Find publications on Popular Psychology issues

Using Childhood Joys to Increase your Valuing of your own Self

Many people who are codependent do not value and love themselves, their Self, because they have learned in their family of origin that they were of little value or even worse that they were bad. Fortunately there are ways you can learn to reverse this kind of early negative conditioning.

One way to increase your valuing of your Self is to take time for yourself and in this time take concrete steps of valuing the self. If you are middle aged or older this can often take the form of taking interest in your own personal life history. This is similar to the way some people who love their country will take time to read the history of their country. Your own self deserves you taking time to examine some pleasant aspects of your own life story perhaps from years ago or even from when you were a very young child.

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Date Posted: May 21, 2013

Categories: Self-Care / Self Compassion, Self-Love

Swim Yourself Happy?

It’s well known that exercise is an effective treatment for depression, but recent research has enabled psychiatrists to give guidance on precisely how much exercise is enough exercise to give the desired results when treating depression. So how are therapists using exercise in their treatment regimes, and should they be using it more? Are there psychological benefits to exercise as well as biochemical ones, and can exercise help with addiction?

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Date Posted: May 14, 2013

Categories: Happiness

Visual Journals To Lower Stress And Heal The Mind

The power of art to transform people’s lives is well known. Art has been used as a breakthrough technique to reach a patient’s deepest fears, and their most closely guarded emotions. By representing emotions wordlessly, a barrier is lowered, allowing patients to express things that they cannot bring themselves to say, either due to the pain it would evoke, or because of shame. Visual journals are the latest way for those undergoing addiction or psychiatric treatment to find a route through their pain, and here we look at the way these journals can be used to combat stress.

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Date Posted: May 13, 2013

Categories: Stress Management

Eleanor Rigby and all the lonely people

In 1966, the Beatles wrote about Eleanor Rigby and the lonliness and depression she experienced:

All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?

Loneliness is something that most of us will feel at times in our lives. Some of us living in the city crave a quiet moment to ourselves from time to time, to reflect and think. Time for self is important, but loneliness is something completely different. It is never sought, and never wanted. Loneliness is something which happens to us but never by choice. It is little consolation for those already living with loneliness to know they are not alone in their suffering. There are many people today, facing the same situation. Recent research shows that people who have experience loneliness for over 3 years are likely to continue to experience loneliness.

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Date Posted: May 10, 2013

Categories: Attachment Issues, Bullying, Codependency / Dependency, Depression / Bipolar, Emptiness, Ending a relationship issues, Happiness, Self-Esteem, Social Anxiety / Phobia, Social Isolation

Living A Life ... Or NonLife?

The first thing I noticed about Tom was his large frame and piercing eyes. He had come to call me on my mobile phone a few hours ago. And now, we were in a hotel, drinking coffee, and eventually past the pleasantries.

He reached for the marrow of his purpose for meeting me. “I need help for managing my wife,” he said. “She cannot agree any longer that she remain my wife while I keep the other woman for the sake of the children and peace at home.” He fell silent for awhile. “Why can’t she accept that?” he asked.

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Date Posted: May 2, 2013

Categories: Addictions, Attachment Issues, Infidelity

Solitude Therapy

Each of us is alone. In our human existence, aloneness is an inevitable fact of life. We entered this world alone. We will exit this world alone.

I've discovered in my life and in the life of others that how we embrace our aloneness determines whether it will be toxic or nourishing.

Toxic aloneness is produced by internalized shame. Unprocessed "original pain." Old baggage, unfinished business.  So, by it, one fears separation. Or, there is indulgence in addictions, fantasy bond, or unhealthy activities to cover and escape from the pain. Toxic aloneness comes out of being self-ruptured.

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Date Posted: May 1, 2013

Categories: Adjusting to Change / Life Transitions, Adult psychological development

Are you worth the money for therapy?

  There is this man who claims he has no money for therapy. He owns a car and condominium unit, smokes 3 packs of cigarettes a day, and dines out in expensive restaurants. If he sets aside funds even just by stopping smoking, he could afford to pay for his weekly personal therapy.

Doctors always remind trauma victims that therapy costs. But not to be in therapy is way much, much more costly for any one during the years ahead of life - lost relationships, lost opportunities, lost health.

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Date Posted: April 29, 2013

Categories: Happiness, Self-Care / Self Compassion

Working Through Damaged Emotions

Feelings are a crucial part of the inner life. When one is psychologically disturbed or traumatized, feelings become vulnerable. A person may lose touch of the reality of his feelings. He can be alienated from his feelings.

Yet these feelings don't go away. They continue to appear or surface. Most commonly, damaged emotions take the form of emptiness, low self-esteem, shame, anger, confusion, and numbness. The unprocessed feelings are masked in other disguises, since the psychologically ill have difficulty seeing and addressing directly their feelings.

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Date Posted: April 27, 2013

Categories: Abuse / Abuse Survivor Issues, Emotional Abuse

The Brain and Emotions

  I’m reminded of one of Dr. Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic concepts, “ego defenses.” Ego defenses are inhibiting internal mechanisms that prevent us from “knowing” early emotional pain through rationalizing, analyzing, explaining away, minimizing, overgeneralization etc.

Often, this early emotional pain is numbed out by the ego defenses. It’s acted out because it has never been worked out. We act the feelings out, we act them in, or we project them unto others for excitement or mood alteration.

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Date Posted: April 23, 2013

Categories: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Intelligence

How does Climate Change affect Obsessive Complusions?

This new century has brought with it the topic of climate change as a constant in the news media. A controversial and complex topic, it involves discerning the potential contributions of solar radiation, continental drift, and greenhouse gas concentrations to the changing levels of vegetation, precipitation and sea ice.

In this article we will discuss a group of volunteers who agreed to be observed by scientists while going about their daily routine. A significant proportion of the group, greatly concerned about climate change was observed with a specific focus on their daily efforts to reduce the size of their global footprints.

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Date Posted: April 23, 2013

Categories: Obsessions & Compulsions (OCD)