SHRINKITOUT

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Why is Letting Go so Hard?

Think of the last time you tried letting go of something. Be it a behaviour, a person, or anything else. What did you notice in yourself? When was your point of acceptance and how was the process of letting go? Personally, the entire process itself is emotionally turbulent because it forces me to sit with my feelings and emotions of fear, anger, shame, and uncertainty. It’s a painful transition to change. This article will try to explain why it is that acceptance and letting go is so difficult. Using theories from psychotherapy, Buddhist theory, and mindfulness, we hope that you find some peace of mind through this article.

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How Seasonality Affects our Body and Mind

We always wonder: do seasons really affect us? On a physical level, what science tells us for sure is that seasonal changes affect our energy levels, duration and quality of sleep, and eating habits. Psychologically speaking, seasonal changes affect us in all kinds of ways.

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Let'x Explore Personal Boundaries!

Since we were kids, we were taught by our parents, and the culture around us, what is right and what is wrong, and about what acceptable behaviors look like. From these “rules”, we created values and personal boundaries. Boundaries are invisible barriers that help us ensure physical, emotional, and psychological safety. We all have them, but many of us struggle with defining or respecting them. As a result, we can feel exhausted, disrespected, emotionally drained, and underestimated.

Georgia Lepenioti

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Perfectionism: Do We Set Ourselves for Success or Failure?

We all have that friend or family member (or ourselves) that has excessively high standards and overly critical self-evaluations. Doing everything perfectly is so pivotal to them, that sometimes they do not start at all, ending up procrastinating. What does perfectionism look like? How does it work and how does it make us feel?

Georgia Lepenioti

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Self-Forgiveness: Why Is It So Hard?

Most of us have been hurt by others several times. And of course, this comes with a lot of pain, anger, and sadness. And then, being full of negative and painful feeling, we feel the need to blame the responsible ones. Those feelings can haunt us, until we manage to forgive the one who hurt / betrayed us. Forgiveness does not mean that we forget the harm and the pain we suffered or that we should rebuild the relationship with those that hurt us. Forgiveness means that we let go of the resentment, anger, guiltiness, shame, and sadness, accepting the whole experience and moving on [1]. Forgiving the others can be quite challenging. But what happens when the perpetrator is us? What if it us that caused all the painful, guilty, hostile, and shameful feeling? According to research, it is much harder to forgive ourselves that the others.

Georgia Lepenioti

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What Keeps Us Going? A Look at Motivation and Resilience

‍Perhaps the world cup made you think “how did these players make it so far?”, “how did he achieve so much at such a young age?”. You don’t have to look so far. Look around you and maybe you can think of friends and family members that inspire you through their ample motivation and resilience. Indeed, what drives people has always been a popular topic in many disciplines in psychology. This article will discuss how our cognitions, individual differences, and environmental influences might explain motivation. I will also discuss how personal factors and social support can build resilience.

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The Intricacies of Change & Body Image

Change is always at first perceived before it is accepted, and the latter only comes after a long process of trust and adjustment. When change is beyond our control (which it so often is), we are quite bad at adjusting to it. We like to keep ourselves under the illusion that everything will remain the same for as long as possible, even if we know that is not true. Why do we do this? This article takes the example of body image, an area of our lives that is particularly vulnerable to change, in order to better understand human behavioural patterns in face of unwanted change while suggesting some healthy ways to accept, adjust, and embrace that change.

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Holiday Edition Part 1 - Checking in with Yourself During the Winter Holidays

Cold weather, warm feelings, mulled wine and cinnamon buns are ways to describe the winter holidays. For most people, this period is the perfect time to surround themselves with loved ones but for others can be unsettling. Some people can perceive the winter holidays as overwhelming and cause anxiety. To gain a better understanding of why these feelings might arise and how to deal with them you can read the following article.

Diana Birjac

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Loneliness Abroad

Many students or workers living abroad are not foreign to this empty and, perhaps, aching feeling of loneliness. Whether you’ve been living abroad for a while or you’ve just moved, we all have our own stories of loneliness. For example, the person who decides to stay abroad longer than their friends may feel lonely as they have to adapt to a balance without them. The person who has just got here may find adaptation to this foreign country challenging. Loneliness can look different for everyone. This article will firstly introduce loneliness and explain its theories. Then, these theories will be connected to the loneliness faced by people living abroad. Finally, we end with some helpful tips on how to deal with this unpleasant feeling.

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Coping with News Anxiety and Negativity Bias

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"Movember": No Shave November and Men's Mental Health

The time of the year when men can grow their badass beards for a cause has arrived. The movement No Shave November or as Australians call it, “Movember”, aims to raise awareness on cancers specifically affecting males, and to prevent suicide among men. It is a more creative way to tell and remind people to contribute to cancer prevention, by supporting organizations’ research for treatment. It’s also a way to encourage males to talk about both physical and mental issues, something they often don’t do. This month, financial donations to organizations in charge of these causes are being promoted. What should you do? The money you would typically spend at the barbershop you can now donate for this purpose - and let your beard grow!!!

Diana Birjac

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Royal Negligence: and its origins in a contemporary context

We look at the world and the way it is running things, and we mimic its dangerous velocity, forgetting an anomaly of things along the way. Negligent behaviour, or the ability to neglect any responsibility or obligation which is not immediately necessary, is our antidote to everyday overwhelmedness.

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Thought Rumination: Can't stop thinking about it

Have you ever felt like you cannot just stop thinking about something? A feeling where your thoughts keep racing in your head, and you just feel like you cannot escape this train of thoughts. This article may shed a light on what this feeling is like. The topic of what you are ruminating about can be anything… Maybe it is about your grades at school, or about a crush who has just rejected you. What you are going through is defined as rumination. I will discuss the definition, causes, and consequences of rumination in this article and end it with some tips that can help you.

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The Pygmalion Effect On Work Productivity

‍This article focuses on the Pygmalion effec, aka the Rosendahl effect. The Pygmalion effect dictates that high expectations can lead to better performance in a given area. The article will examine the effect that the phenomenon has on people, but it will also take into consideration the critique it faces. The effect is discussed in the context of school and work performance as the article seeks to provide information about the importance of high expectancy on enhanced performance.

Diana Birjac

Writer

Social Anxiety: how can you break the cycle?

After the first intense months of pandemic, most countries have eased their lockdown restrictions. Which seems great, right? Well, for some people, jumping back to the daily, pre-lockdown routine means being confronted by daily social interactions, which can be demanding, frightening, and anxiety-inducing. These feelings are shared by people with social anxiety (not the disorder!), a topic which I think has been neglected when we discuss the negative effects of the lockdown. Therefore, this article will discuss social anxiety, its theories, and it will end with certain methods that may help overcome it.

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16 Personality Test: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Many of us have probably heard of MBTI; you take a test of 100 questions and the results determine your personality type. From whether you’re a “diplomat” or an “explorer”, or whether you have the same personality type as Michael Jackson, the results can be so interesting and attractive to some people (me included!).Today, it is considered one of the most accurate personality tests, explaining its success in companies and professional settings… but have you ever wondered about the quality of this personality test? What are its current criticisms in personality psychology? More interestingly, how could our natural human biases influence our misinterpretation of the results?

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The digital world: how we fall for misinformation and fake news

Every single day we wake up, we are bombarded with what is currently happening in the world. Some of the information we read is not truly transferred to us and some of them are just fake news. But how dangerous is the world of fake news? It is certainly more dangerous than you think it is, as humans are very susceptible to believing fake news. Of course, there are specific factors that affect this, such as age, the social media platform used, what you are looking at and so on. We promise that there is no fake news in this blog post 😉. In this article, we touch upon deepfakes, and fake news.

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Freeze your worries away: Cold-water swimming

I take a deep breath in and descend the stairs of a pier into what is literally ice-cold water. The cold hits immediately as my body gets immersed in the water, my breathing becomes shallow and I have an immediate reaction to get the heck away from the water, as quickly as possible. But I stay in...

Lilja Kanerva

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Impulsivity and some mindful tips

Many of us struggle with irrational, impulsive decisions and actions. From overspending on clothes to procrastinating on daily goals because you got distracted by something irrelevant, we struggle to control our tempting desires for immediate self-gratification. As we know, impulsivity can be problematic, leaving us feeling unaccomplished and regretful. This article dives into the complex world of impulsivity and discusses mindfulness as a possible technique to regulate it.

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Can you trust your memory? Memory and eye-witness testimony

A lot of people think that memory works like a recording device. Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it but so can other people.- Elizabeth Loftus

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Insanity defence

March 1981. John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate US president Ronald Reagan in order to gain the attention of the actress Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed. Hinckley’s attorney argued that he suffered from schizophrenia. The verdict? Not guilty by reason of insanity. He was institutionalised in a psychiatric facility where he spent more than three decades. This is just one example of a case where the insanity defence was used. But how exactly does it work? And is it always successful? Let’s find out!

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The dark side of obedience to authority

After the second world war, many social psychologists were particularly interested in the conditions of Nazi Germany, where ordinary young people participated in events leading to the atrocious mass killings of innocent people. The question is, how can ordinary human beings do such unethical deeds? Who is responsible? And how exactly does authority manipulate their followers? This article uncovers the complexities and horrors of the consequences of obedience, but ends in a positive light that explains how to break free from misleading obedience.

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Grief and Loss

Death sometimes can be a relief if the person is in a terminally ill situation after a major car crash or a stroke yet it is an unpopular opinion. People tend to have the need to keep people they love alive as animals do for their loved ones even when they are experiencing the worst illnesses. The truth is that it is unbearably difficult for someone to accept that they are not going to see the faces of the ones they care about anymore, and they are even shocked and startled when they hear of a loss of a friend or a family member they had never met in their lives. It is normal therefore for people to pass through a heavy psychological process, that of grief.

Demi Anagnostouli

Head of Contents

DÉJÀ VU: A Glitch in the Matrix?

How many times has it happened to you that you are talking to someone and suddenly experience an overwhelming feeling of familiarity, as if this exact conversation already happened. Except, it hasn’t. This phenomenon is referred to as ‘déjà vu’. It is a fairly common feeling that most of us experienced at least once in their life. But why and how does it occur? Let’s find out!

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The Psychology behind Nudging

It is no secret that our choices are highly influenced by our environment, but this is not necessarily negative. One way that environments can "manipulate" your choices towards healthier/better directions is through nudges. The order of products in the supermarket, having smaller plates than usual, the phrasing of advertisements (9 out of 10 people stopped smoking, when will you stop too?). You have probably noticed most of these examples before, but did not know that they have a special name or purpose.

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The Psychology of Lie Detection

He was avoiding eye contact and fidgeting so much, that clearly means that he was lying! And the polygraph confirmed it, too... We see this in movies and TV shows all the time: police officers or psychologists claim to know when someone is lying simply by observing their non-verbal behaviour. But is this strategy effective in real life? Can we really spot if someone is lying? If so, what are the indicators of deception? And why do we even lie in the first place? Let’s find out!

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“Am I beautiful yet?”: Body dysmorphia in the Zoom Era

“Let’s take this photo from the right, that is my only good angle.” “I don’t want to take a photo without a filter.” “Send me the pictures, so I can facetune them and then we can post them on our stories.” Does any of these quotes seem familiar to you? Nowadays, many teenagers and young adults are hesitant to post pictures without filters. Additionally, people put filters on their photos to look naturally beautiful. The new generation is more open towards changing the beauty standards compared to the older generations, but they are also more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety of looking ugly. Why and how does this happen? Will this be further enhanced by the pandemic?

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The Pomodoro Technique: a way to increase study productivity

I am sure most of you have heard about the Pomodoro technique at one point of your life, probably as a University student. Have you ever been curious of trying it out? The Pomodoro technique is a simple, yet effective method of time management which can increase concentration and productivity when studying or working.

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: productive, yet not fulfilled

Did you have a day where you studied well and got a lot of things done, but didn’t take any proper breaks? Or did you feel depleted from working overtime? Did you delay your bedtime because you wanted “time for yourself” or because it made you feel more productive? Basically, when you are unable to organise your day to your needs, some people will decide to compensate with this via sleeping late and doing whatever they want at late hours. Does this seem familiar to you? Well, if it does, there is a term for this phenomenon: revenge bedtime procrastination.

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The Impostor Syndrome: What am I doing here?

Have you ever felt like you did not deserve the praise you received? When someone congratulated you on your success, did you brush them off saying it was just pure luck? Did you find yourself feeling out of place in a room full of successful people? If you answered yes to any of these questions, chances are that you might have experienced the impostor syndrome. This phenomenon gained substantial attention over the years, so let’s have a look at what it is and why we experience it.

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Social Media & Mental Health: Too connected or not connected enough?

Have you ever heard a message ringtone go off and checked your phone… But you ended up feeling disappointed because it was not your phone? In one way or another, we all have been there and done that. Because we want to feel connected or worthy enough to receive a message. After all, many of us are so used to hearing the phrase: “we are more connected than ever”. Even though that statement has a lot of truth to it, there are always two sides to every coin.

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Burnout: The Silent Executor

“Burnout happens when you avoid being human for too long.” (Micheal Gungor) Have you ever had a time where you chose working/studying instead of attending a birthday party, wedding, hangout with friends? Do you continue working even when you are really tired? Do you prioritize work over health? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, then you are in for a ride. Burnout has been named as an “occupational phenomenon” in 2019 by the World Health Organization (WHO)[8]. It is not a new topic, but it is widely ignored by most people unless it starts showing the most harmful effects, and the person has to do something about it. This article will touch upon both job burnout and academic burnout.

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Perfectionism: friend, enemy or both?

"Perfectionism is the enemy of progress" (Winston Churchill) ‘What is your biggest weakness?’ - one of the most common questions that you can get during a job interview. And the most common response? Perfectionism. Is it really a weakness? While some people might consider perfectionism one of their biggest strengths because it drives them to always complete things to a high standard, some might find the constant striving for ‘perfection’ exhausting. Today, more and more is the idea that perfectionism is in fact a double-edged sword.

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The Dark Side of Personality

When thinking of Psychology one may immediately think of personality traits. Research on personality mostly focuses on its good side and which traits are considered as positive qualities in people. However, people’s personalities are not always positive and there is a dark side to them. In this article, we do not have cookies on the dark side, but we have knowledge on how the dark side of personality can affect your work life and relationships. Do Narcissist people climb up the ladder faster? Do people with high scores in the dark triad get more partners?

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See you in my Dreams.. do dreams have a meaning?

Surely you have had some crazy dreams and found yourself wondering what their meaning could be. That is, of course, if you managed to remember them after waking up. The meaning and purpose of dreaming have fascinated philosophers and researchers for thousands of years. Different scientists propose different theories about why we dream and whether dreams have meaning. Unfortunately, there is no consensus yet. While some suggest dreams serve an important function in terms of our mental and physical well-being, some believe they have no purpose at all.

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Stuck in a Man's World? Underrepresentation of women in leadership

If we compare today’s world to 50 years ago, then we can say that there has been a lot of progress. We all hear stories of powerful women making it to political grounds (Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jacinda Ardern), Top 500 Fortune companies (e.g. Julie Sweet, Jane Fraser) and so on... Yet, how come women only account for 22.5% of boards in the Top 500 Fortune companies? [1] The numbers get more disappointing the more you look at the statistics, and most societies suffer from gender inequality when it comes to representation of women in leadership or high positions in organizations.