Month: March 2022

Empathy & Compassion

Struggling with Compassion? Apply these 4 tips on how to find your empathy again

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

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 like I am sacrificing more than you are.  Or, perhaps I feel like you’re getting more back than I am if we sacrifice the same amount.  Worse still, I might see that you sacrifice less than me and get more back.   Politicians, financiers, billionaires are all easy targets for antagonism because many people agree they don’t deserve our compassion.  Why? Because we believe they often make more than us, pay less taxes, and/or work less. The second reason compassion can be tricky is if I don’t see you as belonging to the same group.  Nationalist and racial examples abound here.  A less emotionally charged example would be the world of professional …

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psychosis

How do you know you’re in psychosis?

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

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 is. Psychosis is characterized as disruptions to a person’s thoughts and perceptions that make it difficult for them to recognize what is real and what isn’t. These disruptions are often experienced as seeing, hearing and believing things that aren’t real or having strange, persistent thoughts, behaviors and emotions. While everyone’s experience is different, most people say psychosis is frightening and confusing.” –nami.org, emphasis mine Many people associate psychosis with its dramatic symptoms of hallucinations and bizarre beliefs.  Disorganized thinking is another unmistakable sign of psychosis. These are not wrong associations.  However, the defining feature of psychosis is a lack of insight.  In other words, a true psychosis is one where the …

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trauma_and_sex_addiction

Why Your Out-of-Control Sex Drive Could Be a Product of Trauma

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

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 guilt and shame–emotions that make us question the stability of our social bonds and membership?  Second, what is an easy way to tell that certain expressions of sexuality may be unhealthy responses to trauma?  And third, why would hypersexuality be a common way of coping with the guilt and shame associated with trauma?   Why Guilt and Shame The fact that guilt and shame are so closely linked to trauma is a bit of a head scratcher at first glance.  For one, traumatic experiences are so varied. Each “type” of traumatic experience has its own emotional nuances so it seems a bit odd that guilt and shame would be so consistently linked …

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how_to_be_happy_when_the_world_is_suffering

How can I be happy when others are suffering?

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

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 other powerful stories of the most profound levels of human suffering. Whether we find ourselves more engaged with those we envy or those we pity, our voyeurism is sure to leave us in a darker place than where we started. It’s true that we would be better off if we simply disengaged.  Stop doomscrolling. Stop engaging with trolls.  Stop watching the news.  Stop immersing yourself in the lives of the rich, beautiful, and overindulged.  But that advice might be skirting a very rational question: how can we be happy when others are suffering through no fault of their own? The first question: do you really want to not suffer? If you’re …

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