Vidéos sur la gestion des émotions / Video on the managing emotions

Re-bonjour!

Voici les vidéos de mes présentations de l’École Mini-Psy (édition 2011). Prenez des méga-doses de caffeine et bon visionnement!

Hi again,

Here are the videos of my two-part presentation in our last edition of Mini-Psych School – 2011 edition (In French). Take some caffeine pills and enjoy!

Du coeur au cerveau – Des émotions nécessaires à notre survie (partie 1)

Du coeur au cerveau – Des émotions nécessaires à notre survie (partie 2)


Read more →
Posted on 08 Jun 2012
Leave a comment
48

Mini-Psych School / L’École Mini-Psy 2011

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 chaque semaine. Je vous aviserai lorsque la mienne sera disponible en ligne.

C’est année, les présentations étaient en français, tout comme les éditions 2007 et 2008; l’édition 2010 était présenté en anglais et en français. Cette année, les...

Read more →
Posted on 04 Jun 2012
2 comments
29

Tabula rasa? Not quite.

Here is something I published last week as a follow-up to my last post. I’ll add a few comments at the end.

From whence our characters?
(Source: D’où vient notre charactère? Journal Métro, May 22, 2012) Voir plus bas pour version Française.

In my last column I wrote about the challenge of having – or in the case of adoption, acquiring – children. Of course once we have children we have to figure out what to do with them. Despite dreams of having a baby Mozart, Einstein or Tiger Woods, I think most parents would be satisfied if their children became happy, independent and well-functioning...

Read more →
Posted on 29 May 2012
1 comment
33

A child and a half

There is nothing more moving than seeing a baby being born. If you can watch a video of that without crying, you’re far more stoic than I can ever be. Just seeing a delivery of some stranger’s kid is enough to make my face wet. I can’t imagine how powerful it would be to watch the birth of my own child. Unfortunately it is an experience I will likely never have. My couple is infertile.

Nevertheless, life is so varied and complex that there is no shortage of moving and life-changing experiences.

I have had the fortune of being handed the gift of children in the form of adoption. And while...

Read more →
Posted on 18 May 2012
1 comment
70

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...

Read more →
Posted on 24 Apr 2012
2 comments
33

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...

Read more →
Posted on 10 Apr 2012
2 comments
29

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...

Read more →
Posted on 29 Mar 2012
1 comment
31

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...

Read more →
Posted on 13 Mar 2012
2 comments
34

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...

Read more →
Posted on 28 Feb 2012
Leave a comment
35

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...

Read more →
Posted on 14 Feb 2012
17 comments
62