“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass … it’s about learning to dance in the rain,” wrote Vivian Greene. Dancing in the rain is the modus operandi of folks living with chronic pain. They spend a lifetime figuring out how to dance gracefully–with little effort visible to the observer—and to resist the urge...
Maybe you haven’t gotten out the voodoo dolls and performed rituals, but chances are good that you’re secretly delighted that your nemesis got fired from her dream job, that your high school prom queen got a bad case of shingles, and that the overachiever triathlon in your family has now been humbled by broken leg....
Psychologists have touted for decades that exercise can go a long way in treating depression. Dr. James A. Blumenthal, a professor of medical psychology at Duke University, led a recent study in which he and his team discovered that, among the 202 depressed people randomly assigned to various treatments, three sessions of vigorous aerobic exercise...
“To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make you everybody else,” wrote American poet E. E. Cummings, “means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” According to a recent survey by the charity Action for Happiness, in collaboration with Do...
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the most controversial treatment in modern psychiatry. Many people envision “shock therapy” a violent procedure such as the one portrayed in the movie, “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest.” Today, however, the treatment is safe and painless, although not totally without risk given the possibility of memory loss. Among the people...
