Welcome to my blog! I am a licensed psychologist and a core faculty member in the APA Accredited Clinical PsyD Program at Antioch University Seattle (AUS). I teach mostly interventions courses like Solution-Focused Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy. I also teach Clinical Supervision and supervise graduate students in our community clinic. My research interests include positive psychology, media psychology, and technology and a lot of my posts are related to these areas. I founded and lead the Positive Psychology and Technology Lab at AUS where fellow faculty and graduate students focus on how psychology can be used to foster individual, community, and organizational well-being in our media driven world. I recently co-authored a textbook titled The Strength-Based Clinical Supervision Workbook (published through Routledge and available on Amazon). My personal website is located at http://chrisheffner.com.

Spotlight on Grit

Spotlight on Grit

Albert Einstein once said, "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." This quote exemplifies the concept of grit ...
Read More
Spotlight on Well-Being: We've Come a Long Way since Freud

Spotlight on Well-Being: We’ve Come a Long Way since Freud

Just as the world was preparing to enter the 20th century, Sigmund Freud was preparing to shock everyone with talk of unconscious drives focused on ...
Read More
Learning to be Optimistic

Learning to be Optimistic

As a human species, do you think we are more naturally pessimistic or more naturally optimistic? Interestingly, Seligman and others in the field of positive ...
Read More
Self-Efficacy - How We Can, Not Why We Can't

Self-Efficacy – How We Can, Not Why We Can’t

The title of this blog post comes from a Ted Talk by Peter Sage. I'll link to the video below so you can watch it ...
Read More
Character Strengths and the Virtuous Life

Character Strengths and the Virtuous Life

The ultimate goal in positive psychology is to help individuals and communities thrive. We thrive by maximizing our character strengths in pursuit of well-being. Read ...
Read More
Grit - Passion and Perseverance

Grit – Passion and Perseverance

What makes someone successful? Is it intellect? Education? Physical health? Talent? Maybe luck? According to Dr. Angela Duckworth from the Positive Psychology Center at the ...
Read More
Building Psychological Capital (Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, Optimism)

Building Psychological Capital (Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, Optimism)

You Can Bank On it Psychological capital in many ways is like a savings account for our well-being. Just as it is good to save ...
Read More
The Real World Benefits of Expressing Gratitude

The Real World Benefits of Expressing Gratitude

Gratitude: As Old as Animal Kind Gratitude may be an evolutionary component of human development, passed down for thousands of years according to sociologist Georg ...
Read More