Posts by Christopher L. Heffner, PsyD, PhD
Doomscrolling: The Ultimate Negative Flow State
First, A Little Psychology I’ve written before about social media use and how it can be both helpful and harmful. The article, Is Social Media Reflecting Our Pathology or Adding to It?, concluded that social media does both. The trick to making social media a positive experience is understanding how their algorithms work. The first…
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Four Resilience Skills To Counter Depression and Unhealthy Stress
Stress Is Good Stress can be bad but it can also be good. And even when it is bad, it can still be good. Let me explain. While we typically think of stress as a negative, there is a type of stress called eustress that is considered positive and healthy. Eustress is the stress we…
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Is Social Media Reflecting Our Pathology or Adding to It?
Social Media and Mental Health Social media has become an open forum for discussing and sharing stories about mental health. For many, this has been positive, perhaps even a lifesaving, as it helps people connect with others who have similar experiences and find places where one does not feel alone. According to an article in…
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Social Media Use is Related to Both Ill-Being and Well-Being
Social media use and mental health seems to have a love/hate relationship. Brailovskaia and Margraf (2016) conducted a large study comparing users and non-users of Facebook on various mental health variables. While they found that users were significantly more likely to score higher on scales of narcissism, they also scored higher on extroversion and self-esteem.…
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Post-Traumatic Growth: An Introduction
We know that psychological trauma exists and that it can have devastating effects on individuals, families, and communities. Trauma has impacted us since humans existed, and according to the National Center for PTSD at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, it has impacted us in a similar fashion across time. When first introduced in the…
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Social Media and Self-Esteem
A recent article published in Science Direct looked at the association between social media use and mental health among adolescents. The impact of social media on mental health is certainly not a new topic. Neil Petersen wrote about envy as a mediator of mental illness among social network users, how social media affects life satisfaction…
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Stoicism, Virtue, and Mental Health
The point of philosophy is to become a better person, at least according to the Stoics. Perhaps this is why the Stoicism and the Stoics writings continue to play a vital role in religion, philosophy, psychology, and mental health. Their four virtues, among other aspects of Stoicism, were expanded from Socrates beginning around 300BCE and…
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Being a Perfectionist Doesn’t Have to be a Negative
Being a perfectionist gets a bad rap. It is associated with negative outcomes, anxiety and stress. This isn’t because perfectionism is bad, but rather the way we approach it is bad. Hurtful Perfectionism Perfectionism is a striving, meaning it is about constant forward movement. This means it is about finding solutions and moving toward the…
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Stoic Philosophers – The First Cognitive Behavioral Therapists
When we think of philosophers, names like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle often come to mind. For psychology, this makes a lot of sense since we use Socratic Questioning, documented by Plato, as an important component of Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT). Aristotle was the first to write about the mind-body connection. But the first approach to self-help…
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Spotlight on Self-Care
Self-care is the process of reducing stress and ill-being and improving health and well-being. It is about countering the forces that deplete us and building the forces that nourish or strengthen us. Self-care is important to healthy psychological functioning and has become especially vital in the age of COVID-19. Like all animals, human beings are preprogrammed…
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