Confidence Intervals

It’s no secret that what’s happening these days is tough on everyone. The limits of the human experience are being challenged in ways we never imagined would happen to us. In some instances, you hear whispers that we weren’t prepared for this. And yet... You hear stories of resilience. Videos on social media have gone viral, of people singing from their balconies , exercise instructors getting people to exercise from their balconies , people dancing with each other at a socially-respectable distance , and visiting loved ones through glass or the other side of a balcony to close the gap on the lack of social contact people have been getting these days. Then there are the virtual interactions, with the choirs and orchestras coming together to perform masterfully edited numbers that include hymns , Disney covers , and show tunes . There have also been the music artists who have done virtual concerts and the movie actors who have been collaborating to provide some measu...

Motivation. It’s not really the word you want to think about when you’re staring at your home/work assignment and longing for Animal Crossing, Halo, or Cookie Clicker (please not Cookie Clicker...the chocolatey chipey black hole of soo many misplaced hours!). You know you should do the thing, but even washing your house sounds more appealing than the thing you need to do. Another casualty of COVID-19...our motivation. It feels weird, because it’s not like we’re too busy to get the sleep we need, and really, the amount of assignments to complete hasn’t increased that much, if at all. So how does it make sense that every thirty seconds finds a new excuse for a distraction that will make us feel better than the effort of a job completed? Perhaps it’s because we feel helpless? This isn’t going to apply to everyone, but for some people, there can be a sense of helplessness in the middle of this pandemic. We’re told we can’t go to work unless we’re essential, and if ...

Ibuprofen reduces inflammation, fevers, and pain. Anti-depressants relieve symptoms of depression. Lithium stabilizes manic symptoms back to baseline. Statements like these are easy to make. Often, they are  made, without a forethought about the implications. Most of the time, statements like these are true. But the sucky thing about humanity is that we can't say, with absolute certainty, that these things are always  true. They're not fact. Enough research and evidence has pretty well convinced us that we can make statements like these with at least a little bit of confidence, but humans are so vast, and so imperfect, that sometimes ibuprofen doesn't do what we've been told it does. Sometimes anti-depressants don't relieve as many of the symptoms of depression as we want, or think it should . Lithium works as well as the dosage and the person's physiology match up. Moral of the story: science is only as strong as the research that supports it.  Whe...

Fun Fact: Grad school is very expensive. Another fun fact: There is absolutely no way of knowing what you're going to find when you stick 26 people in close proximity to each other when they were originally oblivious to each other's existence. When I moved to a new state for grad school, I had no idea what I was going to find. I was going into the wilderness with all of my belongings, and hoping against hope - and my anxiety - that I would land somewhere and be able to call it home. I was in a new place, with new people, and very unfamiliar personalities. I arrived, having quit my job willfully to pursue higher education. It was insane! For the first time, I was around 25 other people who loved psychology as much as me! 25 other people that could geek out as much as I did about learning how to administer an intelligence test. 25 other people that cared about what diagnostic criteria went into giving someone a diagnosis - but only if it was warranted. 25 other people who ...

Self is the name, and care is the game.  Okay, that was cheesy. But seriously. Self-care. It's become a sort of buzzword in a lot of circles these days, to the point where some people tend to cringe when they hear it, but I don't think people really get what it means. Getting into a doctoral program in psychology, we were barely in the door when our professors all  started talking about the importance of self-care.  This is a very intensive program , they said. You need to remember to take care of yourself , they said.  Yeah, well...that's easier said than done.  My cohort being what it is, we are in the final days of our second semester of our first year in this program, and we are all feeling the effects of the pressure, and the workload, and the effort, and the stakes of each of our final assignments and tests. And we are hurting.  Some of us have figured out the key to pacing ourselves and taking time to still be human amidst the never-e...

Psychological Tests. The thing that makes psychologists different from other mental health professionals. Our most unique claim to scientific fame. What's it all about? Psychology, as a science, uses the scientific method to figure things out. When we have a question, we will make a hypothesis, come up with a way to test it, do the test, look at the data, and draw conclusions from the data - all while talking about limitations to the test that was done. In effect, that is what psychological testing is. Asking a question like, "what are the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of a person," led to a test like the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, or the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, or the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities. It was a way to answer the same question without having to make a new test every time. And because they wanted to answer the same question for a bunch of different people, they made sure they could show that the tests measure what t...

I just realized I blasted through the last post. My b. I should probably introduce myself. I'm Shawn. I'm a first year doctoral student in Clinical Psychology. I love helping people figure life out, and feel okay doing it. It's why I decided to go into this field. It's also why I'm starting this blog. I wanted to do a YouTube channel, but I can't make sense of that, so here we are! Good, old fashioned (digital) print! I want to use this blog to help make psychology less mysterious to people I interact with on the interwebs. I also want to help clear up some confusion people experience with the rumors and misunderstandings people hear about psychologists and what we do. Today's topic is about what psychology isn't.  It isn't  a lot of things, but I'm mostly going to stick with some of the things I hear most often. When I tell someone what I'm studying, I invariably hear a lot of the following: "Oh no! He's going to analyze me!...

Just imagine it: A man, lying on a couch, talking about his life and his problems and staring at a nondescript point just beyond his gesticulating fingertips. Behind him, another man, with thin, wire glasses perched on the end of his nose, staring professional and concerned at a legal pad with a regal ballpoint pen, scribbling away on his right-over-left crossed legs. That is probably one of the most classic pictures of therapy that exists, especially in all the memes these days. Truth be told, it is actually a legit form of therapy that some select psychologists, counselors, and psychiatrists may use from time to time. But it is far from what therapy looks like anymore, on the regular. What comes to your mind when you think of the word "therapy"? What thoughts, images, phrases, problems, etc...do you come up with? As a graduate student in clinical psychology, I have heard a lot of responses, even though I'm only in my first year of this five-year program. I have ...