Récemment, j’ai donné une entrevue à PasseportSanté.net. Voici la balado qu’ils ont mise sur leur site web. L’anxiété chez les jeunes
Category Archives: Anxiety
I think I jinxed my rabbit’s foot
Why do we knock on wood or carry around a rabbit’s foot? It certainly isn’t because these things will prevent us from experiencing a disaster. What they do, however, is make us feel as if they will. “Don’t Jinx It,” my last column before my usual August break, dealt with superstitious behaviour. (For a real [...]
The fertile output of the anxious mind
Here’s a question? What’s scarier: reality or imagination? The crazy thing is that even though we know that imagination is not real, it can often cause more suffering than reality. The reason for this is the human stress response. Stress is the body’s way of responding to and protecting itself from a threat. When I [...]
Pavlov rears his ugly head
I once walked out of a restaurant with two colleagues just as the bell rang at the elementary school across the street. The three of us, all in their forties at the time, slumped our shoulders and said, “Damn! Recess is over.” This little anecdote illustrates a simple psychological reality called classical conditioning. Any stimulus [...]
Am I smart or just lucky?
We are constantly facing new challenges. Yet while some of us seem to be better at dealing with them than others, skill and intelligence are not the only qualities that set people apart. Two people with the exact same abilities will have radically different experiences when facing new challenges based on their attributional style and [...]
I get bad thoughts
Every once in a while, very unpleasant or disturbing thoughts come into my head. Since there are many of them, it begs the question, “Am I one disturbed human whack-o?” Although some people might think I am, I believe I am relatively normal (“relatively” being the operative word here). What I am referring to are thoughts [...]
Taking back your life
There are always two blows one receives when one is the victim of a crime. The first is the direct loss of material or the sense of violation. This is what the criminal takes. But there is also a second blow, the impact on the victim’s sense of security. This is the consequence that can [...]
Cyberpsychology
Here is a link to an interview I did last week on the subject of using virtual reality devices to treat anxiety disorders. The interview was done by Pauline Boinot, who keeps a blog on cyber-health for the Public Health Research Institute of the University of Montreal. The interview questions were done in both English [...]
H1N1: From frenzy to complacency to frenzy
Human beings are an odd lot. We like to have things simple and clear – (Which is the best hospital? Which is the greatest band of all time?) Unfortunately, despite our desire for black and white answers, our world is hopelessly grey. The current wave of frenzy over the H1N1 virus highlights what happens when [...]
