I JUST DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE HAPPY (SVP, voir plus bas pour la version Française) Why are some people more prone to depression than others? The answer is far from straightforward. Many people are sad because their lives aren’t going well. Failed relationships and employment problems account for many of these. But plenty of [...]
Tag Archives: self-esteem
The self-confidence two-step
Every once in a while, as a client gets up to leave, I get asked a ‘simple’ question, “How does one develop self-confidence?” Well, let me just ask the next client to wait ten hours while I attempt an answer.” The truth is that almost everything I work on with clients is designed to boost [...]
The judge, jury and witnesses were all paid off
Prejudice is easy to detect in others. It’s much harder to see in ourselves. This is because our attitudes just seem to fit our observations, or perhaps more accurately, our observations happen to fit our attitudes. Of course, trying to figure out whether experience feeds attitudes or attitudes feed experience may be a chicken and [...]
Distorted self-perceptions
As a psychologist, I sometimes joke that most clients fall into one of two broad categories. The first group (the majority) are those that think very little of themselves. For these people, my job is to try to convince them they are not as bad as they believe. Then there are the rest, the ones [...]
Depression and self-confirming negative biases
In today’s Metro column, I tell a story of how depressed people, or those who tend to think poorly of themselves, are always finding proof for their beliefs.The idea of a negative schema (a strongly held belief, or what is often called a “core” belief) is important in the treatment of depression. In cognitive therapy [...]
