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Those lovely biological events like anxiety, panic, mania, depression and trauma come for us all eventually. And if we don’t anticipate that suffering ahead of time when we’re in a calm, cool state, then it will be impossible for us to execute a recovery plan when the pressure is on. And we will feel like the world is slowly closing in on us like a trash compactor. Psychiatric doctors…

One of the great parts about being an adult is, we have the power to leave without explanation. Whether it’s a dinner party, some event we’re stuck at, that club we joined a long time ago, even the job we worked at for years, we don’t have to explain or justify our feelings to anyone. We can simply walk away and remove ourselves. And that may evoke feelings of…

The academic community has greeted grit with a degree of breathless enthusiasm. People have been applauding grit as the trait among traits that helps people persevere. But too much perseverance can be costly. One study demonstrated how grittier individuals might incur some costs by persisting when they could move on. Lucas, the primary researcher, explored grit through the lens of test taking. She found that certain students might not…

Wearing a nametag all the time helps me understand myself more, but it also provides me with an instant psychological analysis of others. It’s a small, repeatable, portable filter that helps me make sense of those who interact with me. It’s not scientific, it’s not one hundred percent accurate, it’s more of a novelty personality test. And yet, it never ceases to amaze me what kinds of insights people…

Stress doesn’t kill us, our reaction to it does. We suffer because we let other people’s emergencies become our crisis. And not to be uncompassionate to their struggle. Everybody hurts, to quote the classic nineties song, but at some point, we have to set a boundary, so their stuff doesn’t become ours. Otherwise we’ll drench our nervous system with a cocktail of frustration and pay the price long after…

More and more hospitals and health clinics are practicing something called whole person care. If you’re like me and you read medical journals from the national institute of health for fun, you will notice that healthcare professionals are trained to practice several things. See the person as a whole and in the context of his or her family and wider social environment. Take continuity of responsibility for people’s care across many…

When we start using words like always and never, that means our brain is messing with us. Even if it is comforting in the moment to have something black and white to hang our hats on, engaging in these all or nothing, now or never demands often make things worse, not better. Phycologists call it dichotomous thinking or cognitive distortions. And the danger is, our overreactions in response to…

The hard part about anxiety is accepting it as a condition you actually have. Because nobody likes hearing they have something. Or that there’s a clinical label to apply to their brain. Especially if society stigmatizes that label. Anxiety, depression, panic, mania? Nope, those are conditions that other people suffer from, not me. Meanwhile, some medical professionals won’t push acceptance as a requirement for treatment. While skimming through a…

Feeling betrayed is a painful and difficult emotional state. When somebody breaks or violates the contract we both agreed upon, we have every right to be upset, and they should absolutely apologize for their callousness. But at the same time, we must be careful not to overdramatize this idea. Because it’s easy to confuse betrayal with things like disappointment, disagreement, change or compromise. Take the music fan who feels…

“I heard the reviews were bad.” The moment somebody makes that statement, my desire to continue the conversation will evaporate. First of all, you didn’t read the review, you heard a review of the review. Secondly, all reviews, whether from real customers or professional critics, are never an accurate reflection of objective quality of the product. It’s like those people who ask their waitresses for a recommendation of what…