SuperPsyched with Dr. Adam Dorsay

Anger is a basic human emotion and none of us is immune. Even the most levelheaded of us can lose our cool. We can experience road rage. Anger at injustice. And we can experience it as we grieve. Yet, as natural as it is, anger can be extremely harmful.  It can cause damage to our bodies, hurt our relationships, and it can hijack our brains causing us to act impulsively with potentially disastrous...

Throughout the day, we engage in self-talk.  That voice we hear—our own—is normal and at the heart of our thoughts.  Sometimes the voice is kind.  Sometimes it’s neutral.  And sometimes it’s quite mean and we beat up on ourselves.  Some of us may even admit to being quite skilled at beating up on ourselves. Why do we do this?  Is it helpful? Spoiler alert: not so much. Turns out when our self-talk...

I have always wondered what it would be like to be a TV news reporter. I imagine that if you aren't one yourself or don’t have a close relationship with one, you may have wondered as well! Fortunately, I know just the guy to pull back the curtain and share what it’s like. Scott Budman is an Emmy Award-winning news reporter who’s served as a Silicon Valley tech and business reporter as well as anch...

Wouldn’t you love to have more energy?  I believe that’s on every living person’s wishlist. Energy can feel like that elusive fountain of youth that we thirst for to hydrate our soul.  But there’s a problem: we seek energy replenishment in the wrong ways. Pursuing energy, we reach for coffee, energy drinks, or food but, even if those methods provide temporary relief, we still come up short after a...

There is an exercise practiced in the well-researched field of positive psychology (aka the science of happiness) that consistently yields a huge improvement in mood. It is easy to do, and I wish everyone in the world would write at least one gratitude.  It’s my hope, too, that everyone receives a gratitude letter! In this solo episode, I explain the why, what, and how of gratitude letters. I...

For the last episode of the year, I decided to do a solo. It's something of a retrospective of 2021 and it's also a tip of the hat to stepping into courage in the face of fear. Fear is a prerequisite to courage. And since courage is a prerequisite to a life well lived, I openly share some things that scared me in 2021, and how I responded. Wishing you a very Happy New Year—one filled with happines...

Spam calls.  Email account hacking.  Telephone scams. Yeah, while the Internet Age has come with lots of good stuff, it’s also come with real headaches.  How can we protect ourselves against people and organizations who want to exploit us?  And, for those of us in the Sandwich Generation—people sandwiched between two vulnerable groups—our children and aging parents, how can we safeguard our loved...

Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by airplanes and pilots. How in the world do those massive chunks of metal called airplanes fly? And what’s it like to fly one? Fortunately, I know just the guy to talk about all things involving being a commercial pilot. Dan Jacobson has spent his career as a pilot and has flown for many years as a captain with United Airlines. As you’ll hear, he l...

Have you ever wondered what it takes to write a great work of fiction? To create a world of characters never before seen or heard, perhaps in a place that doesn’t even exist except in the mind of the author? Recently, I read such a book and found myself asking, “How in the world did the author do that?” Fortunately, that same author, Max Gross, agreed to be on the podcast. His book, The Lost Shtet...

I remember being in 8th grade science class. The teacher asked me to go home, close my eyes, and listen deeply for two minutes, and then to write down everything I heard. Have you ever done that? If not, I recommend you give it a try. What shows up is utterly mind-blowing and reminds me of an idea from Ferris Bueller, who noted that “life moves pretty fast and if we don’t pay attention, we might m...

The latest episode contains skills that can provide levity and improve relationships and are right on time for the holidays!  As we come together with family, it's all about improv and our ability to build on whatever is happening in the room in real-time.  Improv isn't just on stage or about being funny, as you'll learn. Years ago, I took improv classes and was initially terrified. &nbs...

This year marks the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001.  It is a date of heartbreak and tragedy and, if you’re of an age allowing you to remember it, it is a date that likely holds a specific spot in your memory.  We remember it because of deeds that are some of the worst of what humans can do.  In the days following, however, there were heroic deeds representing some of the bes...

Imagine the people who have most influenced your life. I speculate that at least one teacher should be on that list. Teachers are so important in our lives and their teachings go beyond the subject of the class they teach. They can be role models. They can teach us how to think. They can bring out our best. And so much more. Yet, on average, we take classes from teachers, and we move on without re...

Chronic pain can seriously alter the quality of a person’s life. And, sadly, chronic pain is prevalent in the United States with more people suffering from it than the total diagnoses of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease combined. When the source of pain can be diagnosed and treated it is a relief. Yet, far too many people have pain without a diagnosable, treatable, physical root cause of their...

Among the needs all 7 billion of us on the planet have in common is our need to eat. Food allows us to survive, thrive, and it can bring immense pleasure.  However, how things taste and what we like is unique to us all. But despite our uniqueness, there are certain trends.  For example, we order tomato juice on airplanes at a far greater frequency than we do on land. Why is that?  And have you eve...

Last week, I watched as my beloved San Francisco Giants lost in the final game of the Division Series to their rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was heartbreaking. Afterward, I found myself thinking, “Why squander a heartbreak?”  So, I decided to make an episode dedicated to the psychological principles that outline what happens when a person is a sports fan and their team loses. And, while...

This week, I thought I would share my own thoughts in a solo episode about psychology through my feelings about the Bee Gees and disco. As you will hear over the next 10 minutes, due to peer pressure and my low level of conviction at the age of 12, I repressed my love for this band and the genre of music. It turns out that many people experienced the same thing around this time concerning disco an...

An artifact of our brains is a default mode that may nudge us toward being bystanders and toward conforming.  While that feature may have been important to our survival at one point, it inhibits us from standing up for justice. Social psychology experiments that look at conformity and the bystander effect provide stark reminders of these facts. To override our brain’s tendency to stay quiet i...

Infidelity: Nearly Everything We Should Know About It Britney Blair, PsyD, CBSM, AASECT CST Our primary romantic relationships tend to occupy most sensitive places in our hearts. Because of this, the aftermath of an affair can be profoundly painful and even traumatizing. And yet, affairs are not uncommon as you will hear in this episode. What can be done to prevent an affair from happening? And ho...

What is the biggest predictor of our happiness? According to a study conducted for over 80 years at Harvard, it is love. Full stop. But our brains can go to fear and other places that interfere with sustainable, loving relationships. While our brains have evolved to ensure we continue to multiply and increase the population of our species, those same brains haven’t simply evolved to improve long-t...

On any given day, we’ve got tons of information coming at us—and much of it is negative—so we can easily feel overwhelmed. And when we are overwhelmed, we can become numb making it difficult to keep our hearts open to family, friends, and life in general. Some of us may even believe that keeping our hearts open is a bad idea. Yet, when our hearts are closed, we can lose so much of the richness of...

What is it about the beautiful smell of barbecue smoke? I adore it and I am not alone. It seems to hit a deep, primal nerve within us. Its allure may summon our inner cave dweller. Or it may remind us of camping, holidays, cookouts, or other positive memories. For my guest, Adrian Miller (www.adrianmiller.com), it also taps into roots of his African American heritage. And I am so excited to have h...

You know that feeling when someone really gets you? And I'm sure you also know the vastly different experience of not feeling understood or being with someone who appears tone deaf to who you are. Empathy is a big part of the difference, and it matters. Empathy is fundamental, learnable, and it is one of the skills that defines us as people. And yet, empathy is a commonly misunderstood skill. I am...

With the Tokyo Olympics on people’s minds, I thought it would be good to have at least one episode focused on Japan, a country I love.  I had the incredible pleasure of living there for nearly three years. It was a place of endless fascination for me. It was also a place where I could learn more deeply about psychology itself because it was so culturally different from my home in the United States...

I was recently on vacation and reading a psychology magazine. Yeah, I am such a psychology geek that I enjoy reading about it even when I’m relaxing by a pool! An article that captured my attention was one on how to apologize well. I kept thinking about it long after I finished the article, so I looked up the article’s author, Dr. Molly Howes, and found she has written a great book on apologies. A...