I believe art can help make complex concepts a little easier to understand. For visual thinkers, seeing a concept illustrated can help make connections. Even for those who don’t identify as visual thinkers, seeing an illustration can help us remember a concept in a more meaningful way than if we just reading about it or are told about it. In this category I’ve collected my psychology illustrations, comics, and visuals that don’t seem to fit in other, more specific, categories.
While PTSD Flashbacks tend to get attention in books and media, many trauma survivors experience something called emotional flashbacks. Flashbacks flood brains with images, physical …
How do particular colors make you feel? Your answers compared to a partner’s, family member’s, or client’s might surprise you. I developed this simple …
Emotions prompt behavior. In this new emotion wheel, I’ve created a visual representation of how emotions and behaviors are linked. Understanding these connections, and how ourselves …
Good play helps us rest in more satisfying ways, bond more deeply with friends and partners, work more productively, and grow resilience to burnout. So why are so many of us so bad at it? In this article, I share a visual summary of how adults play, according to Dr. Stuart Brown in his book PLAY. Want to learn your play style? Log in via Patreon to take the quiz.
Love is always complicated, but rarely as complex as the love felt for a therapist. Although it’s often dismissed, buried, or even shamed, loving your …
Trauma triggers are activated by experiences – big or small – that remind our brains and bodies of past traumatic experiences we’ve gone through. While triggers may be complex to navigate or understand, and while they never truly go away, good trauma therapy can reduce the impact of triggers.
All of us have some resiliency to cope with challenges. When we encounter difficult experiences that take us past the range of our ability to tolerate, the ways we tend to respond fall into one of two categories: those of us who get agitated, and those of us who shut down.
Emotional regulation refers to our ability to stay present, engaged, and able to listen and learn despite challenges. My rainbow of emotional regulation is a social-emotional learning resource that can help teach this concept in the classroom, in counseling sessions, or at home.
If you aren’t naming and breaking the cycles that have entangled you, you are participating in them. This is true in most systems we are …
Group Therapy Sketchnotes In graduate school, I had the privilege of learning under instructors who were mostly very receptive to the idea that not all …
Magical thinking is a normal phase in childhood in which we think that our thoughts – or totally random, unrelated events – can change the …
You’ve seen my Halloween themed ghost attachment styles doodles, now here’s the Valentine version! Purchase Valentine Digital PDF: Order A 3-Pack of Psychology Valentines Directly …
The nature of crisis is that it is (1) overwhelming, and (2) inevitable. Whether you are a clinician in the helping professions or a person …
To follow my post earlier this week on developing (new) coping skills rather than attempting to just desert our old ones, here are a few …
If you’ve avoided recovery because giving up the only-ways-you-know-to-survive feels overwhelming, know that the goal of good therapy is not “stopping certain behaviors” – it’s …
Most of us know one or two help rejecting complainers. It can be tempting to get frustrated, give up, or get “even,” but when we …
Social media can be a dark, divisive place sometimes. On the other end of the spectrum, depending on the accounts you choose to follow, it …
Schizophrenia is among the most debilitating mental health disorders- so much so that there is still a lot of stigma around the diagnosis. The problem …