Shame is one of the most painful human emotions. While it can serve adaptive social functions, chronic shame is linked to depression, anxiety, trauma-related symptoms, eating disorders, substance misuse, and self-directed harm. When…
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is built around a clear idea: psychological suffering is often driven by rigid patterns of avoidance and fusion with difficult thoughts and feelings.
HIV-positive people who inject drugs (PWID) face profound barriers to healthcare, largely due to the intersectional stigma associated with both their substance use and HIV status.
In HIV treatment, the barriers to care are numerous and complex, especially for those already marginalized by society.
Excoriation Disorder (ExD), commonly known as skin picking disorder, presents significant challenges for those who suffer from it, often leading to severe distress and self-consciousness about their appearance.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a severe mental health condition characterized by an obsessive focus on perceived flaws in one’s appearance, often leading to significant distress and impairment in daily functioning.
At Portland Psychotherapy, for years we’ve been maintaining a list of the best ACT resources for the public that we know about.
In a time when the public discourse around mental health struggles is permeated with sweeping generalizations of “those” mentally ill people and calls to “lock them up,” a new podcast attempts to bring common humanity back into how we discuss the psychological suffering we all face as humans.
This summer, I attended the first ever “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) BootCamp for Women’s Issues.”
Let’s start with the obvious. In most cases, human beings want to minimize pain and discomfort. This is doubly true for emotional pain. While some people enjoy extreme temperatures, endurance sports, and pushing…
“Why doesn’t anyone tell us that it’s normal to feel bad about our bodies?” What?!? It’s “normal” to feel badly about my body? No, that can’t be right. It’s “wrong” to have a…
“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool” — Chinua Achebe I may…
