Psychology

  • What is a psychologist?

    Can a psychologist read your mind? What is the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist? Isn’t psychology all just common sense?

  • The Unrelenting Society

    People with unrelenting standards simultaneously see themselves as unworthy and struggle to accept others. Their capacity for relaxation, pleasure, satisfying relationships or a sense of achievement is obstructed by these excessive standards. I wonder about the pervasive influence on us all of hypercritical attitudes in media combined with the incessant promotion of perfection in…

  • The pain inside

    “She’s just doing it for attention.” This is a phrase I have often heard from people trying to understand why a patient, a friend or a loved-one has been deliberately hurting themselves. Self injury goes against all our natural instincts of survival and self-protection. Unfortunately, the assumption often ends up being that a person…

  • It gets worse before it gets better

    There is a common paradox for psychological therapy: many times the strategies we have found to provide us relief from our problems are at the same time perpetuating our problems. Consequently, therapy can at times be very uncomfortable: you make a choice to confront difficult feelings and experiences that you have developed a range…

  • Buying your way to happiness, or despair?

    Many of us enjoy the buzz a shopping spree creates now and then. But for some people buying becomes very much like an addiction. It is a problem that can have very significant consequences – the most obvious being debt and other financial problems. It can also create friction or breakdown in relationships or…

  • “Are you sure?”

    “Are you sure?”

    Did you ever, as a child, hesitate to step on a crack or a line? You knew it wouldn’t hurt anyone but there was that tiny doubt that said, “But what if it was true? It would be terrible if your mother’s back got broken! And it would be your fault!”

  • Positive Attitude

    Depression is more than just sadness. It is different to grief. Depression is a chronic state of low mood, negative thinking, depleted energy and absence of motivation. It is a self-perpetuating state in which the very actions that might contribute to recovery seem the least possible.