Dr. Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD therapist

01/09/2025

WHY DO I KEEP CHOOSING TOXIC PARTNERS?
By Dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands
www.marcelderoos.com

What do we do when we often find ourselves in a relationship with someone who seems to have abusive tendencies? We can try to understand this person, what’s wrong with him or her. Does this person comes from an abusive family, has an unhealthy attachment style, unresolved childhood traumas, is it a narcissist or suffering from other mental issues?

A better way is to ask yourself why you repeatedly tolerate people who are emotionally not available, who push you away, or who actively abuse you. Perhaps you are reaffirming something that feels similar, familiar. It could very well be that growing up your parents have mistreated you, like a very controlling and abusive mother, or a distant father. The relationship with your partner might not be great, but since it feels familiar, your subconscious will often prefer it.

There exist this fairy tale that you first have to love yourself before you should start a relationship. But romantic relationships are par eminence a place where we can grow, by confronting repetitive hurtful triggers and learning to cope with them in a different way. We humans are relational beings, we need others to make us feel safe.

Relationships mirror us to find out where we need more healing. Because romantic relationships are so close and intense, they resemble the family relationships we grew up with, including all the problems and traumatic experiences. In our present romantic relationships we have to deal with being vulnerable, getting hurt, fights, compromises, boundaries. They can trigger us to experience unhealthy patterns and root causes in our past family life. This is painful but it also gives us an opportunity to reflect, grow and change our current behaviour.

As a side note, no parent is perfect and babies and children need to get used to living in an imperfect world. The British paediatrician and psychotherapist Donald Winnicot phrased the concept of “good enough parenting”. A person develops a “true self” when it has learnt to feel seen, and as good enough. On the contrary, a “false self” signifies only surface confidence and adjustment to the outside world, but it lacks passion and meaningfulness.

And regarding choices we make, the writer Milan Kundera explains vividly in his book “Testaments betrayed”, that we all walk in a fog. But when we look back to judge people’s past then you don’t see that fog, only a clear path. So it’s important to practice kindness, empathy and understanding towards others and towards ourselves.

We can easily hide our struggles for others, and even for ourselves, but not in close relationships. We can find healing and inner peace through relationships, as long as we are aware about our patterns in behaviour and emotions, and we think of how we can change these. We can learn to notice certain triggers, where they are related to, and we can choose to react in a different way. It usually has to do with deeper emotions (and to a lesser extent with a rational insight) which connect with older patterns and experiences from our family relationships in our childhood and teenage years.

Marcel de Roos psychologist with practice in Colombo Sri Lanka (corporate) coaching online counselling.

13/08/2025

EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS: MEANINGFULNESS, LIFE AND DEATH.
By Dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, The Netherlands
www.marcelderoos.com

Many of my clients, after having spoken about their more imminent issues, often mention existential concerns like choices in their life, how to live and the impermanence of life.

One of my favourite authors is the American existential psychotherapist / psychiatrist Irvin Yalom. In his book “Love’s executioner and other tales of psychotherapy” (and more in detail in his book “Existential psychotherapy”) he writes about his existential perspective. Yalom asserts that in order to discover the fundamental truths of our existence one should make time to reflect. That means personal reflection in silence, solitude and exclusion of distractions (no phone, music, TV, people). By doing so, we can get deeper and experience personal emotions and thoughts. This is not the same as meditating where the aim is often “to quiet the monkey mind”, whereas self-reflection is about confronting your thoughts and especially your emotions.

Yalom differentiates four ultimate concerns which individuals are confronted with in their existential dynamic conflict: death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness. By confronting these existential truths they can be vessels for personal change and growth.

- Death is the only guarantee we have in life. When we are young we usually hardly think of it because we are so involved with creating and managing our lives, and death seems far away. When we get older, we typically seek solace with rationalising death or we follow a spiritual or religious path. We know about death intellectually, but we tend to dissociate from the terror that comes with the notion of death. But being fully aware of death and accepting it enhances our wisdom and it gives depth to our lives…
- Although we often think of freedom as an unequivocally positive concept, freedom signifies that one is responsible for one’s own choices, life design and actions. It also means that we as humans become very anxious with the absence of any existing structure, and we have to deal with nothingness, which feels like a void, an abyss. The answer lies in taking ownership and make a decision to act.
- Existential isolation is fundamental in the sense of an unbridgeable gap between ourselves and others (even if you’re in a deeply gratifying relationship). Each of us enters life alone and we must depart from it alone. Our wish for contact, protection, our wish to be part of something larger, tries to cover up our awareness of our fundamental isolation. Although there is no solution for existential isolation, we must find our own way to make peace with it.
- Many people seek therapy because they feel empty and search for meaningfulness. Life in itself has no meaning, you’re born and you die, but we can give meaning to our individual lives. Why do we live, how to live, there is no readymade map for us, so we have to construct our own meaning in life. Meaningfulness is a by-product of engagement and commitment, and it can’t be found rationally. Meaning should be searched implicitly, it results from activities where one feels involved with. The outcome often surprises us because there is no rational explanation for it.

As a psychologist it’s a prerequisite to be able to tolerate uncertainty. Clients’ experiences are unique and there are no standard answers. Therapists should refrain from embracing rigid ideological schools and therapeutic systems. Effective therapy lies often in the unexpected and spontaneous conversations.

Marcel de Roos psychologist with practice in Colombo Sri Lanka (corporate) coaching online counselling.

17/07/2025

WEIGHT GAIN, BODY IMAGE AND EMOTIONS.
By Dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands
www.marcelderoos.com

Quite a few clients that I speak have weight issues, and they tell me they have gone to every gym in town, tried out every diet but had only short lived success, if any success at all. The programs they are following are usually based on setting goals, perseverance and willpower. These are bound to fail, and all that results is at best only temporary weight loss, the well-known yo-yo effect. The body image will become very destructive and negative.

What is missing here is the all-important role of our emotions. People overeat for reasons and these are usually emotional. We sometimes seem to forget the massive influence (this is of course highly simplified) that our amygdala and limbic system have on our behaviour. Besides striving to maintain a lifestyle of moderate exercise and a moderate healthy diet, the real crux lies at finding out the root causes of our overeating and dealing with them.

As with any addiction it’s not what you use nor your behaviour itself, but the fact that you can’t seem to stop it. What makes you continue overeating and why can’t you stop? The reason is that the addictive behaviour has an important purpose: it keeps us away from the underlying emotional pain. We try to alleviate this original pain with our addiction and in this manner we escape from the unconscious truth which we don’t want to face. There are many behaviours that can be used to deal with the original pain: gambling, eating disorders, p**n, extreme cleaning, OCD, extreme exercising, workaholic behaviour, etc.

Addictions can originate from childhood experiences or to a lesser extent from later in life. An emotionally confident parent will respond to the needs of a child and makes it feel safe. The child’s nervous system will relax and the child learns to regulate its emotions. When parents are stressed, depressed, absent, unable to handle emotions or abusive, there is no safety and the child will search for other ways to deal with this. Addictive behaviour releases pleasant and rewarding hormones which makes you feel (at that moment) comforted. We try to fill up a void that arose because we didn’t get the care and attention that we needed. The addiction gives us consolation, like a surrogate mother that we never had.

The road to recovery lies in fostering curiosity regarding root causes, making effort to get insight in those, articulate the recently acquired awareness in a new light, and above all start to experience feelings related to the root causes. With each fresh attempt a different layer becomes bare, it typically takes many non-linear sequences to process tainted experiences, and usually with small steps forwards and backwards.

It’s NOT about using our willpower to stop the addiction or to get used to better routines, these are only superficial remedies which won’t deal with the root causes. The addiction serves a goal: to fill in a void, by facing those feelings you become aware of the painful past experiences. Many people have blocked memories in order not to feel the pain. Healing means that the connection with your past needs to be emotional and not only rational. In addition, the past should be worked through several times by means of connecting with emotions, and from different perspectives.

Marcel de Roos psychologist with practice in Colombo Sri Lanka (corporate) coaching online counselling.

29/06/2025

DREAM INTERPRETATION ACCORDING TO FREUD AND JUNG.
By Dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands
www.marcelderoos.com

According to Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) dreams are the expression of our unconscious mind. In his book “The interpretation of dreams” (1900), he wrote about the significance of dreams. Dreams are symbolic, and they mirror the subjectivity of the dreamer, and they are a manifestation of her psychological language. So a dream has a hidden message, but only within the life story of the dreamer herself.

Freud believed that dreams are encrypted messages from our unconscious. He thought that every dream conceals repressed desires. In his theory we keep these suppressed needs out of our consciousness during daytime, but at night the door pries open. The self-imposed censorship is then less controlling, and desires can emerge in an encoded fashion.

In his theory, there are two versions of each dream. The manifest dream is the dream as it was dreamt and retold: usually a peculiar sequence of events. But behind this manifest dream exists a concealed, second meaning: the latent dream. By means of interpretation and analysis (like a puzzle) it’s possible to translate the manifest dream into the original latent meaning. According to Freud it’s needed to divide the dream into individual elements, and by means of free association with these separate elements you notice new images. Eventually you’ll see all kinds of cross connections and similarities which can be reduced to one core idea: the latent significance.

Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist with a great interest in Freud’s psychoanalytic method. He met the twenty year older Freud in 1907 and started working with him. Freud regarded the intelligent and gifted Jung as his successor as head of the international psychoanalytic movement. But the two men differed about the theory of psychoanalysis and they eventually didn’t get along on a personal level either. They broke up and Jung developed his own theory: the analytic psychology.

Where dreams are concerned, Jung accepted Freud’s approach that the manifest content of dreams stems from events in recent days and from childhood, but Jung believed that there is a third source, belonging to the evolutionary history of our species, which he called the collective unconscious. Moreover, contrarily to Freud, Jung believed that the forbidden wishes manifesting themselves in dreams weren’t predominantly s*xual in nature, but much wider. Dreams could also be seen for example in the light of wishes for a healthier psychological future. Jungian therapy and dream analysis differs significantly from Freud’s ideas. It goes beyond the scope of this article to go deeper into this, and Jung’s style of writing is often complex, demanding and requires constant attention from the reader.

Within the regular psychotherapy, dream analysis is considered to be outdated and the use of it in the treatment process is limited. Only in specialised psychoanalytic therapy, dreams are an integrated part of the treatment. They offer a unique insight to the personality of the dreamer. But Freud’s idea that there is only one interpretation of a dream has disappeared. A dream has endless interpretations, but the interpretation that the patient and therapist jointly share, has an impact on the course of a therapy. The manifest content of a dream and how that relates to the life story of the patient has significance. Dreams show that our psyche has less known elements and that the human mind is much richer and more complex than we think it is.

Marcel de Roos psychologist with practice in Colombo Sri Lanka (corporate) coaching online counselling.

07/06/2025

A PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE.
By dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands
www.marcelderoos.com

In Sri Lanka, psychology or counselling is mainly cognitive orientated. Cognitive behaviour therapy is a collective term for a whole gamut of therapy forms. Clients are encouraged to challenge “irrational thoughts” and change “negative” thoughts into “positive” ones. It stays in the present, and its theory assumes that it’s your perception of the world that colours your views and feelings.

A psychodynamic approach asserts that the mind is an interplay of forces between on the one hand motives, desires and emotions and on the other norms and values. The actual behaviour is a more or less appropriate compromise of this. It’s dynamic because this therapeutic approach guides the client towards a more functional and more satisfactory modification of the beneficial and restraining forces in our psychological life.

On the surface, psychodynamic therapy seems a “talking therapy”. And yes, expressing yourself verbally is beneficial: people start to feel better and it generates hope. But speaking freely in total sincerity often also brings emotions like pain and shame. Sometimes you’re surprised of what you’re saying. The preferred psychological freedom starts with freedom in speech during psychotherapy. Speaking out can change people: communicating in truth and truthfulness, with FULL words (filled with emotions) and not empty ones.

The therapist shouldn’t engage much in “small talk”, it takes away the tension and words can become just reassurance. It’s beneficial to confront yourself with the truth, with reality, in order to feel grounded, provided of course if it’s tolerable. Truth, within certain limits, trumps covering up, cheating, tampering and deceiving yourself.

It’s clear that the family you grew up in, often has a significant impact on covering up. In every family there exists something that everyone knows but nobody is allowed to speak about. It’s vital that children are allowed to speak to their parents. They need to be actively encouraged to express what they are thinking, so children can realise what they experience. Plus children should be allowed to keep things for themselves.

Listening enables speaking. It’s a powerful invitation when someone is willing to listen to something that no one has ever wanting to hear. The psychologist needs to quietly sit and wait for the client to communicate developing emotional insights to come out. All of this without giving clues to what the client might think what the psychologist wants to hear.

Sometimes keeping silent is the best form of communication. Giving the client the space to tell what she wants to say, giving the time to process things. Do not rush the client, but enable him to formulate his words, experience his emotions and to allow the unexpected to happen. Clients should try to integrate the relived experience in their inner world. Words can get significance because of their being enveloped in silence. Speaking out can change people, psychodynamic therapy is a deeply emotional “talking cure”.

Working-through of traumas is one of the key points in therapy. A one-time rational insight is insufficient. The client needs to acquire a lived-through understanding, so it’s necessary to repeatedly discuss experiences and from different perspectives.

Marcel de Roos psychologist with practice in Colombo Sri Lanka (corporate) coaching online counselling.

06/05/2025

NIETZSCHE: OPTIMISM, PASSION AND BECOME WHO YOU ARE.
By Dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands.
www.marcelderoos.com

Another important thinker in the history of psychology is Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900). He was a German philosopher and writer, and became a professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Despite his short and tragic life (in his last twenty years his physical and mental health degenerated), he has published some very influential books. His work has had an important influence on modern culture and philosophy. In psychology and in psychotherapy his ideas have been used to understand motivation and self-improvement.

Nietzsche can be viewed as an optimist. He explored nihilism (a philosophy that asserts that life has no inherent meaning or purpose), but came with his own interpretation. He stated that Christianity has lost its meaning, there exists no supernatural being that defines good and evil and that gives purpose to life. There is no basis for our norms and values, and no absolute truth. We need to create those ourselves. This is in itself a quite optimistic outlook on life. By using nihilism as a starting point, humans have the ability to generate their own meaning and values in a world without purpose. It signifies that you overcome nihilism by finding meaningfulness.

Contrary to many other philosophers (for example the Stoics), Nietzsche propagates to embrace your passions. They shouldn’t be suppressed, but accepted as strong sources of suffering or intense pleasure. These are powerful forces that can elicit creativity and meaningfulness (even in painful experiences). Passions are according to Nietzsche indispensable for creating our personal values. His famous quote “one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star” signifies that by embracing your inner chaos and complexity you can nurture personal growth, creativity and new ideas.

Become who you are: that means that you should slowly and carefully try to taste, savour and experience, which implicates that you need to leave your safe spot. Nietzsche doesn’t tell you what to do, but he tells you that you have to do it. That you owe it to yourself, if you don’t transform yourself, you’re being transformed!

Nietzsche wrote that you need to experimentally find out, you need to try out different things. You need to leave your house, meet other people, explore relationships, taste diverse life experiences, and don’t always open doors but close a few too. Don’t constantly follow others, but find your own way. Discover and learn until you have found what defines YOU. And above all, DARE. Daring initially gives a tinge of uneasiness, but if you don’t dare you will lose yourself. Dare to choose, to become free. Be it a study, a job, a relationship or a belief system.

With Nietzsche as your pocket therapist you can become your own Ubermensch, embrace life, and you will live your life without regret.

21/03/2025

OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOUR.
By dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands
www.marcelderoos.com

Someone with obsessive compulsive behaviour, or better known as OCD: obsessive compulsive disorder, is plagued by recurring obsessive thoughts and/or obsessive and almost uncontrollable repetitive behaviour. About 1% to 3% of the population has OCD and males and females are equally affected.

Frequent obsessions are germophobia, imaginary fear of causing harm to others or yourself, perfectionism, obtrusive s*xual or “forbidden” thoughts, excessive religious or moral doubts, etc. They are hard to ignore or to let go and make you feel anxious, scared and tense. They only seem stoppable by performing certain behaviour.

Common compulsions are frequent repetitive behaviours like handwashing, checking to ensure that the light or gas is off, silently repeating words, praying, counting, catastrophising, etc.
Compulsions are neutralising behaviour you perform in an attempt to prevent something bad to happen (this is often linked with obsessive thoughts). They are often performed and repeated according to strict rituals.

There is no conclusive proof regarding the cause of OCD. But very often there are factors like a period with stressful circumstances or experiences like the birth of a child, a new job, unemployment, poverty, a traumatic childhood, they all can contribute to a developing OCD. To make it more complicated, OCD can also evolve without stressful experiences.

The first choice of behavioral treatment is exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP). Exposure means confronting yourself gradually to a situation which you are afraid of. The therapist will ask you to make a hierarchical list of fearful situations, which will be used as a tool to gradually increase the severity of the triggers.

Response prevention means that during and after the exposure making a choice not to respond with a compulsion. For example with fear of contamination the aim is to consciously stop with handwashing. By realising that the contamination won’t take place, the fear will decrease. Or with a fear of a calamity, by not returning home to check the lights and gas, you will realise that the disaster won’t happen, and that the fear will decline. The therapist will guide you to accept the confronting situation and the ensuing feelings, sit with them, and resist the urge to react with compulsive behaviour.

With ERP there will be an initial increase of anxiety, but soon you will feel that it’s manageable. Very important is that you stop fighting the obsessions, this will cause that the intensity of the feelings will drop. You will notice that by continuing practicing ERP you will get used to the fact that your fears won’t materialise, and your everyday levels of anxiety will be reduced significantly. ERP techniques are for example increasing the time between the experienced obsession and the subsequent compulsion, trying to delay the compulsion, mindfulness.

One of the drawbacks of ERP is that it is purely behaviouralistic and that it stays in the present, while very often the core fear stems from past experiences. It’s important to unearth these factors and make an emotional link between the experienced present fear (that is causing the OCD behaviour) and the root causes in the past. By accepting and feeling the initial occurrence in the past, the present anxiety and fear will diminish.

Marcel de Roos psychologist with practice in Colombo Sri Lanka (corporate) coaching online (FaceTime/Skype) counselling.

02/03/2025

ANGER: MANAGEMENT AND DEALING WITH ROOT CAUSES.
By Dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands
www.marcelderoos.com

Anger is one of the five basic emotions, next to sadness, fear, happiness and disgust. It’s very normal to get angry once in a while, it usually happens when our boundaries are crossed in one way or another.

The deeper reasons underneath our anger can lie in our childhood where for example parents were used to deal with problems in an aggressive manner, which for their children has become normalised. Another reason can be an aggressive context like a busy, stressful or competitive environment. Also, hormonal changes like PMS, menopause or a high testosterone level can result in a (temporary) quick temper.

To be very clear, a troubled childhood does not necessary mean that you will become an aggressive adult, nor that your stressful environment always result in an angry outburst. It’s usually a combination of factors and mitigating circumstances and it’s different for each individual.

Most methods for anger management are quite cognitive orientated and focus on the anger that is presenting itself in the present. While in reality anger is an emotion and it’s typically a mix of a trigger in the present and unprocessed old anger that comes rushing in.

Anger is a very powerful emotion, and at times it can be problematic. When anger hits us we need to be aware in our body of the rising feeling of that anger. Was there a trigger that provoked us to feel angry? If there was a small trigger and the anger is at par with that, then it’s fine. If there is a huge trigger with a resulting huge anger then it’s okay too (for example a very threatening situation).

But when there is a small trigger and a huge ensuing anger then it usually has to be old anger. After recognising this, we need to take preventing measures to avoid an unfair outburst. We can try deep belly breathing techniques, which can ground us and make us feel calmer. Or sometimes counting until ten can be helpful.

But at other times you can breathe and count for all you want, but the anger is too powerful. Then you have only one option and that is walk away to a bathroom, bedroom or another (office) place. And make sure that the person you’re angry with doesn’t follow you! In a private place you need to FEEL and accept your anger and explore if there is an underlying emotion, which usually presented itself before the anger, it can be for example hurt, pain, fear.

By connecting with that underlying emotion we get insight where that might stem from. It could be a recent experience, or further back in your childhood. Injustice is one of the more compelling reasons that can evoke anger. Try to connect with that previous experience within the total context, and with the wisdom and insight that you have now. As a result, the impact of that old pain with diminish. Feelings want only one thing, to be felt. Old pain is often not experienced and processed because back then it was not acceptable to react, or the pain was too much so we had to suppress it.

By repeatedly going to the practice of relaying present excessive anger to experiences in our past that are root causes, we can come to a state of mind where our past doesn’t affect us that much anymore. This isn’t done in a few days, but by diligently going through the steps you will see results! The essence is to allow an unpleasant feeling in yourself to sit there. You need to experience and feel that pain and let it be there. Then it will reduce and it will become quiet inside and you can let it go.

20/01/2025

THE WISDOM OF ARISTOTLE, STILL GOING STRONG.
By Dr Marcel de Roos, Psychologist PhD, the Netherlands.
www.marcelderoos.com

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) can be considered as one of the founding fathers of modern psychology. He was a prolific writer, and he wrote about 200 lectures, of which only 31 survived.

He was a student of Plato (and he rejected his Theory of Forms) but was far more empirically focused and a strong advocate of accurate reasoning. Aristotle also thought that general principles can be important, but there are no strict rules because every situation is different. With each ethical dilemma, those involved need to be extensively immersed in the details of the particular situation.

Most contemporary books about happiness describe “objective happiness”, which can be measured by factors as having a good health, longevity, a loving family, and freedom from financial worries. But there is also “subjective happiness”, which has to do with satisfaction or feeling good about yourself. This kind of happiness can be described, but not measured. We can never fathom from outer appearances whether a person is truly happy or not: a seemingly cheerful person can be very depressed inside. And a relatively short life can be very satisfactory while a long and healthy life very disappointing.

Aristotle was the first philosopher who studied subjective happiness and he developed a program how to become a person with a happy and meaningful life. He propagated a life with active, practical, flexible, social, independent and “good” intentions. The state of mind that is the result of this, is “eudaimonia” (his notion of happiness).

In his Ethica Nicomachea he wrote that many people confuse certain forms of desirabilities like pleasure, wealth or fame, with the meaningful and commendable goals that he mentioned. The problem with the former is that they are strongly influenced by chance (see for example nonsense like “the law of attraction” or “manifesting”, where you can easily fall into a depression when the promised results fail to materialise, because life has its natural quirks and setbacks, and you start blaming yourself), while goals that incorporate social and community involvement can generate the kind of meaningfulness where “eudaimonia” refers to.

His complete manual for a meaningful life can be summarised in one sentence: choose for the golden mean, and in function of the circumstances. You can think for example of food and alcohol which we can consume more at a party than on an average day, but also of eroticism. The hypers*xual male or female who jumps from one bed after the other and tries out every position, gender and gadget and who continually tries to excel by means of a cocktail of vi**ra and co***ne, finds his or her opposite in the frustrated ascetic who has denounced s*x and as a consequence thinks of it the whole day. Likewise, courage is the middle between recklessness and cowardice, calmness between hotheadedness and valium-apathy, and each example always depends on the context.

Aristotle emphasised that maturity isn’t related to biological age: there are young people who are emotionally quite grown up and there are older people who will never reach full psychological and emotional growth. In addition, he believed that people who suppress their emotions too strong, are not capable to live a life where they can pursue effectively commendable and meaningful goals. In this sense he seems to be very modern and psycho-dynamic orientated.