Dr. Gary Bell's Absurd Psychology

When you take things personally, you allow many issues to consume your well-being. This way of thinking exhausts your energy with little good and a lot of stress and anxiety. The amount of worry, anger, and suffering you experience in your life is proportional to your sense of self-importance. Whatever you include as part of "me" or "mine" is part of the ego's domain. The ego causes you to seek pl...

People who have borderline personality disorder tend to have more tumultuous, chaotic romantic relationships. Such relationships are often marked by stress, conflict, and dysfunction. Some of the ways that BPD can manifest in a relationship include: Oscillating between excessive demands for attention and a sudden withdrawal Severe fear of abandonment that leads to needy, clingy behaviors Lying and...

While some partnerships are beyond repair—whether it's due to infidelity or emotional abuse—other couples call it quits at the first sign of conflict, but they miss out on an opportunity to resolve anything. Before making your decision, it's important to try salvaging the marriage and working through your issues (we recommend seeing a marriage counselor). Since both of you play a role in the relat...

You're sick and tired of all the dating apps and websites and trying to meet people in your kickball league? And how many awkward first dates can you go on to find a "normal" person? And what's with all the fake personalities and flaky people who seem more interested in themselves and can't be bothered to make a slight change in their schedule to, you know, go out with you? If this describes the m...

The severity of midlife crisis symptoms can vary from person to person. Gender can also play a role in how a midlife crisis unfolds. Women may be more likely to go through a period of self-reflection as they shift away from tending to the needs of others to tending to their own needs. Men, on the other hand, might be more likely to feel as if their past decisions have limited their future options....

They say marriage is a covenant, and keeping that covenant requires two committed people. It doesn't matter the grand wedding you had, the gifts you received, or the kinds of guests that attended your wedding.  It takes more than just a celebration to sustain a marriage union, and there are things to consider before getting married. Before you get married, you must understand the commitment that y...

You don't need a degree in psychology to know that friendships are different, depending on gender. Men have historically bonded by relentlessly deriding one anothers' haircuts and giving each other nicknames like 'Sponge' and 'Meatball'. Women, meanwhile, will bond by baring little pieces of their souls to one another until one day they're squeezing four people into the same toilet cubicle because...

To parent effectively, it's not enough to simply avoid the obvious dangers like abuse, neglect, or overindulgence. Indeed, The National Academy of Sciences delineates four major responsibilities for parents: maintaining children's health and safety, promoting their emotional well-being, instilling social skills, and preparing children intellectually. Numerous studies suggest that the best-adjusted...

Starting a relationship is always fun and exciting, but making a relationship last is hard work. Once you've gotten settled in your relationship, you have to maintain an honest flow of communication and to continue to cherish your time with your loved one. Making a relationship last isn't always fun, but the benefits of maintaining a long-term and committed relationship far outweigh the difficulti...

How do you protect yourself in this world? How do you ensure that the things you care for are protected on a daily basis? One way we protect ourself is by having strict boundaries. Boundaries are extremely important for human beings to maintain. Without boundaries, you are likely to be taken advantage of, manipulated, abused, or "blinded" by the shallow, self-centered people we encounter in our da...

People feel emotionally safe when they feel free of excessive criticism, free of excessive control by others, free of uncalled for blame or shaming from others, free from fears that others will turn anger on them, seen and heard when they express their thoughts, and free from concerns that others will leave them. They also feel safe to the extent that they receive positive attention from others, f...

Everyone who chooses to be in a relationship will experience conflict at some point. There may be mismatched expectations about how often partners spend time together or different ideas of what quality time looks and feels like. Or, maybe the conflict is something more significant, like a difference in values or beliefs, the way one partner's family drama affects the relationship, or intimacy or f...

Psychological warfare or mental warfare is the use of techniques and tactics designed to influence the attitudes, emotions, and behavior of an individual or a group of people. This has been used countless times throughout the ages by many armed forces but in this context, we are discussing mental warfare in everyday life between individuals and within an individual themselves. Tune in and learn al...

Sexual trauma is exposure to any amount of inappropriate sexual behavior that's caused intense fear and anxiety. It's also referred to as sexual abuse or sexual violence.  Sexual trauma comes in different forms. There are overt types of sexual trauma such as molestation or rape. But sexual trauma can also be covert such as sexual harassment, and unwanted exposure to sex as a child. Sexual trauma c...

Good human traits typically refer to qualities or characteristics that contribute positively to individual well-being, interpersonal relationships, and societal harmony. These traits vary across cultures and contexts. Human traits, whether perceived as bad or not, often stem from a combination of biological, psychological, social, and environmental factors. Tune in and learn all about what. we are...

There is a growing generation that few people have heard of. Within the next few years they will outnumber the Baby Boomers, and many of them will live to see the 22nd Century. We're talking about Generation Alpha, the children of Generation Y, and often the younger siblings of Generation Z. Simply put, Generation Alpha are defined as those born from 2010-2024. More than 2.8 million are born globa...

Gender is related to but distinctly different from sex; it is rooted in culture, not biology. The APA (2012) defines gender as "the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person's biological sex. Gender conformity occurs when people abide by culturally-derived gender roles. Resisting gender roles (i.e., gender nonconformity) can have significant social consequenc...

The ever-increasing explosion of data puts more knowledge at our fingertips than ever before, but you need to know what to do with it. Otherwise, it is obsolete and ineffective. We see an increasing lack of insight with companies living in an "illusion of knowledge," drowning in data, insight poor, and failing to turn information into intelligence. Why? The lack of shared understanding of what an...

Gaslighting is an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity. Over time, a gaslighter's manipulations can grow more complex and potent, making it...

Mental illness in children can be hard for parents to identify. As a result, many children who could benefit from treatment don't get the help they need. Understand how to recognize warning signs of mental illness in children and how you can help your child. Mental health is the overall wellness of how you think, regulate your feelings and behave. A mental illness, or mental health disorder, is de...

Online message boards and communities comprised of incels—men who are involuntarily celibate—have gained notoriety in recent years due to mass killing events that were reported as being inspired by a misogynistic ideology that emerges from this group. However, there has never been a systematic psychological investigation of this population. In a fundamental sense, incels are characterized by their...

Technology addictions, also commonly known as digital addictions or internet addictions, are often overlooked due to the acceptance that society has placed on using digital devices.  Technology addictions often go unnoticed by loved ones because the addicted individual may appear as though they are tending to something important such as work-related tasks on their digital device, when in reality h...

Talking about a past relationship is a tricky affair. What starts off as a fun round of twenty questions can turn into an icy chill in no time if you aren't careful. Finding out more about past relationships is never a good thing, and yet, like all inquisitive fools, we go looking for dirt in our lover's past. And when we do find the dirt, we dirty our hands and are left with a stench that lingers...

The psychedelic experience feels as though this self-referential moment-to-moment updating of the ego has suddenly disappeared. The perception of our familiar self vanishes. The name given to this experience is ego death or ego dissolution. This distortion of our subjective experience of self is central to the psychedelic experience. People describe ego-dissolution as a diminished sense of self an...