Cognition

multiple closed doors representing choice

Is Suicide a Choice? (Regardless, It’s Not Selfish)

This post isn’t about saying that suicide is something people should choose, or that it’s a good choice, or that it’s a choice that they want to have on the menu. I’m writing this because, while it’s much more complicated to get into the element of choice, I believe that it’s inaccurate to say that …

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Faith, Attribution, and Cognitive Dissonance

This post flows from a few different things that other bloggers have been talking about lately. I’ll refer specifically to a couple of posts about faith on Tisha B’Av, a Jewish day of mourning, but this also ties into what some other people have been talking about with regards to subjective vs. objective reality. This …

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How Much Control Do You Have Over Your Mind?

A while back, a post about choosing to be positive came up in my WordPress 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 …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Executive Functioning

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms.  This week’s term is executive functioning. 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 your brain’s air traffic control system. Tasks that fall under this umbrella include: …

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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphors

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 our heads, not the content of it. One metaphor for …

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Mental Health @ Home book review: Remember by Lisa Genova

Book Review: Remember by Lisa Genova

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 – affiliate links). The book begins by …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Ellis’s 12 Irrational Beliefs

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 …

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Do You Have Dead People Goals?

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 is …

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The tree of contemplative practices from The Contemplative Mind Foundation

Exploring Contemplative Practices

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 swirl around it. Contemplative practices build meta-awareness, …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… a Heuristic in Psychology

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is heuristic. A heuristic (from the Greek “to discover”) is a mental rule of thumb or shortcut that allows our brains to process information and arrive at conclusions more quickly. I recently wrote about philosophical razors, which are …

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