As August winds itself up, it is time to start thinking about the fall and then winter coming up. A little bit like the squirrels, who are already putting away food for the winter, it may make sense to make sure that you have what you need to have a happy and energetic fall and winter. The first thing is …
Proactivity
Proactive behavior refers to actions taken that are forward thinking, that anticipate future problems, and are aimed at avoiding those problems. They are focused on changing the environment for the better. Proactivity contrasts with reactivity as an approach to challenges. Reactive behavior is about dealing with the crisis that is present right now. Reactivity also often is associated with a wish …
Brain Power
Problems with memory are common for people with depression (and the rest of us, as we age, as well). Although the most important thing to do to improve brain function is to address mood extremes, there are often residual problems, and sometimes there are negative brain effects from the medications that help stabilize mood. A wonderful older man who came …
Autism Spectrum Disorder: An inside look to CATs
Recently there has been discussion about alternative treatments for Autism Spectrum Disorder. The acronym CAT is used to describe these complimentary and alternative treatments. CAT is a great approach to treatment for individuals that are concerned with potential negative effects of taking medication. Some examples of CATs include melatonin, RDA/RDi multivitamin/mineral, massage therapy, acupuncture, exercise, music therapy, and animal-assisted therapy. …
When Your Mirror Lies
When an individual spends massive amounts of time obsessing about minor defects or even normal elements of their appearance that it begins to impair daily life, then they are said to be plagued by Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Eve Fisher tells her personal story about BDD recovery. When Eve was 16 she began looking in the mirror for long periods of …
Know Your Body
Geneen Roth talks about how infatuated she was with her imperfections while growing up. She was constantly thinking of how much better looking she would be if she didn’t have certain features. If only she could cut out all the flaws, so just her best features would remain she could be happy. Roth tried to reach self improvement through shaming …
The No Motivation Blues
Today, I met with a couple of women whose central concern was the fact that they felt a complete loss of motivation. One of these women is finishing graduate school. Only a few weeks away from graduating, she has found that she is not completing the assignments that she needs to in order to graduate. She knows that she can do …
The Pressure of Perfectionism
In today’s society, many people struggle with the desire to be perfect. Perfectionism is the view that anything done in a less than perfect fashion is unacceptable. In a PowerPoint presentation found at this website, Jennifer Marten explains how striving for perfection can take away from personal happiness and success. Perfectionists can be identified by a series of habits. …
Strategies for Bipolar Disorder
Living with Bipolar Disorder is not an easy feat. On the bright side, there are different strategies for coping with and managing the various symptoms. By making healthy choices and pairing medication and therapy, individuals with Bipolar Disorder can gain more control of their lives. Some factors that are necessary for maintaining a healthy lifestyle with bipolar disorder include hope, …
There’s an App for that
The I-phone has come out with some new, user friendly mood charting apps that have the potential to change the way you live your life. Just when you thought the I-phone couldn’t get any better! Two of these affordable apps are Senti and Moodkit. The Senti app keeps an emotional history of every day life by asking questions about the …
Defuse Dangerous Thoughts
We want to spend a little bit of time talking about one powerful technique for dealing with dangerous thoughts. Dangerous thoughts are thoughts that make themselves true in powerful and self-destructive ways. One example of a dangerous thought is from a very attractive young woman who had a terrible childhood of neglect. She has a powerful, dangerous thought that pops …
Coming Home
Where does the mind go when it is not occupied by the worries, frustration, and anxiety? Does it go to a happy place, or are people naturally angry? According to Rick Hanson, PhD, the mind constantly fluctuates between a reactive and responsive state. When in the responsive state, the body is able to relax and reenergize. It is a time …
Gratitude
Recently it seems that many people have been talking about the idea of gratitude as a practice that enhances psychological health. I was intrigued to run across a recent post by Disorderly Chickadee (a woman with a WordPress blog about bipolar) on the topic of her gratitude journal and the reasons she has discovered for gratitude. And then I started …
Phew… That’s Done: Sustaining Attention
It is such a relief, after worrying about some health problem for a long time, to suddenly realize that that problem no longer needs acute and urgent attention. This is as true for an ankle or knee injury in sports as it is of anxiety or depression, or any other mood state that impairs our ability to function. There is …
Escape from Depression
I met a young woman yesterday who got me thinking about the reasons why I feel so strongly about the work I do as a psychiatrist, helping people with chronic mood problems. She came in for help with what she described as a “mild but chronic depression.” She had already seen one psychiatrist, and he had not been terribly helpful; …
St. John’s Wort
St. John’s Wort is a plant which has been shown in many well controlled clinical trials to be more effective than placebo in treating mild to moderate depression (not transient sadness). In fact the evidence supporting its effectiveness is better than the evidence supporting the effectiveness of some FDA approved anti-depressants. It does not, in our experience, work as well …
Awareness and Acceptance
The New York Times has had a series of well written articles on the topic of mindfulness. The most recent article notes that brain scans show that mindfulness can change the way our brains function, and help us improve attention, reduce stress hormones and even bounce back faster from negative information. The increased ability to bounce back from negative information that comes from …
Trojan Horse Medications
From time to time we are asked to review the care that people with cycling moods have received, trying to figure out, from a complicated story of medication changes and mood cycles, what to do to get someone out of a period of deep pain and dysfunction. A few years ago I did such a review on a young man …
Small Rewards
A young woman who was scheduled to go on a big trek in the Himalayas was not doing the training she needed to in order to have a good experience. She had been depressed for the last few months and this was probably a manifestation of that mood. She told me that she felt she “should be doing much more.” …
Fish Oil Update
Since so many people with bipolar and depression take fish oil we thought we would pass on some information in a summary form from Consumer Labs. The full information is available if you subscribe. Consumer Labs is the only source of reliable information about supplements (the only place that does any testing) and if you take supplements we strongly encourage …