Posts Tagged ‘Treatment’
Testing Three Emotional Regulation Techniques
How do we manage difficult emotions and direct them in a positive direction? Psychologists have identified different strategies people use for emotional regulation, some of which seem to work better than others. Three of the strategies commonly mentioned are: Reappraisal: reframing a negative situation in a more positive way Acceptance: engaging with negative emotions and…
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When Therapy Helps With Social Anxiety
A type of therapy that is often recommended for social anxiety disorder is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. In this type of therapy, people learn to challenge unhelpful thought patterns, create new behaviors, and respond to their emotions in more productive ways. As with any treatment, there is a range in how much CBT improves…
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Interventions Can Reduce Ageism
Old age is a life stage that we all hope to reach, but that doesn’t always make us empathetic toward people who have already reached it. Prejudice against older adults shows up in a variety of settings, and older adults feel the effects. A survey by AARP found that three-quarters of adults over 45 felt…
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What’s the Role of Politics in Therapy?
Therapy is a place where anything can come up. The old adage about discussing politics and religion doesn’t necessarily apply. To learn more about how political views fit into the therapeutic process, researchers from New York recently surveyed 268 therapists from around the United States. In case you’re wondering, there’s a good chance your therapist…
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A Daily Gratitude Exercise
Psychologists increasingly believe gratitude to be a powerful emotion that can boost happiness and wellbeing. Gratitude is interesting not only because of its links to happiness but because it’s something we intentionally cultivate in our lives. One way of doing so is through gratitude exercises. Recently, psychology researchers in Brazil tested the effects of a…
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Meditation Can Improve Ability to Cope Flexibly
Don’t we all just want to have better coping skills? Coping skills have to do with how we handle stressful situations, and they seem to be an important part of mental health. One aspect of how we cope is what psychologists call coping flexibility. This is pretty much what it sounds like: the ability to…
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Should Therapists Disclose Their Own Mental Health Struggles?
As a mental health blogger, I don’t have to think twice over pouring my heart out about my own mental health challenges. But therapists are in a more delicate position. On one hand, therapists might want to establish a sense of rapport by mentioning their personal experiences with problems their clients are confronting. On the…
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Online Interventions Can Lower Stress Response
As far as practical steps you can to take to improve your mental health, you could do worse than learning some new techniques for coping with stress. Stress is something we deal with in multiple parts of our lives, and finding healthy ways to manage stress can lead to real improvements in quality of life.…
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When Therapists Misjudge Their Clients’ Emotions
Therapists are, of course, human, and one of the things about being human is that we sometimes misread other people’s emotions. Psychologists refer to the ability to know what other people are feeling as empathic accuracy. Having high empathic accuracy is useful in many everyday situations, and it’s especially useful for therapists as they help…
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