optimism

Many people with depression believe that nothing good will ever happen for them. The norm is failure and disappointment, the exception is success, and when something good does happen, it doesn’t count. This is just the sort of inner belief and self-talk that cognitive therapy addresses, and one of its leading advocates is Martin Seligman. […]

Stories about the struggle to recover from depression tell of repeated efforts to find a way to live well despite the recurring burden of illness. For me the key lesson is that each person in these stories keeps trying, despite repeated setbacks. I recently came across a research study that says the same thing in […]

A few months ago, Therese Borchard of Beyond Blue was describing in one of her insightful videos the nature of her belief in Catholicism. She had been accused of being a “cafeteria Catholic,” picking and choosing which of the Church’s teachings she would accept. She emphasized that she read the Church Catechism as a bipolar […]