Blog Archives
-
Click on a link, or scroll down to read them all.
The Self-Conscious Emotions
Developing Self-Compassion
Romantic vs Committed Love
What is 'Ego Depletion'?
Discredited Psychological Treatments
The Interpersonal Circle Model
Making Peace With the Past
Freeze Phase Model of Change
Acceptance Model of Relationship Change
Living vs Existing
Remembering vs Reliving
How to Write a Difficult Letter
Four Questions of Counseling
Resolving Cognitive Dissonance
Blurring Levels of Perception
The Secrets of Changing
Answering "Why" Questions
How to Forgive
Diagnosing Mental Disorders
How to Say Hard Things
9/5/10: There are countless ways researchers and psychologists have worked to understand and catalog the human emotional experience. Fortunately, there is some agreement on the basic emotions that most people learn at a young age: fear, anger, sadness, and joy. A set that develops later and becomes a source of emotional struggle throughout adult life are the self-conscious emotions: shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride. The following will explore each of these a bit further, and give some ideas on how to cope with them.
8/13/10: Although some people view human nature as inherently cruel and selfish, we are capable of incredible acts of kindness and compassion. Unfortunately, for many people, that kindness does not extend to the self (or sometimes loved ones) as often as it does for a child in need, a stranger in distress, or an injured animal. I hope the following post can help to illuminate how to develop self-compassion, and deepen the ability to be compassionate for others.
8/6/10: Love, one of the most central components to human life, is such an amorphous concept that it is nearly impossible for people to completely agree on what it actually is or means. That is some of the beauty of love, but also some of the reasons we find ourselves confused. The following is a crash-course in what psychologists understand of "love", and I hope that it may highlight new ideas, or name some things that can help you in your own journey of understanding it.
7/29/10: Have you ever wondered why you can make good choices for your health throughout most of the day only to crash and burn later by skipping the gym and having a second dessert? Or why you might be able to control your emotions and how you communicate them earlier in the day, but later feel more out of control or unable to express things as smoothly? It is more than just being tired. Enter ego depletion.
7/25/10: The psychological treatment marketplace is filed with all kinds of approaches and theories. Some of these have been able to withstand the rigor of scientific testing (all major schools of talk therapy for example: cognitive-behavioral, humanistic-existential, psychodynamic), proving their value to patients, while others come and go like pet rocks (Orgone therapy, primal scream) or occasionally things that really harm people (frontal lobotomy, rebirthing).
7/15/10: One of the most practical models of communication and conflict I have seen is the Interpersonal Circle. It was originally developed back in the 1950s and has been changed over time, but the original core ideas remain, and have been validated by substantial research. Below I am presenting a very basic version that I hope can be used to conceptualize different types of communication and conflict.
5/6/10: Many times the things that lead people to counseling have to do with past events that they "just can't seem to let go of". For some reason, we hold expectations that we should just be able to "let the past be the past and move on", but find tremendous difficulty doing that, and often struggle with this "unfinished business".
3/7/10: I/O psychology focuses on organizational level change, and has produced a number of interesting models to approach the process. One of the most basic is also very applicable to individual level change, which I use to describe the counseling process. Kurt Lewin's "Freeze Phase Model" has three stages: unfreezing, transitioning, and crystallizing.
2/14/10: I work with many people on difficult relationships with their parents, siblings, and children. This struggle looks different throughout the lifespan, and one of the unique stages is in young adulthood. Parents who have continued to evolve their style of love and support, and foster their now adult child's independence and sense of self, generally don't end up with some of these difficulties. However, if a tense, critical, or unsupportive pattern (or enmeshed family style) became fixed during an earlier stage, it can challenge the longevity of the relationship altogether, and place the adult-child, as well as the others in the system, in difficult positions.
2/6/10: We all know that how we feel during any given day or period of time in our life can be different, even if we don't have the words to describe it. For example, sometimes we are deeply engaged, aware, and present, which I call "living". This style of being feels good, and we are alive with energy and able to connect to ourselves, others, and the world. When we are really living, we embrace our lives and potential, and make the most of our time.
1/31/10: We have all lived through things we wished we had not experienced, some of us more than others. Coping with these memories, images, or feelings can be quite difficult. Something I notice when people talk about their painful past experiences is that many seem to be transported back to the time period it happened in. This is referred to as "reliving", and it is understandable why we put so much effort into avoiding this material if our only way to work with it is to experience it all over again.
1/23/10: I get asked all the time to read over letters or emails that people want to send to a friend or partner to express strong feelings. After seeing enough of these, I have come up with several important guidelines to make it go as well as possible for you.
1/18/09: Boiling everything else away, there are four basic questions that we need to answer to move ourselves from a position of distress into strength and health. They generally look something like this:
1. What is happening?
2. Why is it happening?
3. What do I do about it?
4. How do I do it?
1. What is happening?
2. Why is it happening?
3. What do I do about it?
4. How do I do it?
1/10/10: Cognitive dissonance is one of the most widely researched concepts in social psychology. Anytime you have held two inconsistent beliefs, or acted differently than you believed you should, you likely had some amount of emotional discomfort. This feeling is cognitive dissonance. To demonstrate ways to resolve or prevent this feelings we will use the following classic example:
1/4/09: Many of my clients struggle with experiences and decision-making when different levels of living or perceiving are blurred. The results of acting without clarity can be dramatic on our mental and physical health.
12/27/09: A lot of people have great ideas about how to change to improve their lives, and a lot of times even implement these changes well. However, for many of these situations, there is a regression back to the early habits or ways of being. With New Year's resolutions right around the corner, many of us will attempt to change something, sustain them for a week or a couple months, and then revert back to our old ways. However, for a lucky few, they will stick. So what are the secrets?
12/22/09: "I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." -Rainer Maria Rilke (1903)
12/09/09: "Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill the other person."
12/07/09: I get asked for my thoughts about psychopathology and mental disorders pretty often. Many practicing psychologists have an opinion on the debate to determine what a "disorder" is and isn't, and the place I stand is with the "harmful dysfunction model", first proposed by Jerome Wakefield. Essentially, this model states that a mental "disorder" must be a dysfunction of a naturally occurring system that is harmful to the person as judged by cultural standards.
12/06/09: I work with a lot of people on holding boundaries, asserting themselves, saying difficult things, and saying "no". Usually the problem with doing any of these things is that we do not want to disappoint someone, feel guilty, hurt someone, or have someone angry with us.
