: That frustration when someone does something badly, again, is not just irritation. It is a signal worth examining. Whether it is a coworker who cannot meet a deadline, a partner who handles something carelessly, or a driver who cuts you off, the intensity of the reaction often says more about the observer than the observed. This article, written from a clinical perspective, explains where incompetence frustration comes from, what psychological patterns it tends to reflect, and what it does to your relationships over time.
Self-Help
How Shame Can Warp Our Lives
The dynamics of shame and embarrassment are central issues in the development of the self in those individuals who have come from dysfunctional families. Understanding a few issues can be helpful in making changes so that these fears will lose their great power in your life.
Consequences of Not Having Personal Boundaries
We all want to be fair, kind and loving to the people that we care about. Sometimes that means going out of our way for them. At other times, it means putting up with a certain amount of crap. In the long run, we hope and bet on the odds that it’s worth it for our relationship to have a little give-and-take. However, giving out love without any personal boundaries can be extremely dangerous and carries extreme risk to our own sense of self and others.
How NOT to Talk to Your Doctor
Medical appointments are short, high-stakes, and often anxiety-provoking. That combination reliably produces a set of communication failures that leave patients without the information or care they came for. This article, written by a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who works with anxiety and communication patterns in clinical settings, breaks down the most common ways people undermine their own care through how they communicate with physicians, and offers practical guidance on advocating for yourself more effectively.
How to Swim with the “Difficult Sharks” in our Lives
No one wants to swim with sharks. Yet difficult people are, by their very nature, sharks: Aggressive, territorial, and tribal. When we unexpectedly find ourselves dealing with a difficult person, we often give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they will “play fair”. In our desire to “get along with others”, we often just make the situation worse. The hard truth is that we must learn how to identify and respond assertively to difficult people without being “eaten alive”.