8 Slightly Quirky Ways to Reclaim Your Mental Health

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...

When we anticipate or have difficult conversations, our emotions are often triggered. Difficult conversations intensify our emotionality because our minds perceive them as a threat. A crucial part of emotional intelligence is adjusting how you internally modulate and externally express your emotions with integrity. At one point or another, we’ve...

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...

A challenging issue involves parents who ignore, minimize, or deny their kids' experience of mental health issues. Unhelpful suggestions from parents can result in a sense of loneliness for the child or teen and a loss of trust in the family. South Asian kids often have an urge to please...

Negative interpretations of ambiguous situations can harm your mental health. Habits to interpret situations negatively can be improved through novel interventions. These interventions may help clinicians further improve their treatments. Imagine the following situation as if it would happen to you right now:. The company you are working for needs...

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...

Co-authored by Llewellyn Boggs and Robert T. Muller, Ph.D. As a supervisor at a large retail company, I had always felt safe in the workplace. But this sense of security was upended when I learned of an armed robbery that took place at a store I worked at. The news made me feel worried for my coworkers, who had endured a traumatic event, but it also got me thinking about the issue of mental health and traumatic incidents at the workplace. What, if anything, are large retail corporations doing about mental health issues among workers? And what policies do they employ to cope with workplace trauma effectively?

When we don't use anxiety as a signal to improve, it automatically gets worse. In small doses, anxiety is a vital feeling. Without anxiety, we'd be ill-prepared for the important tasks of life. Anxiety is a yellow light, not a red light. We might call the times we live in,...

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...

Going back to the work of Abraham Maslow, behavioral scientists have found lots of evidence for the importance of love in one's life. Feeling unloved is, just as Maslow suggested, a wretched feeling that stunts growth and happiness. Finding love, which comes in all kinds of varieties, is, without question,...

According to research from the National Institute of Health, “Emotional distress is a state of mental anguish that can take a wide variety of forms. It may result from a mental health issue or particular circumstances, such as relationship difficulties or financial strain.”. When you have an issue going...

Social media can be overwhelming following a tragic event and can hinder the grieving process. Reading too much about tragic events on social media can keep people from feelingt feel present in their own daily life. For some, it may be wise to refrain from using social media in order...

It can be difficult for a person to feel connected to their long-term future self. There are benefits to being connected with your future self, including better decision-making in all aspects of life. Two significant challenges to connecting with your future self are human evolution and the powerful pull of...

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...

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...

Before attempting social change, each person must do their homework to find important information that informs problem-solving. Tying together individual interests and leveraging them as a group can amplify social change. Social change requires critical reflection to explore the implications of the group's actions. We all know the drill by...

Our society believes that being healthy is the norm, and we tend to overestimate our health. Regardless of what we do, health is a temporary state of being. If we start seeing health as a temporary state requiring constant maintenance, we will be able to live fuller lives. The World...

Research shows that hypnotherapy can help people overcome phobias, particularly when combined with other therapeutic modalities. An integrated hypnotherapeutic approach could start showing results after one or two sessions, though a longer course of treatment may be needed. Imaginal exposure can help lead to desensitisation, allowing clients to stay safe...

The modern workday is filled with disruption, and one of the biggest culprits is our own psyche. When our default downer patterns are triggered, it can distract us from our focus. A practice of grounded wonder can help reshape those default downer patterns into something more creative. Digital ethicist Tristan...

Though many readers of this blog will know that my primary area of research interest is critical thinking and, more broadly, cognition and education, a large portion of my research has been conducted in health psychology. Years ago, I was working on a project that included/offered Public & Patient Involvement...