A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
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
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
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to the extent to which we perceive the various elements of our self-concept positively. It incorporates our physical self-image, how we feel about the things we've accomplished, how successful we consider ourselves to be… Continue reading What Is… Self-Esteem
Do you make judgments when things are going well? The idea for this post came indirectly from Mark Manson via AP2 of Clear Air Turbulence. It's about 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… Continue reading Meta-Feelings: How Do You Feel About Feeling Good?
: 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… Continue reading Do You Have Dead People Goals?
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society 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… Continue reading Exploring Contemplative Practices
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect, first described by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, is a type of cognitive bias that causes people to feel confident that they have greater knowledge or competence in an area… Continue reading What Is… the Dunning-Kruger Effect
It's fairly common, at least in the mental health blogging world, for people to self-criticize, especially if they they think they've made a mistake or failed to do something. I don't tend to do that, and recently had a bit of an aha moment about how it came to be that I believe that it's… Continue reading Life Lessons: How I Learned It’s Okay To Mess Up
There's a lot of knowledge out there in the world. We've all accumulated some of it, whether that's by formal schooling, work, or life in general. There are several different ways in which we relate to the potential knowledge that's out there in the world. This can be seen in the modified Johari window diagram… Continue reading The Importance of What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know
Recently I was commenting on a post about self-esteem by Caz of Mental Health 360ยบ and decided it was worth expanding on in a post of my own. I've always has good self-esteem, and this is what I've identified as the basic building blocks that support it. Inherent worth of humanity This is probably more… Continue reading My Self-Esteem Building Blocks