Understanding Shame
by Tom Horvath, PhD If guilt is the bad feeling I get after doing “something wrong,” then shame is the bad feeling I get about being myself. Shame might arise along with guilt (“I’m not good enough, and a bad person, for doing something that terrible”). However, shame might arise by itself. In the extreme […]
Managing External Boundaries
by Tom Horvath, PhD When we talk about having boundaries, we can talk about managing external boundaries and we can talk about managing internal boundaries. This blog will discuss the management of external boundaries. To better understand external boundaries, it helps to understand the concept of interpersonal boundaries. Interpersonal boundaries are the rules we establish […]
Seeking Out and Managing Discomfort
by Tom Horvath, PhD A well-lived life needs to have significant and possibly considerable amounts of discomfort in it. For instance, do you want to exercise well, maintain a certain weight, get up early, work hard at something, or hold your tongue in an intense discussion? You are likely to feel uncomfortable! The key, then, […]
Asserting Myself
How well am I asserting myself? It is an increasingly competitive world. We need to assert our wants and desires in order to thrive. It is also an increasingly (socially) distant world, and not just because of a pandemic. It is easy to get distracted by the limited connections provided by social media, and not […]
Cannabis-Induced Psychosis is No Reason to Keep Pot Illegal
by Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD As cannabis crawls toward federal legalization, the 11th hour panic push is in on. Last week saw the introduction of the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, which seeks to federally legalize cannabis in the U.S. For those opposed to legalizing cannabis, ‘cannabis-induced psychosis’ and ‘ultra-high potency THC products’ are the buzz words working most […]
America Celebrates the Drug War’s 50th Anniversary
by Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD Let’s call a spade a spade. The war on drugs is a euphemism for a war on personal freedom. The hypocrisy inherent in a war on personal freedom in the self-proclaimed land of the free is more than a tad embarrassing (insert cringe emoji here). The number of lives ruined with criminal scarlet letters […]
Radical Acceptance
by Tom Horvath, PhD, ABPP Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) places a primary focus on improving distress tolerance. One of several tools DBT offers for tolerating distress is radical acceptance. The context of using any of the distress tolerance tools is the recognition that life will have distress, and that we need to learn how to […]
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): A Brief Overview
by Tom Horvath, PhD, ABPP Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an approach to psychotherapy designed for individuals who are highly emotionally sensitive, who struggle with depression and anxiety, and who may at times become suicidal. DBT tools, which focus on distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and mindfulness, can be helpful to anyone. You can […]
Dialectical Dilemmas
by Tom Horvath, PhD, ABPP Dialectical is a word with a long history (back to the Greeks), but for now let’s define it as “focusing or acting on the interaction of opposing forces or ideas.” Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) identifies and addresses three common dialectical dilemmas, in order to improve emotional self-regulation, one of the […]
Managing Interpersonal Boundaries, pt. II
by Tom Horvath, PhD, ABPP Interpersonal boundaries are part of the rules we establish about how we interact with other people. In this blog we focus on protecting ourselves from the outside. In a parallel blog we focused on keeping inside what needs to stay there. In both cases we can compare interpersonal boundaries to […]