3 Paradoxes of Strong Mental Health
Introduction I love a good paradox. In clinical practice, a session seldom goes by where I do not seize the opportunity to share a relevant one with a patient. Perhaps it’s their inherent rhetorical force in paradox. Maybe the power of paradox comes from their historical and cultural tradition. Eastern philosophy is full of paradoxes. You can find paradox in the Tao Te Ching....
Struggling with Compassion? Apply these 4 tips on how to find your empathy again
Compassion comes to people naturally. Even in the nursery, infants experience empathic distress–when one baby cries, ALL babies start to cry. Problems experiencing and expressing compassion tend to arise the more involved we get in the complexities of social give and take. Compassion becomes especially tricky in a couple of different scenarios: First, I might have trouble feeling compassion for others if I feel...
How do you know you’re in psychosis?
How does someone know if they are in psychosis? As it turns out, this is precisely the correct question to ask. There is a simple and interesting answer to this question. But first, let’s begin with how NAMI (National Alliance On Mental Illness), an authority on mental illness, defines psychosis: “Most people think of psychosis as a break with reality. In a way it...
Why Your Out-of-Control Sex Drive Could Be a Product of Trauma
I recently came across a study that established interconnections between trauma, the self-conscious emotions (i.e., guilt and shame), and hypersexuality. The tendency towards hypersexuality appears especially strong among male trauma survivors. A summary of the findings from the study can be found here. The study’s findings stirred up a few interesting questions in me. First, what is it about experiences of trauma that evoke...
How can I be happy when others are suffering?
We live in an interconnected world–a world where the 24-hour news cycle and social media confronts us with the most extreme ends of human experience. One hour, we might be watching the Kardashians vacation or unwind in their multimillion-dollar mansion. The next hour (or perhaps even the same hour!) we could be scrolling through instagram seeing haunting images of oppression, invasion, illness, destruction, and...
Is borderline personality disorder curable?
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be lifelong, but it doesn’t have to be in most cases.
Am I Depressed or Just Lazy?
How can I figure out if I’m depressed or just lazy? What is depression? There are many ways to define depression. The DSM and ICD take descriptive approaches, outlining a set of symptom criteria that coincide with depressive episodes. Psychodynamic therapists formulations explain it in theoretical terms, summarized simply as “anger turned inward.” Behaviorists posited that depression results from a lack of reinforcement, whether...
The Montessori Method: The 5 Principles
What do Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow and His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge all have in common? They are the beneficiaries of the century-old student-focused Montessori education, which has produced some of the most innovative thinkers on the planet. Little Bets author Peter Sims wrote in his Wall Street Journal blog,...
Everything you need to know about psychodynamic psychology
Psychodynamic meaning / Psychodynamic definition The American Psychological Association Defines psychodynamic theory as: “a constellation of theories of human functioning that are based on the interplay of drives and other forces within the person, especially (and originating in) the psychoanalytic theories developed by Sigmund Freud and his colleagues and successors, such as Anna Freud, Carl Jung, and Melanie Klein. Later psychodynamic theories, while retaining...
5 Ways To Build Pandemic Resilience
According to a UN report, we are collectively living in the hardest time since World War II. Indeed, the coronavirus pandemic is responsible for an ongoing economic and health crisis. In challenging times like these, building resilience is crucial to surviving and thriving. What Is Resilience? Psychology Today defines resilience as “the psychological quality that allows some people to be knocked down by the...
