I can’t die, my fingers are crossed!

If you want to understand what goes on in the mind of a person suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder – to a certain extent anyway – you need look no further than the little superstitious rituals we all perform: don’t step on a crack, touch wood, cross your fingers.

Anxiety is what we feel at the thought of something bad happening. We may each fear different things (dentists, airplanes, public speaking, death, etc) but we all react the same way when we get scared. We do whatever it takes to get out of danger or reduce the threat.

This is easy to see when we fear things like getting...

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Posted on 24 Apr 2012
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Take something to eat if you’re hungry

 

Famous scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life

 

I weigh a little over two hundred pounds. Not a healthy weight for a guy just under 5’7″ (170 cms) but still much better than what I carried around a few years ago. But if you’ve ever been around my mother at a dinner table you’d realize it’s a miracle I don’t weigh four-hundred pounds. 

I’m not going to blame her entirely for my weight problem, after all it has been 35 years since I moved out, but seeing her force feed my father while in a hospital bed recently recovering from a fall was surreal. When he left some juice on his tray and...

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Posted on 10 Apr 2012
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Running in corridors

Time to set aside Fatmaster-Z and become Mr. Psychology Guy.

In yesterday’s Métro column, I ask people to imagine a scenario where they are performing without any feedback. When the degree to which we push ourselves depends solely on our own judgment, we may be pushing way too hard (if we never feel anything we do is good enough) or not hard enough (if we feel we do too much).

I think it is self-explanatory. (Or at least I hope it is because I’m going away for a week and I don’t have time to elaborate.)

Here it is: (Voir plus bas pour la version Française.)

Running in corridors
(Source: La...

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Posted on 29 Mar 2012
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Introducing Fat-Master Z

I often wonder what I would do in life if I had to start again from scratch. I like being a psychologist but perhaps I wouldn’t mind a little change of pace. I just don’t know what would I do? One of my great passions is music. Unfortunately, I am blessed only with an appreciation of the art form…but none of the ability to produce it. I often tell people that in a musical brave new world, I’d be an epsilon!

(In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, he writes about a futuristic society that is structured along five levels from alpha to epsilon. The alphas are genetically engineered to be...

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Posted on 13 Mar 2012
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Children as baseball bats

I guess I hit a chord with people with my last post. Thank you to all who sent comments and e-mails, and to those who tweeted, facebooked, reddited, called, etc.

While no parent is perfect, I think people were struck by the article because they realize the importance of maintaining a good relationship between parent and child. This can only be achieved through mutual respect and acceptance. In today’s column for Métro, I look at another type of parent child relationship – one where parents get divorced.

Despite never being divorced myself, I have lived through hundreds of divorces through...

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Posted on 28 Feb 2012
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My father the janitor

Giuseppe "Joe" Zacchia

THE MEASURE OF A MAN

For the past few months, I have had to spend a lot of time at my parent’s home since they are both rapidly losing their autonomy. My mother, 83, is more and more confused and needs help with her medication. My father is weak and has trouble walking. It isn’t fun to see them deteriorate but in many ways it is a great time in our relationship. This is because I get to have a glass (or two) of my father’s home-made wine every weekend and listen to his stories of the old-country. We have never been so close.

I have heard enough horror stories...

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Posted on 14 Feb 2012
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Let’s talk!

Today is Bell Let’s Talk day. The campaign urges us to talk about mental illness with the goal of improving the lot of individuals with mental illness. The reason’s are simple:

Bell Let's Talk spokesperson, Michel Mpambara, president of the Douglas Institute Foundation, Jane Lalonde, and yours truly at an event announcing Bell's major donation to the Douglas Brain Bank.

- One in five of us will suffer from a mental illness at some point in our lives. This of course doesn’t mean we will be completely debilitated (like physical illness, some stop us in our tracks while others are more...

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Posted on 08 Feb 2012
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Run, Forrest, Run

Should we listen to our emotions? Most people tend to say Yes. “Listen to your emotions, they are telling you something.” But does this really make sense?

The fact is, emotions are a basic aspect of human nature. They are neither good nor bad, they just are. It’s sort of like eating. Don’t do enough and you die, but do too much and you die as well. Emotions act the same way as hunger, they are necessary to our survival, but they are not always our allies.

Most people who struggle with life have a tendency to have overactive emotions. Fear and guilt are two good examples. While there are...

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Posted on 31 Jan 2012
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Why am I always attracted to abusive alcoholics?

Intriguing title for this blog post, don’t you think? Well it is an actual question I have been asked more than once in my career.

It certainly does make you wonder. It’s not as if on a first date, we would typically ask something like, “Are you the kind of person that will make my life a living hell?” And when they say, “Count on it,” we happily give out our phone number!

There must be something about the filter that is lacking when we are seeking a relationship. Of course we can’t read minds and we will sometimes find ourselves in bad relationships. It happens and it can’t always be...

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Posted on 17 Jan 2012
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This year I resolve never to write about resolutions

I can count on three media requests each year. In the summer, I will get a request to comment on the importance of summer vacations. During the holidays, the pre-Christmas request is to discuss loneliness and/or stress. This is soon followed by the standard “Hey, why don’t you write about resolutions?”

Well, as Weird Al Yankovic once said so eloquently, “I’d rather rip out my intestines with a fork.”

OK, OK, perhaps I am not so averse to the idea. Several years ago, I decided to advise people on how to break New Year’s resolutions and was lucky enough to have it published in the Montreal...

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Posted on 03 Jan 2012
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