Fight SAD With Five Connected Ideas
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
3y ago
Depression can snag us, and take us down.  It seduces us to shrink from the world and hide away.  While summer’s balm welcomes us, winter pushes us back into our homes, toward comfort, known quantities and isolation.  Here are five ideas that can help you challenge the call of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) depression. Take regular exercise outside.  Push yourself, even if the weather’s bad.  Try to embrace expansion – in your efforts, in the views you reach, in your capacities.  Feel the power in your body, the tingle of cold, the thrill of being alive.  ..read more
Visit website
Narcissist Survivors' Club – Depression
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
I’d like to talk in this article about a specific kind of depression, linked with the stresses of growing up in the shadow of narcissistic parents.  As I wrote in my last article “What is Narcissism”, a narcissistic parent is akin to Geocentrism: they have an insistent need for the Universe to revolve around them, and a concurrent, linked need to devalue the other.  To quote the Highlander movie: “There can be only one!” Modern developmental psychology shows that one of the fundamental things that any young child has to do is to go into the world, to be mirrored and mirror, to give a ..read more
Visit website
Narcissist Survivors' Club – What is Narcissism?
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
A couple of years ago, I wrote a small article with this title, and it must have found a home somewhere on the internet, because I regularly receive enquiries about it.  I decided it was high time I followed it up, so here goes. The concept of narcissism has moved mainstream, which can only be good news in my opinion.  The more this issue is in our language and conversation the better, since the issue of narcissism haunts every human relationship – be it individual, group, political, economic or social.  It’s something we just don’t seem to be able to grow through, perhaps becau ..read more
Visit website
What Would Jung Make of 2018?
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
Even if you don’t agree with every detail of Carl Jung’s writing, he’s worth reading out of consideration for an alternative point of view on our present cultural situation.  Jung lived and wrote through the Second World War, a time when hate and tribalism erupted into destruction.  His conclusions don’t really appear as a part of our dialogue in our present day conversation, if it can be called that – a remarkable fact considering his status as one of the two most influential psychologists of the last century. Jung was a prolific writer, with an encyclopedic knowledge of many topics ..read more
Visit website
Othering: Beneath the Tentacles of Discrimination
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
This week, I came across an “ism” that surprised me. The word I found was “sanism” – the prejudice and discrimination against those who suffer from mental illness. Why hadn’t I heard this word before, I thought? After all, I’m a psychotherapist, and the ill-treatment of those who are suffering in the sphere of mental health is hardly foreign territory. The discovery of this word prompted me to wonder whether a kind of fatigue has set into society. Marginalized groups across the spectrum of human experience are competing hard to have their voices heard. Culture wars are setting social media on ..read more
Visit website
Loneliness, Belonging & the Hunt for Admiration
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
We are tribal creatures. For thousands of years, human beings have depended upon living in groups in order to survive. When we exist successfully with other people, we gain a deep sense of belonging that is fundamental to human wellbeing. When we gain true acceptance, we don’t have to compulsively seek attention. We can just be. This kind of belonging is becoming rather scarce. Whether real or virtual, modern groups increasingly tend to reward a part or aspect of us that is useful, rather than our true selves. We anxiously don masks (personas) in order to fit into groups that demand such high ..read more
Visit website
Objectification: Monster in the Shadows
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
Current events in our culture or family lives can lead many of us to raise our hands in despair, and ask: “Why do (other!) people never learn?” Things can seem so bad, on so many fronts that we can feel overwhelmed and powerless. This article is intended to highlight a connection between prevailing problems we encounter in apparently unrelated areas of life: the problem of objectification. Human beings are able to imbue objects and animals with human characteristics. This act is known as “anthropomorphism”, and it happens all the time. Look no further than children animating stuffed toys, or D ..read more
Visit website
Seniors and Depression
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
Until recently, in our society, we seemed to equate getting older and retiring as slowing down. We expected that as a person would age, they would slow down, sleep more, go into retirement and just fade into the background. That is not the reality today. Seniors are living longer, are in better health, and seem to be able to conquer more things in their lives, than the seniors of yester year. “According to Health Canada, older Canadians are healthier, more affluent, are living longer and more independent lives than ever before. Seniors are physically more active, are engaged with their familie ..read more
Visit website
The Narcissist Survivors' Club
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
This is the phrase I sometimes have in my mind when I think about my practice, and about therapy in general. It doesn’t describe everyone who comes to therapy, but both the incidence and the suffering involved are considerable. It is deeply instructive to me that so many people facing struggles in life have suffered at the hands of narcissistic parents, and many people bear the tell-tale deep, invisible bruises of what often amounts to a form of emotional (and sometimes physical) abuse. I thought it might be helpful to outline a few of the dynamics of growing up and living with narcisisstic pe ..read more
Visit website
Scapegoating & Group Narcissism
Toronto Psychotherapists
by Toronto Psychotherapists
4y ago
We tend to look at the great societal challenges we face in isolated, fragmented terms.  Racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, sexism, inequality, organized crime, nationalism – individual fights and movements are underway in courageous attempts to make the world a better place, but they are issues that are often seen as distinct, separate in their identity, as if they had nothing in common. We do not question when the plight of each scapegoated group is spoken of in totally isolated terms.  Racism is hardly ever spoken of in the same breath, for example, as misogyny.  Reli ..read more
Visit website

Follow Toronto Psychotherapists on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR