How to Create a Beautiful Adulthood for Yourself

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Interracial couples cohabitate at higher rates before marriage. The stability and outcome of interracial cohabitations that have not transitioned into marriage are similar to those of same-race cohabitations. Living with a partner prior to marriage stabilizes interracial marriages in ways that it does not stabilize same-race marriages. Over the past...

Our children are facing a number of traumatic events and adversities. Helping your child build resiliency skills can make a difference in their overall outlook and wellness in moving past such events. Connection, wellness, healthy thinking, and meaning-making are components that can support your child in overcoming traumatic events. Like...

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?

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...

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,...

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...

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...

People often claim for themselves any trait that sounds good and deny anything that sounds bad. Bullies and tyrants use a "duck and tuck" formula to appear right, righteous, and mighty without paying attention to what they're claiming.. The formula enables hypocrisy by switching from one absolute virtue to another...