Adult Attachment Anxiety

Everyone has an attachment style, a part of your personality that determines how you behave in interpersonal relationships. Insecure attachment styles include attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. An avoidant attachment style is characterized by reluctance to trust and rely on others and fear of intimacy. An anxiety attachment style involves reoccupation with the other, a need for reassurance and fear of abandonment. When attachment styles interfere with daily function, the condition is considered an attachment disorder. Adults with attachment anxiety are more often depressed and perceive and react to other people's behavior more quickly, but less accurately, than more self-reliant adults.

Depression

Individuals with attachment anxiety are more likely to become depressed than more self-reliant people, reports a research team in the July 2005 issue of the Journal of Counseling Psychology. The researchers looked at the attachment styles of 425 students between 18 and 36 years old at a large Midwestern state university. They found that participants with high levels of attachment anxiety had excessive needs for reassurance. Not getting the needed level of reassurance led to symptoms of depression. Read the rest of this article >>

Philosophy Student Reflects on his Weight Loss

My former student Adam Taylor reflects on his 156 pounds weight loss here.

The Princess Diaries

From my newest blog: There's Something about Mary: The Princess Diaries

The fairytale began on September 16 2000 when Mary Donaldson, an ordinary Australian girl, met Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark at Merivale's Slip Inn in Sydney during the Summer Olympics.

Three years later the Australian beauty and the crown prince decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. On October 2003 after a long-distance relationship, a short stay in Paris and a number of private visits to Denmark, Mary and Frederik got engaged.

During the ten years from the couple's first meeting until today, Mary underwent a drastic change from a sporty, sun-tanned sales director to crown princess, fashion icon, mother of two and charity activist. She is director of the Mary Foundation, an organization focused on improving the lives of children, adults and families who are socially excluded.

The changes the princess has undergone during the ten years are astonishing. Her hair has been coloured and restyled, she has undergone a body and skin transformation, her posture is more regal, and her clothing has become more classic and elegant with a clear historic influence.Read the rest of this post >>

Extreme Jealousy in Relationships

Jealousy and envy are painful emotions that can be hard to distinguish from one another, says Aaron Ben-Zeév, philosophy professor at University of Haifa and the author of "In the Name of Love." When you are jealous, you fear that you may lose a loved one's affection or favoritism to someone else. When you are envious, you perceive yourself as getting the short end of the stick. Ben-Zeév has found that lovers of unavailable people experience both emotions. They want more, and they don't want to lose what they have. This puts them at risk for developing morbid, or extreme, jealousy. Love chemicals run amok, competitor genes and social conventions can also trigger extreme jealousy.

Morbid Jealousy

Jealousy in moderation is normal. It shows that we care about a spouse or partner. Morbid jealousy is pathological. It is an irrational emotion that signals a psychopathological disorder, according to forensic psychiatrists Michael Kingham and Harvey Gordon in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment. Read the rest of this article >>