I find it fascinating the range of comfort levels people have with being alone. It’s pretty much guaranteed that we will all need to spend at least some time in our own company, yet there are many, many ways in which people experience this. While I know that for some people alone time is quite […]
How Do You Feel About Your Own Company? Read More »
Being perfect is an ideal that some people may strive for or feel that they are required to attain, but how realistic is the notion of perfection? One of the biggest problems with perfect is that a lot of things in this world are subjective. When it comes to things that are subjective, everyone has
The Problem With Perfect… Is That It Doesn’t Exist Read More »
We all have a variety of different characteristics and things floating around in our heads. But when you dig down deep to the core, what is it that makes you, you? I think a major part of the foundation of who we are is the sum of our entire life experiences. No one else has had
Exploring Identity: What Makes You, You? Read More »
Failure isn’t fun. There’s just no two ways about that. But what does that failure mean> I think that, particularly when mental illness is involved, it’s easy to leap from “I failed at [X]” to “I’m a failure.” But taking a step back, they’re not really the same thing. Fear of failure Fear of failure
When You Fail, Are You a Failure at a Task? Or as a Person? Read More »
When we look in the mirror, I suspect that very few of us see what’s objectively there in the reflection. So why is that? Do we recognize what we see? Mirror recognition is not as simple as it may seem. The vast majority of animals, including my guinea pig munchkins, lack this ability. When we
What Do You See In The Mirror? Does Mental Illness Affect It? Read More »
Sometimes, as part of anti-stigma campaigns, you’ll hear that we shouldn’t say people are bipolar, schizophrenic, etc. The thinking goes that phrasing it this way puts people in a little box in which they’re primarily defined by their illness. Yet at the same time, you’ll find many bloggers referring to themselves as “I am bipolar.”
Are You Your Mental Illness? Read More »
Introversion and extraversion are personality traits lying at opposite ends of a spectrum. Some people fit with one extreme or another, but many people fall somewhere in the middle. While societal expectations might make it seems like introversion is rare, it’s actually not. Introversion & extraversion – what’s the difference? Much of the difference between
How Common Is Introversion? Read More »
Introversion, shyness, and social anxiety can sometimes get mixed up and confused for one another, but they’re actually three distinct concepts. In this post, we’ll look at some of the similarities and differences. The relevant constructs Psychological constructs are representations of intangible thing that gives us a way to talk about those things and distinguish
Introversion, Shyness & Social Anxiety: What’s the Difference? Read More »
What exactly are emotions? Well, there’s no easy answer to that; it depends on who you ask and what their theoretical perspective is. But regardless of how we define them, how do we describe them? That can be easier said than done. There’s even a psychiatric term, alexithymia, for difficulty identifying and articulating emotions. Several
Identifying Emotions Read More »
A little while back I was reading a blog post that talked about Dr. Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person (affiliate link). I thought huh, sounds like I’m probably one of those. So I picked up the book from the library and had a read. It got me thinking about trait, illness, and all
Emotionally Sensitive, But Not-So-Highly Sensitive Person Read More »
