Psychology

Mental Health @ Home book review: Overcoming Stress-Induced Brain Fog by Jill Weber

Book Review: Overcoming Stress-Induced Brain Fog

Overcoming Stress-Induced Brain Fog by Jill Weber covers ten strategies to find focus and make your mind work better. It’s aimed at people who are experiencing brain fog due to chronic stress rather than due to illness. The book draws on concepts from cognitive behavioural therapy (ACT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness. The …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Attention

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is attention. We are constantly bombarded with a steady stream of stimuli, both internal and external. Attention is the process by which we narrow our focus to certain pieces of information. This is necessary because our capacity to …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Thought-Action Fusion

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is thought-action fusion. Thought-action fusion (TAF) happens when people believe there is an equivalence between thoughts and actions. It was first described by researchers in relation to OCD, although it’s not exclusive to OCD. There are a couple …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Cognitive vs. Emotional Empathy

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week, we’ll look at cognitive vs. emotional (affective) empathy. Emotional empathy, known formally as affective empathy, refers to our ability to share the emotions of others. Cognitive empathy refers to our ability to infer and understand someone’s emotional experiences from …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Eustress vs. Distress

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is eustress vs. distress. The concepts of eustress and distress were first described by medical researcher Hans Selye, who defined stress as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it.” He believed that stress …

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Procrastination vs. Energy Budgeting: What’s the Difference?

Energy budgeting and procrastination both involve putting tasks off until later, but one is healthy and the other isn’t. So what’s the difference? That’s what we’ll explore in this post. What is procrastination? I like Wikipedia‘s definition of procrastination – it is “the action of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that …

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Impostor Syndrome, Masking, Inadequacy, & Social Belonging

Impostor syndrome, masking, social belonging, and inadequacy – that’s a lot of things crammed into one title! The comments on a post I did a while back (Do You Experience Impostor Syndrome?) got me wondering where the lines are between impostor syndrome and some of the things that it overlaps with. I don’t have answers, …

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hands holding a note saying "think positive"

Toxic Positivity: What It Is and Why It’s Not Helpful

Positivity can be a good thing, but toxic positivity not so much. So, what’s the difference? I’d say that positivity is about finding the good that exists despite the bad, while toxic positivity is pretending that the bad can’t/doesn’t exist or trying not to allow it to exist. The element of invalidation is another thing …

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