Mental health
fromPsychology Today
7 hours agoWhy You Can't Rush Healing
Pacing is essential in therapy, balancing speed to avoid client dysregulation or disengagement.
#grief
#grief
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#mental-health #psychology #relationships #loss #trauma #resilience #identity #personal-growth #emotional-health
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
7 hours agoThe hardest part of being called too sensitive as a child isn't the label itself. It's the decades you spend afterward trying to feel less, without realizing you were slowly subtracting yourself from your own life - Silicon Canals
The term 'sensitive' can carry a damaging tone that leads to long-term emotional adjustments and a life shaped by others' expectations.
Relationships
fromSilicon Canals
18 hours agoPsychology says the people who find it hardest to be taken care of when they're sick aren't independent, they're carrying a very old belief that needing someone was the fastest way to be left - Silicon Canals
Needing care from loved ones during illness can evoke feelings of vulnerability and discomfort, often rooted in deeper fears of abandonment.
Pets
fromSilicon Canals
2 days agoPsychology says the grief people feel when a dog dies is often heavier than they expected because the dog witnessed years of their private self that no human in their life ever saw - Silicon Canals
Grief for a pet can be profound and complex, often surpassing societal expectations based on relationship hierarchy.
#retirement
Renovation
fromSilicon Canals
1 day agoI'm 66 and I've been retired for two years and the loneliness isn't what I expected - it's not about being alone, I have a wife, I have children, I have neighbors - it's about no longer being the person a room turns toward when a decision needs to be made, and that shift from being needed to being included is the quietest demotion there is - Silicon Canals
The loneliness of retirement stems from feeling unnecessary as roles and needs change over time.
Retirement
fromSilicon Canals
2 days agoPsychology says there's a specific version of loneliness that only shows up in retirement - not the absence of colleagues or the silence of mornings, but the slow understanding that the version of you the world was interested in was the one producing, performing, solving, and the version sitting at home in a quiet kitchen is someone the world has gently agreed to stop asking about - Silicon Canals
Retirement loneliness stems from losing one's identity and purpose, not just from missing social connections.
Retirement
fromSilicon Canals
1 week agoPsychology suggests retirees who become genuinely exhausting to be around are almost never aware they're doing it - because the crankiness is grief wearing a disguise and the neediness is loneliness knocking on the only doors still open, and neither one feels like a choice from the inside - Silicon Canals
Retirement can lead to unexpected grief and identity loss, resulting in irritability and strained relationships.
fromIndependent
1 day ago'Every life matters' - More than 100 people attend funeral of woman who died with no known relatives
The celebration of life for Margaret Ellen 'Peggy' Murdoch took place at Ronnie Thompson's Funeral Church in Lisburn, Co Antrim, where members of the public, neighbours and carers came together to pay their respects.
London
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
19 hours agoPsychology says a woman has a beautiful soul if she has taken real pain and turned it into gentleness rather than armor - because the default response to being hurt is becoming harder, and the woman who went through the same things and came out softer instead has done something rare and almost impossible to teach - Silicon Canals
Pain can lead to gentleness, with some individuals choosing softness over hardness despite their hardships.
fromPsychology Today
1 week agoGrief, Storytelling, and Identity
The concept album is a response to the brutal murder of Breedlove's father and stepmother at the hands of his stepbrother. The frame—the first song and the last—of the album is about the murders and their aftermath. But this is not a true crime record.
Music production
Parenting
fromSilicon Canals
2 days agoThe people who were praised for being mature as children and punished for being needy as adults, and the decades it takes to untangle which one was actually true - Silicon Canals
Maturity in children often reflects adult expectations, leading to long-term consequences for the child's emotional development.
Humor
fromSilicon Canals
5 days agoPeople who laugh before they finish telling a painful story aren't handling it well. They're releasing the listener from having to respond to it seriously, which is a skill they learned from people who couldn't. - Silicon Canals
Laughter during painful stories often serves as a social cue to ease discomfort rather than indicating healing.
Mental health
fromSilicon Canals
13 hours agoPsychology says the reason so many successful people quietly burn out in their 50s isn't overwork - it's that they spent three decades performing a version of themselves that the job required, and somewhere along the way they stopped being able to locate the original person underneath, and the burnout isn't about energy, it's about grief for a self they outsourced - Silicon Canals
Identity erosion in high-performing professionals often manifests as a grief response to losing one's original self to job demands.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 day agoNot everyone who says they're fine is lying. Some people genuinely cannot locate the word for what they're feeling because nobody ever sat with them long enough to help them name it, and fine became the only vocabulary they trust - Silicon Canals
Many people struggle to articulate their emotions, often responding with 'fine' due to a condition called alexithymia, which affects emotional vocabulary.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
2 days agoNot everyone who smiles through criticism is secure. Some people learned very early that visible hurt made the criticism worse, and the smile is the face their nervous system wears when it's bracing for the next hit - Silicon Canals
A smile in response to criticism often masks internal pain and is a learned strategy from childhood experiences of trauma or stress.
fromPsychology Today
3 days agoWhen Anger Waits: The Turtle Technique Beyond Childhood
The turtle technique is often introduced to children to help them manage strong emotions, guiding them to pause, breathe, and step back before reacting. It sounds simple, yet it carries depth when practiced with intention.
Mindfulness
#forgiveness
Mental health
fromSilicon Canals
4 days agoPsychology explains people who forgive easily aren't weak or naive - they've simply done the math on what resentment actually costs the person carrying it and decided the debt isn't worth collecting, because forgiveness isn't about the other person deserving peace, it's about refusing to let someone who already hurt you once continue to take up space in a body they no longer have any right to occupy - Silicon Canals
Forgiveness is essential for personal well-being and mental health, freeing individuals from the burden of resentment.
Mental health
fromSilicon Canals
4 days agoPsychology says the most isolating part of getting older isn't having fewer people around you - it's having fewer people who knew you when you were whole and fast and full of plans, because the version of you that exists in other people's memory is shrinking at the same rate as the guest list, and one day you'll be the only person alive who remembers what you were capable of - Silicon Canals
The hardest part of aging is losing connections to those who remember different versions of ourselves.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
5 days agoPsychology says adult children don't grieve their aging parents all at once - they grieve them in a thousand tiny deaths, like the first time your mother forgets she told you the same story twice, or the afternoon you notice your father's hands shaking when he signs his name - Silicon Canals
Anticipatory grief involves mourning the gradual changes in living parents, representing incremental losses rather than just preparing for death.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
2 days agoPsychology suggests there's a certain type of anger that lives inside the most agreeable people - it's the anger of swallowing every small injustice, every dismissive comment, every overlooked contribution for decades, and the reason the calmest person in your family might one day explode over something trivial isn't the trivial thing, it's the fifty years of larger things they never allowed themselves to react to - Silicon Canals
Agreeableness can lead to emotional accumulation, resulting in explosive reactions over seemingly trivial matters due to suppressed feelings.
Mental health
fromSilicon Canals
5 days agoPsychology says the reason so many people crash emotionally in their early 60s isn't retirement or aging - it's the first time in decades they've had enough silence to hear their own thoughts and they don't recognize the person thinking them - Silicon Canals
Highly functional individuals often face delayed emotional collapse in their sixties due to decades of avoidance and relentless life pressures.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
2 days agoPsychology says the reason so many high-achievers can't enjoy their own wins isn't imposter syndrome, it's that achievement was the language they were taught love was spoken in, and they've never learned to receive love in any other form - Silicon Canals
High-achievers often feel unsatisfied with their accomplishments due to a childhood belief that achievement equals worth.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
4 days agoThere's a specific kind of adult who apologizes for crying even when they're alone, and it isn't sensitivity, it's the residue of a childhood where emotion was something you were expected to clean up before anyone saw the mess - Silicon Canals
Adults who were invalidated in childhood often apologize for their emotions, reflecting deep-seated patterns of emotional suppression.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
5 days agoThe people who seem to have endless patience with difficult family members aren't necessarily more forgiving. Many of them long ago concluded that the emotional cost of asking for change was higher than the cost of absorbing the behavior, and they've been paying the cheaper price for so long they forgot there was ever a choice. - Silicon Canals
Conflict avoidance is often mistaken for patience, but it can lead to relationship breakdown and is linked to anxiety and attachment insecurity.
Writing
fromIndependent
1 month agoCiara Kelly: It feels like I've been warding off a deep sadness since my beloved sister's death and I need a break. So, I'm signing off for a while
Losing a sibling to cancer differs profoundly from other grief experiences because siblings represent lifelong companionship and shared history from childhood.
Mental health
fromSilicon Canals
4 weeks agoNobody warns you that grief and loneliness are two different animals that hunt together. Grief takes the person. Loneliness takes every small moment you used to share with them and leaves you standing in the kitchen holding two coffee cups out of habit, morning after morning, until you teach yourself to reach for one. - Silicon Canals
Grief and loneliness are distinct experiences that affect individuals differently, with grief being a communal event and loneliness a persistent absence.
fromSlate Magazine
2 months agoHelp! My Sister Just Experienced an Unthinkable Tragedy. She Says She's "Not Grieving."
I'm trying to figure out how to support my sister, but I don't know how. When my older sister "Sonya" was a teen, she was assaulted by an adult. She got pregnant, and our parents refused to let her terminate the pregnancy or put the baby up for adoption. Sonya was an unwilling mom to "Simon" until she turned 18. At that point, she left him with our parents for extended periods of time while she tried to get an education and figure herself out.
Relationships
fromDeconstructing Yourself
2 months agoStay with the Grief
Today I saw images of students leaving their school with their hands raised in the air, hours after cowering in fear and terror in barricaded classrooms. Nine dead and twenty-seven wounded in the tiny Rocky Mountain town of Tumbler Ridge. The mayor, Darryl Krakowka, said, "I have lived here for 18 years. I probably know every one of the victims." And this in Canada, which often seems to us Americans like a bastion of sanity and normalcy in comparison with our madness.
Mindfulness
fromSilicon Canals
1 month agoI'm 44 and I haven't cried since my father's funeral three years ago - not because I've healed but because somewhere between the eulogy and the drive home my body decided that was the last time and I've been waiting ever since for the next wave to come and it just won't and the numbness is worse than the grief ever was - Silicon Canals
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes in 'The Body Keeps the Score' that trauma doesn't just live in our minds - it reshapes how our bodies respond to emotion. Sometimes, when we experience significant loss, our nervous system essentially decides that feeling is too dangerous and shuts down the whole operation.
Mental health
Mental health
fromSilicon Canals
1 month agoPsychologists explain that the grief of not having children doesn't follow the stages people expect because there is no single loss to process. It's a recurring absence that resurfaces at every milestone, every holiday, every quiet evening, and the pain isn't that it keeps happening once but that it keeps happening in new forms for the rest of your life. - Silicon Canals
Grief from childlessness is a unique, ongoing loss without a single event or clear moment of acceptance, manifesting through countless ordinary moments that unexpectedly trigger profound emotional weight.
fromPsychology Today
2 months agoWhy the Grief Ripples So Deeply When an Advocate Dies
'They're dead.' In disbelief, my response was unfiltered. 'What?' Followed by the F word. A wave of emotion rushed through me. My chest tightened. My body went cold. I could not immediately find the words to offer condolences, not because I did not feel them deeply, but because inside, my many parts were experiencing a collective shock. When you live with dissociative identity disorder (DID), news like this does not land in one place. It ricochets across all parts within.
Mental health
fromSlate Magazine
2 months agoOvercoming Grief Through Ritual
When we think of rituals, we tend to think of face masks and wellness trends. But there are actually ways to use rituals to help heal grief and deal with stressful times. On this episode, Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newcamp, and Zak Rosen are joined by ritual expert Betty Ray to talk about creative ways to help children process grief and big emotions, how to use ritual to create safety and expression, and much more.
Mental health
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