Blog

An Epidemic of Loneliness: There’s no shortage of people in the world. So why are so many so lonely?

Many people all over the world express feeling a tremendous loneliness. Frieda Fromm Reichmann defines loneliness as the want of intimacy, and it has long been recognized as a serious and painful issue. Mother Teresa once said, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and […]

Pushing Through Pain: aka Too Much Impulse Control

I am in yoga class and have just been silently congratulating myself on my amazing Crow pose (resting my knees on my upper arms, feet up, with just my palms touching the ground). I’m thinking how awesome I have become at this posture and really feel secure in it. And then, I fall. Hope Arnold, […]

The Other F Word: FAKE

Much of RO DBT therapy includes an emphasis on practicing skills that will help people who lean toward overcontrol (OC) get back into the tribe, and as a result, back to optimal mental health. According to Lynch, psychological health or well-being in RO DBT is hypothesized to involve three core transacting features: Receptivity and Openness […]

My Obsession with Eyebrows

I’ve done a few degrees, but I think I am now doing a post-doc in eyebrows. I never really thought much about eyebrows, really. They are just kinda there, aren’t they? The first time I paid attention to eyebrows was with my dad, whose eyebrows are, I admit, quite impressive. While he has precious little […]

Tips on How to do Self-Enquiry with Another Person

Self-enquiry is a core skill from RO DBT that that focuses on asking yourself good question in order to find your “edge.” Your edge is your personal unknown and the place where we have something new to learn. Self-enquiry presumes that “we don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we […]

Emotional Leakage

RO DBT posits that many folks are experts at inhibiting emotions, delaying gratification and generally keeping things looking quite perfect. And this is really important for keeping the world ticking along. But as we say in RO DBT, sometimes you can have “too much of a good thing.” And a consequence of superior inhibitory control […]

Being Kind to Perfection

Usually I am a superb driver, but with my sister and my nieces in the car, my level of distraction and excitement is through the roof. We headed to dinner Sunday night at our favorite burger place and were discussing a store that just closed on the opposite side of the street. I began to […]

The Purple House: Learning to Forgive Yourself

My favourite colour has always been purple. When I was in elementary school, living in a boring, grey stucco house, we had a neighbour who in my child’s eyes lived the charmed life. Not only was her house raised via the slope of the road, it had a robust yard, wonderful views of our street […]

The Importance of the Question

I love commercials that make an interesting philosophical point. One that aired recently in the United States highlights the value of asking questions instead of making statements. The commercial gives examples of how replacing a period with a question mark makes a difference in the way you think. For example, “Phones are only for making phone […]

Working Toward Psychological Health: Prioritizing treatment goals based on a definition of psychological health

When working with individuals who have treatment resistant depression and have an over controlled personality style, it’s a challenge to intervene effectively in the multiple symptoms they present. What are the primary goals for successful treatment? Read the entire blog by Karyn Hall, Ph.D., on Psychology Today

Yikes, you want me to do what? I’d rather wait until later

Are you the kind of person who gets really excited when a person hands you a gift, you open it immediately, and then you throw your hands in the air with joy over what you got (like my daughter in this picture)? Or are you are the type of person who sets the gift aside […]

Overcontrolled is a term that I’ve come to discover describes me well

I was born with a temperament that generally makes me leery of risk taking, I tend to inhibit emotions and impulses and it takes a lot to get me excited about something. Different aspects of my childhood and familial experiences reinforced these tendencies. The result is that I have develop an overcontrolled coping style (something […]