How Our Safety Behaviors Feed Anxiety

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) affects approximately 5% of the population. While social media has been blamed for an increase in narcissistic tendencies, these aren’t indicative of an NPD diagnosis. Narcissists can inflict great emotional and psychological harm on their partners, parents, and children. As social media has made all...

In case of acute disaster, different organizations develop their own set of tools to cope with stress. Drs Mauseth and McGuire co-leads of the Behavioral Health Strike Team for the Washington State Department of Health made their own set of tools. Included in Dr. Mauseth's Health Support Team training are...

While under the influence you’ll probably act differently, but that doesn’t mean your drinking reveals—or can reveal—who you really are. Alcohol lowers your inhibitions, leading you to act more impulsively and care much less about how others might adversely regard your behavior. The dangers of excessive...

Mainstream empirical psychology divides the world into behaviors that we can see and mental processes we can infer. The Unified Theory Of Knowledge shows why this is an error. We can frame human mental behavior patterns as patterns of justification, investment, and influence. Mainstream empirical psychology tells us we should...

The “repetition compulsion” is a basic concept in all psychotherapies. Freud believed the repetition compulsion was a reflection of the death instinct—an unconscious drive toward self-destruction. The repetition compulsion is acted out through processes such as displacement and projection. The “repetition compulsion” is a basic concept in...

The number of adults who do not have kids, and do not think they will ever have kids, is growing. Why is this happening? How do these adults feel about the prospect of never having kids? Decades of survey data offer some answers. Will You Ever Have Kids? The Men...

Happy couples experience positive and negative interactions during a conflict in a 5-to-1 ratio (5 positive for every 1 negative). The concept of negative sentiment override suggests that feeling negative emotions can cloud one's ability to see things clearly. According to the Stimulus-Value-Role theory, what someone finds important in a...

Focused attention and open awareness practices are two important subcategories of mindfulness. Focused attention practices help us hone skills of concentration and cognitive control. Open awareness practices help us develop equanimity with the ups and downs of life. Mindfulness is commonly referenced but frequently misunderstood. It is often discussed as...

Punishment, including self-punishment, can teach the wrong lesson and is different from consequences. Even when we (or someone else) deserve to feel guilty, guilt can backfire and make people worse. Punishment and shaming are motivated by anger and evening the score and do not promote positive behavior change. "I did...

Sleep is the bedrock of both physical and mental health. Anxiety causes sleeplessness, and sleeplessness exacerbates anxiety. The CDC recommends adults get at least seven hours of sleep, and more than a third of Americans rarely reach that mark. You probably already know that you should be getting more sleep....

A study published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Sneller and colleagues compared 189 people who had recovered from Covid-19—many of whom reported symptoms of Long Covid—to a control group of 120 participants who never had Covid-19. The study authors found no difference between the...

Medical gaslighting is a phrase used to describe physicians or other medical providers who blame a patient’s symptoms on psychological factors. There can be serious repercussions for biases in health care, including delayed diagnosis and treatment. There are a number of measures to protect patients from the harmful effects...

Our relationship with technology has become increasingly heavy and complex, adding weight to our shoulders that wasn’t there before. You are in charge of your relationship with social media. Improve it for better sleep and mental health. Be brave enough to spend time offline—and off screens. The traditional...

Cognitive biases are pre-wired shortcuts our brain takes when making decisions or analyzing new information. Many of the decisions we made during the pandemic were influenced by these cognitive biases. The key to overcoming cognitive biases is to educate ourselves about our thinking and better understand why errors in judgment...

Analyzing archetypal images can be fun and psychologically instructive. The experience of engaging deeply with stories can help us release our fears. Deborah Harkness' "All Souls" trilogy takes a stand against prejudice through its use of the lover, warrior, and sage archetypes. I love to track what is going on...

Evaluating the quality of an assessment tool is an essential step in deciding whether to use it. Quality can relate to what the tool measures, how it measures it, who designed it, and how your users will perceive it. Do some research, and if you still need guidance, email an...

E-cigarettes have questionable utility as smoking cessation agents. Like combustible cigarettes, e-cigarettes have been shown to increase anxiety and depression. Research shows that like combustible cigarettes, e-cigarettes are a potential gateway drug. The relative risks and benefits of e-cigarettes for public health are a subject of ongoing controversy. Some highlight...

We are overly confident about why we experience pain and how long it will last. We believe certain events trigger pain and that there is little we can do to avoid it. By planting seeds of doubt, we can disrupt the process in which pain is produced. The business meeting...

Surveys show that most pet owners are convinced that living with companion animals improves their mental health and psychological well-being. However, many research reports have found that the mental health of pet owners is not measurably better than that of people without a pet. The isolation and stress associated with...

Approximately 64 percent of men and 49 percent of women have tried to "poach" someone who was currently in a relationship, one study found. The more mate poaching someone experiences, the less committed they tend to become to their current relationship over time. When people are in a highly committed...