In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is psychodynamic psychotherapy. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a type of talk therapy that does a deep dive into the past to help uncover what’s going on in the unconscious mind in order to figure out problems in the person’s life. It’s […]
What Is… Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Read More »
Resilient by psychologist Rick Hanson looks at how to build resilience given what we know about the neuroscience of learning. Despite being grounded in science, it’s refreshingly practical and simple. The book begins by identifying three basic human needs (safety, satisfaction, connection) and ways to meet those needs (recognizing, resourcing, regulating, relating). These are set
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I’ve taken birth control pills for much of my adult life. Sometimes the contraceptive benefit was useful, but much of the time, it was more about keeping estrogen fluctuations associated with PMS at bay. I’ve recently decided to stop taking the pill because there is some indication that oral contraceptives may promote inflammation. The connection
Estrogen & Depression: An Unhappy Dance Read More »
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) has a lot of useful concepts, but one of my favourites is wise mind. Wise mind is the area of overlap between our emotional mind and our reasonable/rational/logical mind. Emotional mind deals in feelings, while reasonable mind deals in facts and evidence. Neither emotion mind nor reasonable mind is wrong or invalid,
Finding Wise Mind in DBT Read More »
Bipolar Me by Janet Coburn explores her journey with bipolar II disorder. The book is made up of blog posts, which are divided into chapters based on theme. The chapters cover topics like the symptoms of bipolar disorder, the “med-go-round”, times of struggling, dealing with social situations, and broader societal issues. Each post is pretty
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I think we’ve probably all felt the urge at one point or another to give advice. We see the situation someone is in, and can’t help but think if they only did X, then things would be so much better for them. Chances are that most of us have also been on the receiving end
How Helpful Is It to Give Unsolicited Advice? Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is anosognosia. I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard this term before, so let’s break it down. Agnosia is an inability to recognize people or things. Nosology is the classification of diseases. Throw the two together, and you get
What Is… Anosognosia (Lack of Insight) Read More »
This is a follow-up to a recent post on why I think direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs is wrong. This post is going to look specifically at marketing by drug companies aimed at health care professionals. Primarily this relationship between Big Pharma and psychiatry involves targeting physicians, as they’re doing the majority of the prescribing.
Big Pharma & Psychiatry: Cozier Than They Should Be? Read More »
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that takes the stance that avoidance and resistance to internal experiences identified as negative is what causes cognitive distress. To resolve distress, ACT suggests that we need to employ strategies like mindfulness, de-fusion from our thoughts, and recognizing the self as the context in which
Setting Sail with the ACT Life Compass Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is psychomotor retardation (PMR). Psychomotor retardation, one of the less common but more outwardly observable symptoms of depression, involves a slowing of movement and thoughts. It’s been described as far back as Ancient Greek times. PMR is one
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