About Me

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I am studying Psychology and Sociology at Utah Valley University, and working at a treatment center for troubled teens. I love life, being with people from all cultures, speaking Spanish, and traveling all over the world. I will never stop laughing, dancing, singing, enjoying, appreciating, and just being.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Moments of I M P A C T

"Following the leader"



I love this video we watched at my work and I think it has a powerful message.  





I think we all need to have our lollipop moments this Christmas.  We can give sincere appreciation and acknowledgment to the people that have changed our lives for the better.  Make a list of all the people in your life that have done this for you and during this Christmas break, go around telling them and giving them credit.  We all need to be aware of how much one word, one smile, and one experience can change a life for good.  We have so much power and influence on one other and we need to recognize and use it more!  Be aware of any moment you have when you are stuck somewhere with a loved one, a friend, or even a stranger and instead of getting on your phone to stalk instagram or snapchat some lame picture, make the choice to listen, open up, laugh, smile, vent, or support the people around you.  You might not need it but the souls around you that live and fear, worry, stress, and negativity need it a lot more than you think.





"The moment of impact. The moment of impact proves potential for change. Has ripples effects far beyond what we can predict. Sending some particles crashing together. Making them closer than before. While sending others spinning off into great ventures. Landing them where you've never thought you've found them. That's the thing about moments like these. You can't, no matter how hard you try, controlling how it's gonna affect you. You just gotta let the colliding part goes where they may. And wait. For the next collision. "
                                                                      

-The Vow



Thursday, December 6, 2012

Psychology Project

Chapter 3:  "Flourish"

The Dirty Little Secrets of Drugs and Therapy



"Almost always, the effects are what is technically called "small".  Depression is typical.  Consider two treatments that are certified by vast literatures to "work":  cognitive therapy for depression and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Taking an average over the entire huge literature, for each you get a 65 percent relief rate, accompanied by a placebo effect that ranges from 45 percents to 55 percent....

Every form of psychotherapy I know, every exercise, is a "fighting the mountain" intervention.  In other words, these therapies are not self-reinforcing and so the benefits fade over time.  In general, talk therapy techniques all share the property of being difficult to do, no fun at all, and difficult to incorporate into your life.  In fact, the way we measure how efficacious talk therapies are is by how long they last before they "melt" once treatments ends.  Every single drug has exactly the same property:  once you stop taking it, you are back to square one, and reoccurrence and relapse are on the rule."



Something is simply not working!  What can we do...?
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

"How you celebrate is more predictive of strong relations that how you fight.  People we care about often tell us about a victory, a triumph, and less momentous good things that happen to them.  How we respond can either build the relationship or undermine it."

4 basic ways of responding and only one that is effective-
ACTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE RESPONDING:


DEALING WITH NEGATIVE EMOTIONS:
"Negative emotions and the negative personality traits have very strong biological limits, and the best a clinician can ever do with the cosmetic approach is to get patients to live in the best part of their set range of depression or anxiety or anger. ..one thing that clinical psychology needs to develop in light of the heritable stubbornness of human pathologies is a psychology of "DEALING WITH IT."  We need to tell our patients, "Look, the truth is that many days-no matter how successful we are in therapy-you will wake up feeling blue and thinking life is hopeless.  Your job is not only to fight these feelings but also to heroically:  functioning well even when you are very sad."

The vision of therapy in the future:  THE C U R E !!!

1) Patients need to be told that the drugs and therapies are TEMPORARY symptom relievers only, and that they should expect reoccurrence when treatment stops
2) Treatment should not end when suffering is relieved.  Patients need to learn the specific skills of positive psychology:  how to have more positive emotion, more engagement, more meaning, more accomplishment, and better human relations.  Unlike the skills of minimizing misery, these skills are self-sustaining.  They likely treat depression and anxiety and they likely help prevent them as well.  More important than relieving pathology, these skills are what flourishing is, and they are crucial to everyone's search for well-being