Posts by John Gassaway, PsyD

Resilience is oftentimes thought of as the ability to bounce back from a challenge — something you find in yourself (or not) only at the moment of crisis. But we don’t have to wait to experience something negative if we build resilience for life. If I have never experienced the loss of someone very close…

We can feel very overwhelmed by life’s demands but utilizing Graded Exposure meets us where we are. Deciding to engage in a new exercise regime or starting a new diet will likely be a short-lived change unless we ease into it. If someone decides to start running for health reasons, they don’t go out and…

The culture of the United States of American is not particularly conducive to coping with loss. This is unfortunate, as loss is a fundamental and inescapable feature of human life. Experiencing a loss can result in feelings of numbness, being lost, fear, and/or sadness. Loss can take many forms as well: death of a loved…

When we want to remain steadfast, determined, and successful with an endeavor, we are likely moving from motivation to grit. Motivation is extremely important to help us work through challenges and difficulties, give the effort necessary to progress, and focus our attention to succeed. Motivation can also be divided into intrinsic and extrinsic, a determination…

There are considerable similarities of flow state in a vast number of accounts but that does not mean the experience is uniform. Flow state generally reveals a slowing of time (sometimes a loss of time is described, which is sometimes associated with the subject of memory), ease of challenge or effortless action (although the challenge…

Coping with COVID in the second year leaves us to question “What will ‘normal’ look like once we have a system in place that protects us from this pandemic?” The adverse impacts of COVID on our social lives, economy, entertainment, and perception of trust in the system meant to protect us will, in my opinion, never…

Dealing with the stress of COVID we can learn from the past year.

We are all dealing with the difficulties that the pandemic has presented , there may be some easier ways to cope.