Convincing Ourselves

Self-efficacy, confidence in one's own ability to create change, undertake behaviors, is essential for optimum mental health. So much so that it is a major marker for depression. In fact, while doing through the literature on psychological fir aid for disaster and trauma survivors, I came across building self-efficacy, of a community or an individual, as an important part of the rehabilitation process. So how does one go about building self-efficacy, especially after one has gone through immense failure and loss? Staying the realm of psychology only, one can go down the route of regular counseling, and even hypnotherapy or EDMR, which has shown great success for trauma victims. However psychological first aid adopts a more behavioral approach. Building self-efficacy in such a case is best developed through a series of practice situations, given to a survivor (or even a community). It could be as simple as collecting water or cooking food. However, these practice sit...

::SPOILERS::: I just finished watching the first and only season of the German/Austrian Netflix Orignal 'Freud'. A reimaging of the early life of Sigmund Freud, before he became famous for his work in psychoanalysis. The show starts off as an autobiography. It shows a young Freud who has just encountered hypnosis and is trying to convince his peer of its powers. The show gives the impression that Freud was a big believer in hypnosis early on and among his peers was the only one who believed that neurosis was due to 'thoughts and beliefs' rather than physiology. This is not entirely accurate, but the show does a good job of portraying him as a genius waiting to be discovered. The show quickly turns into a crime thriller with Freud coming into contact with a group of Hungarian rebels. These Hungarian rebels at first glance seem like trickers playing around with the feelings of people and letting them talk to their dead loved ones through Fleur, the medium. Howeve...