The tragic death of George Floyd is yet another example of the nastiness of discrimination and prejudice that exists in the United States and across the world, including Canada. The sense and tone I’ve gotten from social media is one of frustration, anger, sadness and confusion. How can this still be happening? What can be done to stop this violence? From a psychology perspective the judgments we harbour can be conscious (explicit bias) and/or unconscious (implicit bias). Some people truly…
Sometimes you don’t know how fast you are moving until you are forced to stop. COVID-19 has forced a lot of us to slow down and adjust our routines. Luckily, as a result, I have been able to allocate more time to reading and exploring ideas. For this Psychealth article I’m going to do something quite different: I’m going to present a theory that has some practical implications for our lives. It’s a heavier read than usual but I hope…
Right now, the news is a scary place and the world is starting to feel like a scary place. If you are the parent of an anxious child this is a time of increased stress, fear, and difficulties for you and your family. Perhaps you are feeling overwhelmed and are not sure how to help your child who is also feeling overwhelmed. Perhaps dealing with all of your together in a small space is getting difficult From a parent and…
All parents care about their children being health and happy. While we often get lots of information about how to help our children grow healthy and strong physically, how to help them grow socially and emotionally can be a little more complicated. The Early Development Index (EDI BC 2019 Report) indicates 16 percent of British Columbia’s children enter kindergarten with vulnerabilities in social competence, while 17 percent have vulnerabilities in emotional maturity. Both of these areas are essential to children…
Sophia was concerned about her son. Danny, normally an out-going and energetic sixteen-year-old, had been down in the dumps since he and his girlfriend Lucy broke up just over two weeks ago. Since then he stopped seeing his friends and hardly left his room. At meal times he hardly ate anything and was visibly losing weight. His sleep was erratic and he seemed to lack the energy or interest to do anything – even those things he was usually passionate…
David betrayed his life partner and he was not prepared for his partner’s emotional distress. He wanted to know when it would end. He asked “Why isn’t sorry good enough?” David needed to understand that his partner’s reactions were normal. Her healing was largely dependent on his ability to be empathic, remorseful, honest, apologetic, loving, patient and soothing over a long period of time. And most importantly to stop the behavior that devastated his spouse. Normal reactions of the betrayed…
Suicide is an emotional word. Feelings of confusion, fear, anger, and even disgust are common responses when the topic comes up in conversation, rare as that might be. As a clinical counsellor, I have felt all of these emotions when discussing suicide with clients and will continue to do so. But over years of working with people at some of the lowest points of their lives, I’ve learned not to let those emotions get in the way of compassion. I…
A book review by Jennifer Foster, MSW I recently read a book called The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg. It is about why we have habits and how they can be changed. I was interested in this book because I have some habits I want to break and I was curious to learn about why they exist in the first place and how to change from having bad habits to good ones. The author, Charles Duhigg, describes habits as…
About three and a half years ago I wrote the article: ‘Up In Flames’ that can be found at Psychealth.com. It was written shortly after my apartment burned down and shares my experience navigating through that challenging life event. This article is the follow-up. It took over three years to rebuild my home. I recall the first few weeks as the most difficult, as I was coming to terms with the scope of the loss. As time went on, I…
Why are so many people struggling with anxiety? This was the question posed to me by a good friend over coffee this week, who was concerned about the levels of anxiety she was seeing in her workplace colleagues. With all that is happening in the world around us – natural disasters, immigration crises, worldwide political unrest, political shenanigans, housing affordability issues, ethical and moral failures-a more appropriate question might be – Why wouldn’t we be anxious? According to the Statistics Canada…
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