Bonjour tout le monde (an English message will follow). L’automne dernier, j’ai eu l’honneur d’agir comme hôte de notre 6e édition de l’École Mini-Psy de l’Institut Douglas, une série de présentations qui s’adressent au grand public. Les vidéos des présentations se trouveront sur notre site web à partir du 1er juin, à raison d’une nouvelle vidéo [...]
Category Archives: Anxiety
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 [...]
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 [...]
The new hypochondriac
Most anxious people have pretty well been like that most of their lives. Their anxiety may get better or worse but, for the most part, they always consider themselves anxious people. But in a small number of cases, a debilitating anxiety disorder seems to come out of the blue. These people seem to have functioned [...]
Batman’s belt
Stress is all about the challenges we face. The greater the challenge, the greater the stress. The negative emotion we feel is usually labelled anxiety when it is acute. In more chronic situations, we feel a general sense of unease which often produces burnout or depression. These negative feelings push us to address the problem and [...]
Vidéo sur les Troubles Anxieux
L’année dernière, le thème de notre programmation de l’École Mini-Psy de l’Institut Douglas portait sur la santé mentale chez les jeunes. J’avais donné une présentation sur les troubles anxieux. Voici le vidéo de cette présentation en deux parties (for English version, click here). Partie I: Partie II:
Video on Anxiety Disorders
Last year’s theme for our annual Mini-Psych school program at the Douglas Institute was youth mental health and I was asked to give a talk on anxiety. Here is the video of the presentation (it is in two parts): Pour les videos en Français, cliquez ici. Part I: Part II:
Why is that guy looking at me like that?
I suppose a little paranoia is good. It keeps us on our toes. As threats become more real, paranoia becomes an ally. The problem is that in normal times, the hyper-vigilance caused by paranoia and fear can seriously ruin what we are trying to protect. In my column of May 3, using an analogy of [...]
I’ll trade you that needle for a bus ticket
In my last post I wrote about stigma by discussing how two similar experiences can be lived in radically different fashions. I used the example of losing a loved one. Because we live our lives through our subjective lenses it is easy to label someone as weak when they handle something less well than us. [...]
Unnatural acts
Human beings act, think and feel. These three dimensions pretty well sum up our psychological experiences. So what then do we target when things are bothering us? When I first trained as a psychologist, we were taught to work with thoughts and behaviours, hence the term Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy. But what of emotions? Are they not [...]
