Frequently, I am asked how to handle irrational jealous feelings.  Usually, the individual recognizes that her feelings are unreasonable with no valid evidence but feels incapable of controlling the jealousy.  In addition, the person usually recognizes the destructive nature of indulging in the feelings and the resulting behavior.  Such behavior typically involves excessive questioning of her spouse, suspiciousness, and accusations.  Many spouses become extremely frustrated with this behavior because they have no way of proving their faithfulness.  This leads to an escalating cycle of anger which is used as further evidence by the jealous spouse that her suspicions are correct. The jealous spouse often desperately wants to stop the behavior but finds that he can't control the thoughts which makes him feel miserable.  He believes that if he can just prove his suspicions one way or another, he will feel better.  The unfortunate fallacy in this thinking, is that trust can never be proven; it can only be disproved.  The definition of trust is the belief that something is true.  Therefore, without evidence to the contrary, if we want a satisfying relationship, we have to choose to trust the person we love.  READ MORE...

Betrayal is probably the most devastating loss a person can experience.  To be betrayed, the person must first experience trust in the betrayer.  It is fairly impossible for you to be betrayed if you did not trust the individual in the first place.  Therefore, the definition of betrayal involves the act of someone violating your trust in them.  The betrayal I am discussing in this article refers to a variety of forms of betrayal.  For instance, a child is betrayed when he or she is abused by the parents who are supposed to love, support, and protect the child.  A spouse is betrayed when their partner has an affair.  Betrayal is when someone you trust lies to you, cheats on you, abuses you, or hurts you by putting their own self-interest first. READ MORE...

I had some good questions on my website regarding handling a partner's irrational jealousy.  The reason I wrote the article What to Do When Your Jealousy Threatens to Destroy Your Marriage for the individual with the problem jealousy is because until that person decides to make changes nothing can be done to eliminate their jealousy.  That article has been very popular and many people have indicated to me that they are trying to change their behavior after reading it.  However, there are many other people who are not recognizing their jealous behavior and so their partners are writing to me asking what to do.

Just because the person with the jealousy problem is the only one who can change it doesn't mean that there is nothing that you, as the partner, can do about your partner's jealousy.  However, the steps you can take may be very challenging and don't come without risk.  If you truly want a chance for your partner to change, the best place to start is with yourself.  By changing how you respond to your partner's jealousy you will develop a greater understanding of how difficult it is to make changes.  This increases your empathy for your partner especially if he/she is trying to make changes.  However, it may also make you less tolerant of someone refusing to recognize their problem or do anything about it.  This could be a healthy thing for you because you are less likely to remain in a destructive relationship.  READ MORE...

A natural human tendency is to simplify explanations, especially explanations regarding the behavior of other people. Even science teaches the importance of being parsimonious; in other words, don’t use a complex explanation when a simple one will do. However, many times we over-simplify the cause of behavior, both as individuals and as a science.

In social psychology, a concept known as "the fundamental attribution error" describes the tendency to view too much of someone else’s behavior as related to internal factors. For instance, if a person is fired from a job, we may think, "That person is incompetent," even though we could as easily think, "That job was not right for that person." We tend to believe that the problems other people have are due to some internal fault or flaw and we tend to over-estimate the degree of the person's responsibility. READ MORE...

One rarely sees David and Susan more than a few feet from each other at work. The thought of Susan increases David’s heart rate, while Susan’s thoughts do likewise every time David is near. The way they look into one another’s eyes tells their co-workers, “You don’t really belong here.” Even their boss feels a bit awkward when the heat between them borders on the inappropriate.

A passionate relationship beginning to bloom? No. David and Susan are two co-workers locked in what seems to be an incurable conflict at work. Their situation illustrates how conflict can affect us at our job. Conflict may not only take a toll on our physical body (as it did on David’s racing heart), but it often occupies our thoughts and causes us a great deal of emotional distress. As we saw in the situation with David and Susan, conflictual behavior impacts not only those involved in the conflict, but also those who have no part in it. As most of us spend approximately one-third of our adult lives in the workplace, conflict in this setting can’t be easily dismissed as unimportant. In fact, failing to address such conflict may have implications for our “non-working” lives. As a result, it becomes important for each of us to understand how conflict arises in the workplace, and what steps we can take to deal with such conflict.  READ MORE...

The hardest thing about dieting is the deprivation. It feels like we are being punished. No wonder so many people are unsuccessful with dieting if it has such a strong negative reaction. We aren't motivated by negativity except to move away from it. We are motivation to move towards things that feel good. Therefore, the secret to losing weight has to be in making it feel good. "How can I do that?" you ask because you associate the words "diet" and "bad."

I don't have any miracle or new strategies to weight loss. What I am presenting in this article are the old tried and true techniques that have been shown through behavioral research to be effective. However, the title is true. You can lose weight without deprivation if you change some basic ineffective thought processes and behaviors. READ MORE...

Athletes typically have a great deal of difficulty adjusting to injuries especially those that prevent them from engaging in their particular sport. Much of their sense of self is connected to their sport. An injury can cause disruption to their usual routine and prevent the self-satisfaction and accomplishment they experience through their sport. As a result, they often experience a sense of loss, confusion, and irritability or frustration when they are injured. This article is not just for those athletes who have already experienced an injury because it is important for every athlete to prepare for eventual injuries and learn how to assess the seriousness of the injury and how to cope with a temporary change in their activities as well as how to deal with a career ending injury. READ MORE...

After experiencing severe heart palpitations and shortness of breath while driving, Diane rushed to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. Extensive tests showed no physical abnormalities or problems. She was told she had a panic attack and was given an anti-anxiety medication. As a result of the panic attack, she quit driving by herself because she became fearful of having another panic attack and losing control while driving. Whenever she would attempt to drive by herself, she would have a panic attack. Her family physician explained to her that Panic Disorder was a chemical imbalance and that medication helps to regulate the chemicals in the brain. An anti-depressant was prescribed in addition to the anti-anxiety medication. Diane found that she began to feel less anxious with the medications, but that she was still avoiding the driving due to her fear of having a panic attack. Additionally, she became concerned about needing to be on the medication for a long time and wondered if any other treatment could help. READ MORE...

Frequently, athletes are so caught up in the excitement of their career and on developing the necessary skills and techniques to succeed in their sports career that they don’t anticipate what may occur when their sports career ends. Sports careers are different than many other careers because they frequently end at a much younger age than standard retirement age and often may end unexpectedly. The transition can be made somewhat easier the more the athlete recognizes the issues in ending the career and prepares for life after a sports career.  READ MORE...

A young soccer player accompanied by his father reluctantly walked into my office because he had problems with "motivation" according to his father. The boy sat quietly while his father explained, "He just doesn't seem to care. He's good enough to get a scholarship to college but he's not making the effort. I tell him all the time how he can improve his game but I never see any effort." When I asked about the coach's involvement the father responded, "He's just useless. He thinks the most important thing is for the kids to have fun. He encourages them but he never tells them specifics about how to improve. I think I need to switch him to another team where the coach focuses more on winning games." When I talked to the boy alone I found out that he really enjoyed soccer but felt that he couldn't meet his father's demands. He also felt that he didn't get much direction from his coach. As a result, he didn't have clear ideas about how to improve his skills.

The above situation describes three different sets of goals that were developed without any communication among the people involved. His father's goals were outcome or success-oriented goals focused on winning games or "winning" a scholarship. The coach's goals weren't focused on the skills at all but on the emotional aspect of enjoying the sport. The boy wanted to improve specific skills but needed assistance to develop performance-oriented goals. However, due to his father's expectations he tended to be fearful of failure; this failure-orientation in his goals tended to decrease motivation and persistence. READ MORE...

Holidays are often a joyous reunion for many families--a time of happy memories, a time of sharing, a time of renewing ties. Many people look forward to the holiday season with excited anticipation. However, many people look forward to the holiday season with trepidation. Often, holidays are stressful times because problems within families that can be ignored from a distance become readily apparent with the close contact of family gatherings. What is supposed to be a pleasant time becomes a nightmare.  READ MORE...

The vast majority of my clients with anxiety disorders are perfectionists. Additionally, perfectionism is extremely pervasive in our culture generally. However, the typical response when I inquire about perfectionism is, “Oh, no, I’m not a perfectionist. I’m far from perfect.” Such a response indicates a lack of understanding regarding the concept of perfectionism.

Perfectionism is the belief that one must attain perfection or one is a failure. Perfectionism is an extreme distortion of the concept “Do your best” when an individual believes that his or her “best” means, “perfect.” The individual becomes fearful of making mistakes and may experience stress, anxiety, and depression as a result. READ MORE...

Janine is a 38-year-old married woman with two young children. She obsesses continuously about whether her house is neat and clean enough. She frequently stays up until three in the morning scrubbing and straightening. In addition, Janine is painfully shy and has few friends. She worries about what other people think of her and is terribly afraid of rejection. Some of her neighbors get together with their children to play in a nearby park or each other’s homes, but Janine never joins them.

You may easily recognize that Janine has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). What you may not recognize is that she has an additional anxiety disorder called social phobia. Janine is not alone; recent research (1) estimates that 24% of individuals diagnosed with OCD receive an additional diagnosis of social phobia. In fact, this study found that social phobia is the most common additional anxiety disorder diagnosis made for those individuals with OCD.  READ MORE...

Although we may prefer to believe that learning a motor skill is purely learning a set of physical techniques, we have to consider that most learning typically takes place in the context of an interpersonal relationship with a teacher. The critical question is how does this interaction affect the development of motor skills. It appears that the mediating factor between the presentation of the instructions by the teacher and the performance of the skill by the student may be the cognitive process of self-efficacy (Escarti & Guzman, 1999). Some may argue that the development of effective skills may lead to the increased self-efficacy demonstrated by students of high ability. Although this process occurs, it is not sufficient for explaining the role of developing self-efficacy and its impact on learning motor skills. To fully explain the role of self-efficacy, we must evaluate the interpersonal context of how the teacher or coach provides feedback to the athlete, how that feedback affects self-efficacy, and how self-efficacy enhances performance. Unfortunately, studies directly examining this relationship are sparse, and therefore, the inferences need to be made based on research examining the relation of the different components of the equation such as the feedback/self-efficacy relationship and the self-efficacy/motor skills relationship.
READ MORE...

Although martial arts derive from the eastern philosophical thinking which focuses on the importance of the combined interaction of the mind and body, many western martial artists tend to ignore the mental aspects of the art and only focus on the physical aspects.

Interestingly, other sports that were not so grounded in the metaphysical traditions seem to have more easily accepted the precepts of sport psychology and embraced the development of mental skills. It seems that more and more frequently, whenever a sporting event is on television, references are made to sport psychologists assisting the athletes. Top athletes in most sports are turning to sport psychologists to enhance their performance because the development of the mental skills has been shown to give an edge to those athletes. READ MORE...

Although sports psychology is still in its infancy, a tremendous amount of interest has been generated by the potential of psychological principles to enhance athletic performance. In particular, the dedication to empirical examination of the tenets of cognitive-behavioral theory has led to more effective clinical techniques which have been intuitively appealing to sport psychology consultants. As a result, psychological methods were implemented to enhance performance prior to solid research support. However, recent reviews of studies conducted in the last approximately fifteen years have shown the psychological methods to be useful in the area of sports performance enhancement (Greenspan & Feltz, 1989; Weinberg and Comar, 1994). READ MORE...

RECOMMENDED BOOKS...

Personality testing has been used for many decades by industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists to select appropriate candidates to fill certain job positions. In particular, police departments and fire departments often require personality testing of applicants. Even many seminaries require testing of students desiring to become ministers or priests. More recently, some professional sports teams are using personality testing to help select from the draft choices. Is this a good idea and what kind of problems can we expect in this process? READ MORE...

Too often, mental health professionals focus on treating illness rather than maintaining wellness. However, the skills we bring to the treatment of psychological disorders are the same skills that can aid people with enhancing wellness. More importantly, the focus on wellness can prevent the life disruption caused by illness and the need for further treatment. What does it mean to focus on wellness? Basically, it means life style enhancements that protects the individual's physical well-being and improves the ability to cope with stressors. Frequently, these are simple techniques that most people just don't take the time to include in their lives. How many times have you said or heard others say, "I don't have time to exercise" or "I don't have time to relax?" Thus, a very important contributor to wellness is attitude: a thought process that influences the way a person approaches dealing with life. READ MORE...

One day when I was seven–years–old my father allowed me to choose our Sunday family activity. He said we could either take a drive across the Mississippi River or ride on the last streetcar in St. Louis. At that time of my life I had never seen an ocean or even a great lake and I was awed by the vastness of the Mississippi River. It never occurred to me that the river would always be there and the streetcars might not. I chose the river. Of course, driving across the river took all of fifteen seconds. Immediately after we crossed the bridge I regretted my decision. My regret at the time was that the streetcar excursion would have been lengthier. My regret later was that I never again had the opportunity to ride a streetcar in St. Louis.

My father could have protected me from my regret and sadness. He could have taken me on a streetcar anyway or have convinced me that I had made the wrong decision. However, he allowed the decision to stand and allowed me to deal with the consequential emotions. I don't know what he intended, but I do believe that he was trying to be a good father that day.  READ MORE...

Without confidence in one’s ability, an individual cannot perform to his or her potential. It is even possible that someone with lesser ability, but with confidence, can outperform this person because belief in oneself can be a powerful influence. What is this sense of confidence? Albert Bandura refers to situation-specific self-confidence as “self-efficacy” which is the strength of an individual’s belief that he or she can successfully perform a given activity. The concept of self-efficacy has often been used interchangeably with the concept of self-esteem which is the process of evaluating the self; however, self-efficacy is more accurately described as a precursor to self-esteem and is mediated by the individual’s self-attributions. READ MORE...

Low self-esteem has been implicated in most psychological dysfunction; however, low self-esteem is not necessarily the root cause of this dysfunction. It is believed (Aro, 1994) that individuals with high self-esteem who may be predisposed to psychological disorders are better equipped to cope with those disorders, and thus, reduce the negative consequences that may result. Therefore, if self-esteem can be enhanced, the psychological consequences of disorders can be reduced. This process can be illustrated by describing a similar process that occurs with physical illness such as diabetes. The individual may be genetically predisposed to developing the illness, but if they engage in the proper healthy care-taking activities, they may prevent the development of the illness or, at least, reduce its consequences (Amir et. al., 1990. The enhancement of self-esteem and self-efficacy can be an important contributing factor to both the prevention of psychological and physical illness and the maintenance of health.  READ MORE...

Training “smart” is more important than the amount of daily practice. Too often an athlete believes that the more he or she practices, the more proficient he/she will become. However, this plan is not only ineffective, but it can also be detrimental to achieving the desired outcome. An athlete who practices frequently and hard without an overall plan will be more likely to suffer the effects of overtraining such as burn-out, exhaustion, and increased injuries rather than actually improving performance. By developing a set of specific goals and a plan for reaching those goals, athletes can more effectively use their practice time and even reduce the time required in practice to attain their goals. Obviously, this does not mean that the martial artist can achieve rank or win tournaments with little practice; it means that the athlete does not need to waste time through ineffective practice and through the harmful effects of overtraining. READ MORE...

Frequently, people have many misconceptions about what sport psychology is and how it is applied. These misconceptions stem from making assumptions based on a limited understanding of psychology and how it is used in applied settings. In particular, misconceptions include thinking that sport psychology is for treating athletes with mental disorders or that it is simply focused on getting an athlete through a slump or that it is just fluff. There is also a great deal of confusion about the credentials of a sport psychologist primarily because there has been controversy within the field as to the appropriate credentials.  READ MORE...

Assessing performance and correcting errors are important internal skills for the martial arts student to develop. But how does one develop this skill? To do so, the martial arts instructor needs to consciously teach skill just as he or she teaches proper execution of a side kick or using faking techniques during sparring. However, teaching the development of using internal sources of information for feedback may be something many martial arts instructors were not taught themselves. So often when we teach skills, our response to the student’s performance involves correcting errors or giving general praise, neither of which are conducive to teaching the student how to self-correct errors. In fact, these responses tend to create excessive dependence upon the instructor’s feedback and presence. READ MORE...

The manner in which instructors provide feedback to athletes can have significant impact upon an athlete's self-efficacy which in turn affects the ability to learn a skill and the overall performance. Self-efficacy is the athlete's personal belief that he or she has the capability to learn and perform a specific skill or activity. The results of an interesting study by Amparo Escarti and Jose Guzman in 1999 indicated that performance feedback which focuses on providing feedback regarding technique rather than evaluating outcome was related to increased self-efficacy, a higher level of performance, and the tendency to choose more difficult tasks. Other research has shown that a higher level of self-efficacy improves performance. Thus, research shows us that how a coach provides feedback to athletes is critical in the development of the athlete.

To make this issue all the more complicated, there is research evidence that women respond differently than men to feedback from coaches. This is most likely a crucial point in the martial arts today because the majority of instructors in the martial arts are men and there are more and more women choosing to participate and compete in the martial arts. Therefore, a martial arts instructor needs to be more attuned to the methods of providing feedback to women in order to elicit their best performance as well as to keep them interested in continuing their training  READ MORE...

Wellness is not only a state of physical health, it is also a state of mind. The mind and body are completely integrated. The mind and body cannot be separated into "This is a physical illness" and "This is a mental illness," although we do just that in our classification schemes. Research has shown more and more that mental illness often has a physical component, and that many physical illnesses can be addressed, at least partially, through behavioral means.

Let's look at this through logical analysis. We use medications for many different kinds of problems: to relieve pain, to reduce depression and/or anxiety, to lower blood pressure, to reduce cholesterol, to fight infections, etc. Have you ever wondered why medications work? In the simplest terms possible, medications primarily work because they either mimic or stimulate natural processes. We are chemical beings. Everything that we do, that we think, is through chemical processes. Therefore, when we use medications, we are aiding a natural bodily process. READ MORE...

If women could just change one thing, they would find that they could have almost everything they want in a relationship. Of course, I'm talking about women who are married to the average decent non-abusive man. I don't know how often I've heard a woman say, "But I shouldn't have to ask." Frequently, they have all sorts of expectations of their partner and become resentful and angry when he doesn't fulfill those expectations. However, when I ask what he said when they asked for what they wanted, they either respond with "I shouldn't have to ask" or with "I told him once. I shouldn't have to keep telling him."

These attitudes are self-defeating and often destructive to a relationship. If women could learn to ask for what they want and ask often, many women could have the relationship of their dreams. When I tell women this, then they typically respond, "But he'll think I'm nagging him." The problem with this thinking is that women don't understand how men communicate.  READ MORE...