This week’s Psychology Around the Net focuses on how turning your to-do list into an action plan can help you become more productive, why nightmares can be beneficial to your mental health, how your brain type affects who you are, and more.
How Nightmares Could Be Good for Your Mental Health: Typically, we don’t view nightmares as pleasant experiences, but they might be positive ones. Well, have positive benefits, that is. Research shows that nightmares can help relieve stress, offer insight into our suppressed emotions, and prepare us for real-life threats. According to Harvard University’s Dr. Deirdre Barrett, interpreting our dreams and nightmares can help us understand thoughts and feelings we haven’t been conscious of: “So if you just have garden variety nightmares occasionally, that’s a really good opportunity to understand a little bit more about unconscious fears and anxieties that may be cropping up.” Of course, not all nightmares — or dreamers — are created equal and these benefits probably don’t extend to people who suffer from night terrors or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Turn Your To-Do List Into an Action Plan and Get Things Done: For many people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), planning doesn’t come naturally. People with ADHD often have weak executive function skills — those skills that handle the ability to plan, organize, and manage time effectively. Because of that, daily tasks can get pushed to the side and tasks that do get started can be abandoned due to being unprepared. However, some planning in the form of “who, what, when, where, why, and how” can help you tackle that to-do list.
Teens Who Have Loving Bond With Mother Less Likely to Enter Abusive Relationships: According to a new study out of the University of Buffalo, teens who have a loving relationship full of warmth and acceptance with their mothers are more likely to avoid being in abusive relationships later in life — even if the mother’s own romantic relationship is full of conflict.
There Are 5 Different Brain Types: Here’s What Your Type Says About You: Daniel Amen, M.D., clinical neuroscientist psychiatrist and author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades, breaks down the five types of brains and how your brain type affects your personality type, career path, learning style, relationships, and potential mental health and other related problems.
Veterinarian Students Strip Down for Racy Calendar Shoot in Name of Mental Health: Future veterinarians from the Sydney School of Veterinary Science in Australia are baring it all (well, everything the strategically placed animals and props don’t cover!) in a calendar to raise money for mental health. The calendar benefits the Black Dog Institute, an organization that benefits mental illness, and has raised nearly $100,000 over the past 10 years. Says Lucy Fuchter, the calendar director: “With 1 in 5 people battling with mental illness at some point in their lives, we hope that supporting the Black Dog Institute will assist their endeavors in helping so many. Additionally, as soon-to-be veterinarians and animal scientists, we are entering a workforce in which the suicide rate is four times that of the national average — it is a cause close to our hearts.”
Overcoming Self-Sabotage: Healing from Abusive Relationships: We use the term “self-sabotage” to describe ways in which you harm your own life. Examples of self-sabotage include taking responsibility for other people’s behavior, using substances to cope, walking on eggshells for others, and more. Here’s a list of steps you can take to stop participating in your own self-destruction and take back your life.
