A therapist near me couples counseling New York City Tribeca

Catchy headline, huh? We swear it’s true, too. There’s gobs of merit in chiseling away at one of your bad habits for months in order to make a long-term improvement to some aspect of your career. In fact, we champion that approach here all the time. However, we’re also going to make the alternative case […]

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and […]

A study in the journal Food Quality and Preference suggests that tea-drinking benefits divergent thinking, a key element of creativity that’s associated with generating ideas or identifying patterns. The researchers from Peking University greeted their initial 50 student participants with a cup of either hot water or black Lipton tea, before asking them to use […]

I’m sure you don’t feel like a jerk. Nobody does. Few of us like to believe anything negative about ourselves. Do you think it’s possible you might be a jerk? It’s a rude question, I know, but not a totally absurd one. After all, we’re surrounded by jerks – if you don’t believe me, glance […]

Intelligence tests are meant to tell you something about a person’s inherent abilities. But what if the results are distorted by the motivation to perform well? That would undermine the tests’ validity and have important implications for their use in education and recruitment. A simple way to find out whether motivation affects intelligence test performance […]

Changes often hurt when they first emerge, but resisting them goes against the way the world works. In my teens and 20s I lived in a spiritual community where days and nights of ordered living, rules, and obedience made it seem like change was something that happened somewhere else, to other people. For us, life […]

Should parents be troubled when their kids start to deceive them? Odds are, most of us would say yes. We believe honesty is a moral imperative, and we try to instill this belief in our children. Classic morality tales like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and “Pinocchio” speak to the dangers of dishonesty, and children […]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the Liberian elbow bump. When Ebola overtook the West African country in 2014, many people were afraid to shake hands and embrace in the customary way. That’s understandable, because Ebola is spread by the exchange of bodily fluids during body-to-body contact. So Liberians came up with a less […]

On Jan. 12, a few days after registration opened at Yale for Psyc 157, Psychology and the Good Life, roughly 300 people had signed up. Within three days, the figure had more than doubled. After three more days, about 1,200 students, or nearly one-fourth of Yale undergraduates, were enrolled. The course, taught by Laurie Santos, […]

Some people love to exercise. But plenty more do not, and urging them on with information about how healthy exercise can be hasn’t exactly been shown to sway the masses. Only about half of Americans report meeting the government’s exercise recommendations,1 so some scientists are exploring another idea: Let’s make exercise feel better. To do […]

Feeling afraid about life issues is common as you age, but if it takes over your life, you may have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Everyone feels afraid or worried at times, but if these feelings begin to take over your life, then you may have crossed over into generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), which is the […]

At the heart of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are the intrusive, often distressing, thoughts. My skin is dirty… I must have left the gas on and my house will burn down… But why do some obsessive thoughts compel the person to act on them, while others don’t? And how are some people with OCD able to […]

Imagine being eaten by a cave bear. Or a saber-toothed cat. Imagine, with that first gash of claw or incisor, instantaneously transitioning from being a person to being food. Imagine what it feels like, the first, dangling bits of you being ripped apart, ground up and ingested, while the rest of you watches. Very unpleasant […]

Many years ago, when I was young and things didn’t go my way, my mother used to look at me with a fierce and piteous expression and tell me: “Nobody’s better than you.” My mother is the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. By the time she was born, her people (and […]

You’re in your car, heading for an intersection. The light turns yellow, so you decide to hit the gas. Then you see a police car. Almost instantly, you know that stomping on the accelerator is a big mistake. But there’s a good chance you’ll do it anyway, says Susan Courtney, a professor in the Department […]

Psychologists are regularly berated for spending their workdays reaching blindingly obvious conclusions about the world – an accusation that isn’t entirely unwarranted. (My favourite recent finding comes from the journal Psychological Science: “Depressed individuals may fail to decrease sadness.”) At first glance, it’s tempting to respond that way to a new study from the University […]

Elisheva Adler was 20 years old, sitting in pajamas in her childhood bedroom in Long Island, the first time she saved someone’s life via text message. Adler had just started volunteering as a counselor for Crisis Text Line. The 4-year-old nonprofit provides free crisis intervention through a medium that is increasingly favored by young people: […]

Your harshest critic is often yourself. You might not even realize it, especially as you go around administering fair attention and wise advice to others. Yet anyone listening in on your internal monologue, particularly in times of nerves, anxiety, or fear, might hear a verbal rabbit hole of unreasonable negativity and self-berating. The focus of […]

A new book argues sleeping pills aren’t the answer to chronic insomnia. Instead, a simple, natural trick works better. There was a time not long ago when this reporter was, shall we say, stretched a bit thin. At night, she lay in her bed, which was covered with laundered and not-yet-folded yoga pants, attempting to […]

New research suggests that romantic conflict can hurt our health. How do we fight right? Robert W. Levenson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, studies how couples interact, looking for clues to marital stability and satisfaction. In his latest research, Levenson has found that the ways people argue in a marriage […]

When I mentioned to a friend that my baseline neurosis has evolved from daily stress into anxiety, her response was – “Go for a float!” A float? Yes — spend an hour in a dark, soundproof room floating in a body-temperature warm pool. “The heavy salt concentration does the work for you,” my friend told […]

OF ALL THE places to meditate, the backseat of a yellow cab isn’t ideal. And yet, the other day I found myself stuck in traffic feeling tranquil, or at least less agitated than I’d usually be given the circumstances. As the firetruck next to me blared its sirens, I cradled my phone in my hands […]

Don’t expect your best stuff to suddenly appear by magic. You can throw ideas up against the wall until somehow the fairy dust of your creative gift is released by the gods and floats down over all. But before any of that can happen, you need to figure out what you’re trying to say. This […]

In 2007, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth authored a paper on a trait she called “grit” which went on to arrest the attention of anyone interested in the secrets of success. TED talks and a 2016 book followed, wherein Duckworth explained how a combination of passion for a topic, and perseverance in the […]

In 2015, the mania for adult coloring books was at its peak. It was hard to walk into a bookstore and not find a table piled high with tomes of intricate, ready-to-color mandala designs, city scenes, or floral patterns. The publishers often seemed to purport that the activity of coloring could be a form of […]

David Thomas and I met when we were about 5 years old. We celebrated his 26th birthday last weekend, marking roughly two decades of friendship. Once, while walking down the street, a man looked at us and said, “Ain’t it Harold and Kumar!” He was almost certainly making light of our race, but perhaps he […]

Money can’t buy happiness, right? Well, some researchers beg to differ. They say it depends on how you spend it. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that when people spend money on time-saving services such as a house cleaner, lawn care or grocery delivery, it can make […]

Weekends aren’t what they used to be. And it’s become a serious problem. That’s the message of Katrina Onstad’s new book The Weekend Effect: The Life-Changing Benefits of Taking Time Off and Challenging the Cult of Overwork. Onstad, a Canadian novelist and journalist who has written for the The New York Times, starts off by […]

An experience some people have, similar to synesthesia, “except the tingles are associated with a feeling of relaxation.” Shhhhh! Come closer. A little bit closer. There you go. That’s better. There’s a growing food trend we want to tell you about, but it’s being done in hushed whispers by video bloggers known as ASMRists. Look […]

If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef. With one dietary change, the U.S. could almost meet greenhouse-gas emission goals. Ecoanxiety is an emerging condition. Named in 2011, the American Psychological Association recently described it as the dread and helplessness that come with “watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying […]

PUSH NOTIFICATIONS ARE ruining my life. Yours too, I bet. Download more than a few apps and the notifications become a non-stop, cacophonous waterfall of nonsense. Here’s just part of an afternoon on my phone: “Hi David! We found new Crown jewels and Bottle caps Pins for you!” “Everyone’s talking about Bill Nye’s new book, […]

Many of us have experienced awkward moments, where we don’t understand a particular social situation and put our foot in our mouths. While these social faux pas are certainly unpleasant, they don’t necessarily impact our social relationships too much. But for some people, awkwardness can be a way of life, punctuated by regular experiences of […]

People may know what a healthy romantic relationship looks like, but most don’t know how to get one. Psychologist and researcher Joanne Davila describes how you can create the things that lead to healthy relationships and reduce the things that lead to unhealthy ones using three evidence-based skills – insight, mutuality, and emotion regulation. Watch […]