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 …
I’ve heard quite a few people talk about not having been traumatized enough for their trauma to really count. I love me a good metaphor, and I think spoon theory and fork theory can be useful in explaining how little-t trauma (i.e repeated smaller stressors) can cause serious damage just like big-T trauma can. Spoons …
Big-T Trauma, Little-t trauma, and Mental Health Cutlery Read More »
In this series, I will dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is resilience. In its most basic sense, resilience means rebounding or springing back. The American Psychological Association (APA) describes it as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources …
It can be easy to assume self-care is just bath bombs and spa days, but as lovely as they may be, they’re just a small part of a much bigger picture. Let’s start with a couple of definitions for self-care from Google Dictionary: “the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health” …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is autistic burnout. Autistic burnout is something I’d only heard of quite recently, and I was curious to learn more about it. It’s a concept that’s discussed a lot among autistic communities, but it hasn’t been well researched. …
I don’t currently do therapy and haven’t had a lot of success with it in the past, but I’m very pro-therapy in general. I’ve picked up a collection of therapy tools from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), and various others that are handy to pull out of …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the stress bucket model. I first heard of the term stress bucket several months ago in a post by Caz at Mental Health 360º, but it’s been around for a while. It looks like it’s best known in …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is learned helplessness. Learned helplessness was first described by Martin Seligman, who is also the founder of positive psychology. It began with observations made during animal studies, and eventually became his theory of depression. While doing classical conditioning …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the window of tolerance. The window of tolerance was first described by psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel in 1999. It’s used to describe levels of arousal, both psychological and physiological (and no, not sexual). The window represents the …
Today is Pink Shirt Day in Canada, a day to stand up against bullying. It began when students in a Canadian high school wore pink in support of a male student who was bullied for wearing pink. Pink Shirt Day makes for a good time to talk about how bullying affects mental health. While bullying …
The Terrible Effects of Bullying on Mental Health Read More »
