We’re right in the height of the holiday season, a time of year that seems to amplify conflict in many relationships. However, there are ways to ease tension with all the important people in your life throughout the year, and compromise in relationships can be a great place to start.
I recently wrote an article on the mental health benefits of forgiveness for the Anxiety Relief Project, a website with resources for people suffering from anxiety. In the article I talk about what it means to forgive, forgiving others, and forgiving yourself.
It sounds simple on the surface, but research shows how treating others with kindness can have a profound impact on both the receiver and the giver. I recently wrote an article on this topic for the Anxiety Relief Project, a website with resources for people suffering from anxiety. In the article I talk about about how acts of kindness can boost your mood and reduce anxiety.
In my last article, I discussed the importance of seeking help for depression and letting go of the stigma that surrounds it. In fact, an astounding 80 to 90 percent of people who do seek help show improvement in their symptoms. In addition to seeking professional help there are a number of ways you can help yourself through depression.
The deaths of two prominent celebrities in June, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, have left many people with more questions than answers. These two wildly successful people both battled depression, and they both ultimately took their own lives. In the aftermath of these losses, more people have begun to open up about the sometimes debilitating condition that is depression, and it’s becoming clear that we need to drop the depression stigma.
Have you ever been so absorbed in an activity or project that time seemed to stop? Where you felt so happily lost in something that you worked, played, or created for hours on end? That experience is something experts call “flow,” and finding flow can help you tap into a greater sense of meaning, purpose, and even happiness.
When faced with stress or sadness, do you turn to alcohol, tobacco or other substances for a quick, feel-good boost? Have you thought about what that could be doing to your physical and mental health? As an alternative, you could use the mental benefits of exercise to help you feel calmer and happier, but in a healthy way.
We live in a society that values people who strive for something. Hard work, dedication, perseverance and perfectionism garner attention and praise. But what happens when perfectionism and rumination take a darker turn? Striving to be better – or the best – comes at a cost for many people.
At the beginning of relationships, many couples feel nothing but hope and bliss. You want that feeling to last forever, but in reality, you don’t always feel blissful about your partner. However, there are ways to deepen your connection and remind yourselves why you fell in love in the first place. John Gottman, Ph.D., developed Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work to help guide couples. While his research and language are mostly formulated around a marriage between a man and woman, which may be offensive to some people as it does not address same sex couples and/or people who are not married, I think his ideas can still be very helpful for all couples.