Last updated: June 18th, 2024 Life is full of situations that shouldn’t be the way they are! Sometimes you can fix these situations, but sometimes you can’t. Accepting things as they are is a powerful way to cope with situations that you don’t want or that shouldn’t happen. Many things in life are beyond your…
Last updated: June 14, 2025 Negative reinforcement plays an important role in anxiety and related problems. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, panic attacks, and other related disorders can all be worsened by it. So what is negative reinforcement? Anxiety is relatively well understood in the 21st century. A mere 50 or 75 years ago, that wasn’t…
It is normal to experience a broad range of emotions. In fact, emotions are what make us human! Common emotions include sadness, joy, excitement, fear, guilt, anger, shame, and anxiety, to name a few. Experiencing a broad range of emotions is natural and unproblematic. However, intense emotions or rapid fluctuations between positive and negative emotions…
Everyone has stress. But when is stress a risk to our health and well being? Episodic acute stress might be the most common way that stress gets out of hand and puts our mental and physical health in danger.
Do You Worry Too Much About Your Health? It can sometimes be tricky to determine whether you are focusing enough on your health. Are you obsessing about it? Or are you neglecting an important symptom? What’s the happy medium?
Last updated: March 2nd, 2025 The STOP skill in DBT is one of the crisis survival skills (along with TIP skills, IMPROVE the Moment, and others). Use it when your emotions are threatening to get the best of you and you’re tempted to take unhelpful actions. The STOP skill can also be thought of as…
“Improving the Moment” refers to a set of strategies recommended in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to help you get through emotionally trying situations. These skills help in situations when our usual self-soothing efforts aren’t getting the job done. The DBT IMPROVE the Moment skills are intended as a menu of options you can use to…
Has sleep become a source of frustration and dread? Try these four sleep hacks to maximize your chances of sleeping well. Sleep Hack #1: Keep a Regular Wake Time If you suffer from insomnia, you may be making a common strategic mistake. It involves your approach to waking up in the morning. If it takes you…
The ABC PLEASE skills from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) are important for anyone who wants to improve their emotional health. The skills help set us up for success in managing our mood and emotions, and they pave the way for a happy life. See below for a summary of the skills and for lists of…
Last updated: August 28, 2023 Sexual arousal can feel terrifying when it happens in the context of POCD. Learn how to understand this nuanced phenomenon. What is POCD? Pedophilic obsessive-compulsive disorder (POCD) is a term used for obsessive-compulsive disorder when the primary symptom is obsessions around pedophilia.
When emotions are out of control, you can use TIPP skills to bring down the intensity. There are four TIPP skills described in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Using them in a crisis can calm things to the point that we can then use other coping skills. They are presented first in summary form, and then…
It’s one thing to be told you have POCD. It’s another to feel comfortable that your fears are “just OCD.” So is it POCD, or could you be a pedophile in denial? What Is POCD? POCD stands for pedophilic obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s not a separate condition from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, the isolating and…