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The How-To Lounge: Finding a Therapist
As you already know, I’m a huge supporter of therapy and often suggest it as a means of working through a specific issue — some problems are best solved with professional, and specifically, unbiased help. But finding someone who can meet your specific needs and whom you can trust is not an easy task. I’ve compiled a list of things to consider when seeking a therapist.
Britney's New Do: But What Does It Mean?
The pictures are everywhere: Britney Spears shaving her own head. At the young age of 25, she's famous, wealthy, accomplished in the music industry, twice divorced and the mother of two young children. Lately, she's raised eyebrows with her questionable fashion choices, missing panties and inelegant photographs, and constant clubbing.
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Clash of Cultures Puts Latina Teens in Danger of Suicide
According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, one out of seven Latina teenagers attempts suicide.
Psychologist Dr. Luis Zayas of Washington University, who has spent the last 25 years studying Latina teens, believes that this rate is so high because of the teens' troubled relationships with their mothers.
Should Psychologists Treat Patients For Being Gay?
Reading through Slate this week, I came across a challenging piece about treating homosexuality with therapy. According to a new study, one-in-six mental health professionals have tried to change their patients' sexual orientation.
BMC Psychiatry, which published the study, found the results troubling because treating homosexuality as a mental illness can be dangerous.
Politicians, Narcissism and Cheating — Oh, My!
There's been no shortage of politicians in the news who cheated on their wives (Sanford, Spitzer, Clinton — we're talking about you), and the television show The Good Wife is even dramatizing this all-too-familiar story. Most social scientists and psychologists are not surprised; many of the traits that are required for political leadership are prevalent in narcissism: ambition, risk-taking, and charisma. You don't need to be a narcissist to be a political leader, but it doesn't hurt.
Are You a Fan of the Surreal? It May Make You Smarter
Franz Kafka, David Lynch, and Rene Magritte were my Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas as a teenager. (Yeah, I was a weirdo.) So imagine my delight when I read a study that claims that surrealism may be good for the brain.
Research psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia concluded that exposure to surrealist art, film or literature, because it puts you in worlds whose elements don't make sense, drives you to look for structure and sense elsewhere, hence raising "the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions."
What Is Stockholm Syndrome?
News this week that Jaycee Lee Dugard, 11 years old when she was abducted in 1991, was discovered living in her abductor's backyard, prompts reactions both of happiness and horror. Happiness that this poor young woman, raped and twice-impregnated by her abductor, is finally free. Horror when you think of what her life must have been like these past 18 years.
Tall People Live It Up
Listen up! According to a new survey that included over 400,000 participants, taller people are more likely to experience joy and happiness and judge their lives more favorably than people of average or below-average heights. Psychologists think that because people of above-average stature are statistically more likely to have higher levels of income and education that they also have a more positive outlook on life.
Are You a Compulsive People-Pleaser?
We've all done it before — offering to do a favor we later regret, or overextending ourselves when really we just need me-time. But for some people (and I imagine women outnumber men here because of social conditioning), chronic niceness can verge on the pathological and actually be hazardous to the people-pleaser's overall health.
According to Les Barbanell, psychologist and author of Removing the Mask of Kindness, there are many reasons compulsive people-pleasers turn out that way.
Men Get Dumber Speaking to Attractive Women
In news that will surprise absolutely no one, researchers have found that men get so flummoxed when speaking to attractive women — using up most of their cognitive abilities trying to impress them — that they sometimes forget basic personal information like their own addresses!
Research showed that if (presumably straight) men spent even a few minutes with an attractive woman, they didn’t perform as well on tests that measure brain function than they did after speaking to someone they didn’t find attractive. Women didn’t seem to have this reaction in the presence of men they considered handsome.
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