptop screen an invite to part take into a quiz for finding best assessment screening measures resources. As it happened, and acknowledging without modesty or bragging about such a success, I have won that quiz – in less than timeframe provided,. Gracefully, grateful on that quiz opportunity and participation. What is not known about that exact time is that, that evening I was insufficiently captured with reflecting on my case studies  When all were put to rest with that quiz that evening, I made a good regroup on my mind with the help of one advert and i ventured out from psychology forums and forms to some other quizzes ready available coming up on my screen. One such prospective enquiry came from MI5 security services and that very same screen can be accessed here: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/quizzes I took the investigative challenge first and I have barely passed 4 out of 8 score - within fractions of seconds, I re/attempted same challenge within seconds and got 8/8 

Must be said that there were no intention on furthering my analytical skills at that time. I do not gamble, I do not have a gambling mind and I only complete Sudoku on my commute to work to pass the time, but at very core of me there is no desire to unnecessarily challenge my mind. I now think that a part of me changed after that reflective evening. A feeling were born from an understanding that there is a large, significant part of me that is able to compartmentalize and re/evaluate types of involvement in different relationships on a dynamic between personal and professional levels. There is a question as to how best define that capacity, a capacity  - when times require - for one to be quite so clear and distinct about personal life and professional life. 

Readers might wonder how, why and what this story has anything to do with relationships and what are they*/them* question from title blog - that is in fact what was aimed to be pursued here as an argument. My answer is that all such events from that evening are quite significant: 

relationships at professional level and relationship at personal level are collapsed in an investigative enquiry or real life stories and having to disentangle and pursue what matters most is a difficult task.

Relationships are hard, negotiating between wants and haves and dreams of one with dreams of two, etc, relationships are also hard because an individual understanding and self-growth must always check in with values of self and where she/he is positioning herself/himself within larger structures of society.

Yesterday evening I went through some old efiles and one  email had as subject line: attachment! – When opened and read – it was in fact an outline of a book read from 2012 named “The science of persuasion” by Robert Cialdini. A great text, extremely informative on the negotiation of not the private and public self but personal and more personal – what, if anything, can be seen as an incentive to persuasion. Perhaps we all have a life time to find out exactly that.