A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
A while back, a post about choosing to be positive came up in my WP Reader feed. The blogger mentioned that "our mind is something we do and can have control over." While they weren't making reference to mental illness at all, I don't think control over one's own mind is quite so cut and… Continue reading How Much Control Do You Have Over Your Mind?
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is executive functioning. The idea for this post came from Meg of Where Good Advice Happens. Executive functioning refers to higher-level cognitive processes related to organization and regulation. It's the C-suite of your brain, or kind of like… Continue reading What Is… Executive Functioning
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is really big on using metaphors to convey key concepts. This post will take a look at a few of them. Self-as-context metaphors Chessboard A core message of ACT is that our self is the context for what happens inside out head, not the content of it. One metaphor for… Continue reading Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphors
Remember by Lisa Genova is a non-fiction book that explores how we do, and don't, remember. Genova is a neuroscientist who's also the author of five fiction books, all of which I've read. They feature characters with neurological conditions like Alzheimer's (Still Alice) and Huntingdon's (Inside the O'Briens). The book begins by describing how memories… Continue reading Book Review: Remember
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week, we'll look at the 12 irrational beliefs and 3 major musts described by Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT). I was vaguely familiar with REBT as the therapeutic approach behind SMART Recovery. Recently, when I… Continue reading What Is… 12 Irrational Beliefs and 3 Major Musts
: The topic of dead people goals came to mind a while back when I was commenting on a post by Quiet Person Loud Thoughts. I couldn't remember where I'd first heard of it, but with some hunting around, it looks like I got the idea from Susan David's book Emotional Agility. The original idea… Continue reading Do You Have Dead People Goals?
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society I first heard of the term contemplative practices when reading the book A Fearless Heart by Thupten Jinpa. This involves approaching an inner problem without avoidance or distraction. By establishing some mental space, you can consider the problem without getting caught up in the thoughts and emotions that… Continue reading Exploring Contemplative Practices
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is heuristic. Heuristics (from the Greek "to discover") are mental rules of thumb or shortcuts that allow our brains to process information and arrive at conclusions more quickly. A post not long ago covered philosophical razors, which are… Continue reading What Is… a Heuristic
ion In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is self-verification theory. Self-verification theory comes from social psychology, and it says that we want other people to see us the way we see ourselves. That might seem self-obvious, but what's interesting is that this applies even… Continue reading What Is… Self-Verification Theory
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is critical thinking. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that, while there are various different definitions, the basic underlying idea is "careful thinking directed to a goal." Wikipedia describes critical thinking as "the analysis of facts to form… Continue reading What Is… Critical Thinking