Crying can be a sign of joy, sadness, or frustration. Crying in public isn’t generally considered socially acceptable, and may be interpreted as a weakness. But are there any benefits from it? Well, maybe. Who cries, and when? Crying in response to pain is common until adolescence, but adults don’t usually cry for that reason. …
Do you make judgments when things are going well? If you do, that can stir up meta-feelings. Like metacognition is thinking about thinking, meta-feeling is feelings about feelings. Mental illness, or even a lot of stress, can mean extended periods of time feeling rather yucky. Periods of feeling good, or at least better in a …
Meta-Feelings: How Do You Feel About Feeling Good? Read More »
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 …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is emotion. This may seem like a rather obvious topic; after all, we all have emotions. But there’s actually more than meets the eye, so I thought it would be interesting to look a little closer. Emotions are …
Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley is part of a series of pocket therapy books from New Harbinger Publishers. The book is short, the chapters are bite-sized, and it’s very easy to read. The book is based on dialectical behaviour therapy, with a focus on emotional regulation. …
Book Review: Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance Read More »
In this emerging blogger post, Valerie Rice of The Tiny Couch writes about the good and the bad of journaling for mental health, and how to find balance. Journaling: Good Vs.Evil We have probably all heard about the therapeutic technique of journaling. Some of us might even keep a journal or diary on our nightstands, …
Stop Avoiding Stuff, by Matthew S. Boone, Jennifer Gregg, and Lisa W. Coyne, tackles avoidance using techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy. It teaches microskills that you can use as alternatives to avoidance, and suggests teeny tiny practices along the way. The book starts off with a look at what avoidance is and why we …
Don’t Believe Everything You Feel by Robert L. Leahy uses an emotional schema approach to help you manage anxiety and depression. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) tools are used as part of this approach. It’s set up as a workbook, with a substantial amount of text interspersed with worksheets. Some of the worksheets are fairly structured, …
My Heart’s Song: Emotional Musings 3 is a book of poetry by Maria Pratico, who you may know from her blog Emotional Musings. She explains in the introduction that after a messy divorce, she realized that her purpose was to use her own experiences to help others heal. She describes the poems in the book …
I had never heard of the notion of depression being anger turned inward until I heard about it indirectly while I was in hospital after a suicide attempt. My primary nurse kept asking me what I was angry about. She was insistent that I must have been angry about something to have tried to kill …
