Duff the Pysch: Mental Health Blog and Podcast by Duff the Psych

mental health for real people

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I’m Dr. Duff

I’m Robert, a licensed clinical psychologist based in Southern California, and author of the bestselling Hardcore Self Help book series. I also host a weekly podcast where I address reader questions and interview others in the mental health field.

Recently on the Duff the Psych

How To Explain Anxiety | A Letter

In my book Hardcore Self Help: F**k Anxiety, I have a chapter about how to explain anxiety to people who just don’t “get it” when it comes to the anxiety that you are experiencing. An important piece of this chapter is that I wrote out a letter that you can either use for inspiration or print out and give directly to an individual in your life that you would like to better understand. I am also including a printable PDF of that letter here. I sincerely hope that it helps how to explain anxiety better to the people in your life.

I also have a letter for those dealing with depression, which you can find here.

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July 5, 2015 14

10 Obscure Emotions

Sometimes a psychotherapy session is really just a collaborative quest to find the right word to demonstrate to your client that you have heard them and know exactly what they mean. If only there was an exact word to describe feeling the feeling of being alone in a crowd or the sense of peace that comes from being inside the house during a rainstorm. Well there is this awesome website called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows where John Koenig creates words to describe emotions like these. Here are 10 emotions that you have felt but can never describe. Which of these have you felt?

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March 22, 2015 7

The Five Minute Rule for Motivation

I am sitting at the top of a mountain as I write this post. It may not be Kilimanjaro or anything, but it’s definitely bigger than a hill and it was a solid 40 minutes of hard work to get up here. Sitting here, it strikes me that now might be the perfect time to talk about motivation (and lack thereof). I have been using a phrase a lot lately with my self, with my patients, and with friends. In fact, it’s become something of a mantra for me…

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March 18, 2015 0