blog Archive
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Beating OCD hand-washing, raw meat fears, and eating compulsions
Posted on December 23, 2011 | No CommentsI’ve started putting together a bunch of videos on specific OCD behaviors I overcame with Exposure & Response Prevention. I’ll keep doing one a week for the forceable future (I had a lot of OCD behaviors). I’ve included three of them below. And if this sounds like something like what... -
Web Rehab – How to beat Internet addiction
Posted on December 7, 2011 | 2 CommentsWhen I first went to get help from a therapist, it was because of compulsive Internet behaviors. Online compulsions were a major part of my OCD. Visiting sites repeatedly, checking for messages, for emails, rereading things over and over again, staying on sites for hours long after I’d ceased to... -
Anxiety disorders are like elephants.
Posted on November 10, 2011 | No CommentsWhen it comes to anxiety disorders or addictions, and mental health in general, we too often get caught up focusing on the symptoms of the illness, and fail to look holistically at the complex system triggering the illness. Because of that, we end up continuing to feed the illness, not... -
Nuts boost serotonin and that helps you handle anger better.
Posted on November 5, 2011 | No CommentsEating nuts can help make sure you’re getting enough tryptophan in your diet. And research from Cambridge University found that not getting enough tryptophan in your diet negatively affects your ability to control angry impulses. Check out more details in the video: Tweet This Post -
“How can I get motivated to overcome my anxieties?”
Posted on October 24, 2011 | No CommentsYou can often motivate change by appealing to emotional, intellectual, and financial senses of value. One friend told me recently that when he gave up coffee successfully, after many failed attempts, it was because he had finally learned of a reason to give up coffee that he valued more than... -
Fear of math, linking Alzheimer’s to depression, and your ability to adapt to disability
Posted on October 22, 2011 | 1 CommentA quick overview of some interesting mental health articles that came out this week: Lying to yourself is going to make you depressed and then give you Alzheimer’s A bunch of interesting articles on depression this past week. Women with chronic, untreated depression are twice as likely to develop... -
5 things I love about the new ASAM addiction definition.
Posted on October 11, 2011 | No CommentsEarlier this year, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) released a new definition of addiction. I love it. I think it’s right in-line with recent neuroscience research and it also really connects with the experiences of the many addicts I’ve met over the years and who are involved in... -
Mental Health Articles of the Week
Posted on October 1, 2011 | No CommentsMeditation improves shooting performance in competitive shooters. This is actually an old study from the 90s but I came across it this week while doing some research on mindfulness training. I’ve heard of studies looking at athletes who do envisioning exercises to boost performance, or do concentration exercises, but this... -
Is mental health stigma real? Or just another irrational fear?
Posted on September 27, 2011 | No CommentsA great new organization called Young Ones asked me if I could write a piece on mental health stigma for their website. The more I thought about stigma, the more I wondered if it isn’t just another irrational fear, like any other OCD fear–a fear that we create by obsessing over... -
Are there any studies that show how mood, motivation, energy, or other non-cognitive variables affect IQ or other measures of cognition?
Posted on September 10, 2011 | No CommentsAbsolutely, sort of. It’s not so much that mood or energy affect IQ and other measures of cognition, but that they’re inseparable. Your brain needs energy (glucose), so if you have low energy, your ability to make optimal decisions is affected. Your brain cells use two times the energy the...