A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is STAIR narrative therapy. I recently stumbled across STAIR narrative therapy for PTSD, so I thought I'd do a post about it. STAIR stands for Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation. STAIR narrative therapy, which was developed… Continue reading What Is… STAIR Narrative Therapy for PTSD
From Hardened to Healed by Debi Silber encourages readers to move beyond where they're stuck right now to a place of greater healing. I learned of this book from Joshua Shea, who you may know from his blog paddictrecovery.com; in the book, he shares his story of recovery from addiction and betrayal trauma. The author… Continue reading Book Review: From Hardened to Healed
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is mentalization. Mentalizing is something you do, but probably haven't heard of. My browser's spell-checker tells me it's not a word. Okay, so what is it? Well, that's not the easiest thing to explain. Defining mentalism The American… Continue reading What Is… Mentalization
I'm generally pretty out of the loop when it comes to pop psychology phenomena, so I just stumbled across the term toxic productivity fairly recently. While I hadn't heard the term before, I'm at least with it enough to know that productivity talk is all over the internet. What is toxic productivity? Toxic productivity is… Continue reading Why Is Toxic Productivity a Thing?
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is panic buying. Panic buying has been in the news in the UK recently, and I'm sure everyone remembers the great toilet paper crisis of 2020. This phenomenon has occurred a number of times over the past century.… Continue reading What Is… Panic Buying
There's a lot of overlap in terms used in psychiatry/psychology-speak, and sometimes that can lead mistaken association of words that contain some of the same parts but actually mean very different things (like psychosis and psychopathy). This post will break down some of those words and word roots to hopefully add some clarity. Word roots… Continue reading Psychosis, Psychopathy & Other Psych Terms
It's interesting what you can uncover if you lean into reactions, including triggers that weren't initially obvious. In this post, I'm using trigger in a general sense to refer to one thing bringing up (triggering) something else that's not directly related, rather than talking about trauma triggers that cause re-experiencing. What got me thinking about… Continue reading Leaning into Reactions to Recognize Triggers
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is adaptive vs. maladaptive coping. I use these terms a fair bit, but I don't think I've ever actually explained them. One way of characterizing coping strategies is as being adaptive or maladaptive. Adaptive strategies make things easier… Continue reading What Is… Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Coping
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is conformity. Whether we're talking about peer pressure, keeping up with the Joneses, or other influences, there's often a lot of appeal to conformity. That may be conscious appeal, or an influence we're not really aware of, but… Continue reading What Is… Conformity
Introducing Consciousness: A Graphic Guide by David Papineau and Howard Selina is the latest book in this series I've read. It explores what this thing is that we call consciousness. There are no answers, because consciousness remains pretty elusive, but the book doesn't aim to give you answers. One of the ideas raised was philosopher… Continue reading Book Review: Introducing Consciousness: A Graphic Guide