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In Praise of Pessimism
Confession: I have a secret talent for making lemons out of lemonade. It may not be readily apparent. I smile a lot and make cheerful conversation; my end of the dinner table is not some horrible event horizon beyond which all sunlight disappears. But tucked inside me, almost always, is a grumbling Eeyore. That Eeyore is having her moment. The coronavirus is springtime for pessimists. Every gloomy thought I’ve had about this pandemic has more or less come to pass.
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Coronavirus: ‘Anxiety Rose After Lockdown Was Introduced’
Psychologists at Ulster University (UU) are researching how measures taken to limit the spread of Covid-19 have been affecting mental health. They are working with colleagues at the University of Sheffield on the joint study. It involves a representative sample of 2,000 people across the UK. Their initial findings suggest levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms rose after "lockdown" measures were introduced on 23 March. However, the numbers of those who reported experiencing anxiety and depressive symptoms declined in subsequent days. So far, 30 people of 689 who tested positive for Covid-19 in Northern Ireland have died.
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How to Make Deadlines Motivating, Not Stressful
There’s no doubt that work deadlines can be stressful. When you have too many, you can feel overwhelmed. And looming deadlines have a habit of encouraging last-minute dashes for the finish line, like when students pull ‘all-nighters’ in an attempt to achieve weeks’ worth of essay writing in a handful of long, adrenaline-fuelled hours. Yet there’s no question deadlines can serve a positive psychological function – after all, without them, many students might never even finish their work. You can see evidence for the power of deadlines in the ‘real world’, too.
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Post-Traumatic Growth: Finding Meaning and Creativity in Adversity
Kintsugi is a centuries-old Japanese art of fixing cracked pottery. Rather than hide the cracks, the technique involves rejoining the broken pieces with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. When put back together, the whole piece of pottery looks beautiful as ever, even while owning its broken history. Many people are wondering at this time in history whether we will have a second life. When put back together, will we recover with dignity and grace? The science suggests that not only will we recover, but we will demonstrate the immense human capacity for resiliency and growth.
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The Science Behind Why Everyone is Suddenly Baking Bread
If you’ve seen an influx of sourdough starters on your Instagram stories, you’re not alone. Over the past three weeks, Google Trend searches for “bread” have hit all-time highs, #breadmaking has garnered nearly half a million posts on social media and grocery stores are facing flour shortages. “We’ve seen close to a 700-per-cent increase in flour sales from our shop. The demand picked up shortly after panicked shoppers started emptying grocery shelves,” says Matthew Faust, general manager of Brodflour, an urban mill and bakery in Toronto. ...
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‘People Want to Help You. Let Them’: How to Be Compassionate in a Crisis
APS Member/Author: Paul Gilbert In times of tragedy and trauma, we need compassion to get us through. But what do we mean by compassion? It is different from kindness and empathy, although these are ways of being compassionate. Our clinical work has led us to define compassion as the motivation to engage with distress and suffering and work to find ways to alleviate and prevent it. So, to build a more compassionate mind, we need first to build enough courage to engage with pain and suffering and, second, commit to learning how best to help ourselves deal with this, and then do it.
