In this emerging blogger post, LaDonna of Perspective on Trauma writes about looking within in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been a strange time for all of us over the last several months. As we “stay at home” or “shelter in place (no matter our political background or accompanying belief system) we all […]
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is stoicism. Stoicism came up in a book I recently reviewed, You Got This, and I wanted to find out more about it. It means taking a detour from psychology into the world of philosophy. Stoicism in Ancient
“Happiness is a choice.” It’s a message that you probably come across fairly often. While it’s probably meant to be motivational and positive most of the time, if you start to poke at it a bit, it has some fundamental flaws. I believe that happiness is not a choice, at least not when something like
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is alexithymia. Alexithymia involves an inability to identify and describe emotions. It’s considered a personality trait that can be present to varying degrees and is relatively stable over time. It’s been associated with a number of DSM diagnoses
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Triumph by Trepanation is a short (47 page) book by Nina Rabinowitz that describes how she was able to find healing from an anxiety disorder. The book begins with her youth in a New Jersey suburb. She was expected to follow the standard “New York Jewish Roadmap” of what constituted acceptable life choices. She describes
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s terms are anxiety vs. worry. Anxiety and worry are both normal human experiences, but when severe they can be elements of mental illness. Notably, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) features both of them. People with high levels of neuroticism as
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Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life by Steven C. Hayes explains how concepts from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can get you unstuck from your thoughts so you’re free to actually start living. The book takes a brief look at relational frame theory, on which ACT is based, but doesn’t get bogged
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Everything Isn’t Terrible by marriage and family therapist Dr. Kathleen Smith draws on Bowen theory to deal with anxiety. This theory of human behaviour sees anxiety as rooted in social relationships, so work on relationships must be done to improve anxiety. The book is divided into four sections: the anxious self, anxious relationships, anxious career,
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All She Wrote: Catharsis & Absolution, is a book of poetry by Paula Light. It focuses on the myriad emotions that go along with relationship heartbreak. There are poems about narcissism, gaslighting, and other highly charged circumstances. There’s also a poem about a non-starter online relationship and Google stalking. Here are some of my favourite
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s terms are jealousy and envy. The terms jealousy and envy are often used synonymously, but they actually refer to two separate, although related, emotions. They’re both social emotions, in that we experience them in relation to other people. Envy
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