Richard Brouillette’s Blog

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

You Got a Narcissism Diagnosis: Now What?

There's a lot of stigma and negativity about narcissism floating around, particularly online.

Narcissistic personality disorder exists on a spectrum with a wide range of personal experiences.

Having self-compassion, working on personal growth, and focusing on others can all help one's mental health.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

Is Therapy Homework Getting You Down? 8 Ways to Help

Homework between therapy sessions is a practice dating back decades and based on the idea that a client can improve therapy outcomes through practice. But what happens if therapy homework itself is too challenging or difficult? I have eight ways you can explore to understand and navigate therapy homework.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

Compulsive Toxic Regret: Stop It Using Neuroscience

People often feel regret over a past action that doesn't represent who they are or who they want to be.

Regret can offer valuable feedback, or it can initiate a harmful negative loop.

A simple exercise can break the loop and transform regret into a growth opportunity.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

HBO’s "Succession": Grieving Someone You Love and Hate

HBO’s "Succession" captures the emotional chaos one can feel around the death of a parent who is both loved and hated.

A common tendency is to focus on the positive qualities of the deceased, but often ambivalence plays a role in the grieving process.

Self-talk, using elements of chairwork, can help a person in grief fully express themselves.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

Change the Channel in Your Brain with this Journal Prompt

By focusing on the inner child and the simple feelings we feel, we connect with the right side of the brain and the amygdala, the place of powerful impulses and feelings. Then we switch to an idea of our best self—the healthy caring adult—where we connect with the pre-frontal cortex, or the place of judgment, logic, and useful self-awareness.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

How Negativity “Protects” You From Really Living Life

Negativity schema is believing you are likely to fail if you try, the world will not provide for you, and you are better off not trying.

Negativity schema may come out of an experience of genuine deprivation, neglect, and emotional hardship.

Too much negativity leads to paralysis of action, making positive change even harder, which reinforces a negative outlook.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

3 Ways Approval-Seeking Is a Threat to Love Relationships

Approval-seeking schema is a pattern repeatedly triggered in an individual who feels compelled to find others' approval.

Approval-seeking schema originates in early childhood unmet emotional needs.

Over time, the person with the schema may feel resentment, and the partner may feel burdened with demands and unexpected hurt feelings.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

Why Do We Love Whodunit Mysteries?

“Glass Onion” is a whodunit in the tradition of Agatha Christie, and audiences can’t stop watching for reasons related to neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. All will be revealed!

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

4 Signs You Have an Inner Gaslighter Mode

When you combine a strong inner critic with an insecure, vulnerable child, the vulnerable child turns to the inner critic for care and support.

The inner gaslighter may threaten you with a worst-case scenario of being rejected and abandoned.

Notice when the inner critic is talking, how it makes you feel, and stand up to it.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

6 Signs Your Self-Control Issues Come From Childhood Neglect: Insufficient Self-Control Schema

Insufficient self-control schema is the experience of states of impulsiveness, usually related to several compulsive behaviors.

If it’s tough for you to moderate or control your impulses around pleasure, you may have an insufficient self-control schema.

Schema therapy defines the schema as originating in childhood attachment experience as a reaction to negative emotions.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

Why Are Popular Christmas Movies So Dark?

On the surface, Christmas is a holiday about love, gratitude, generosity, and light.

In reality, Christmas can be about pain in relationships, disappointment, performance anxiety, and loss.

Movies depicting the full range of feelings we have about the holidays are emotionally validating.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

Overcome Your Inner Scrooge in These 3 Steps

Your "Inner Scrooge" is an attitude that says you are never enough.

You may think your Scrooge helps you get things done, but you really don’t need him.

Charles Dickens suggests three ways of dealing with the inner critic, and they sound a lot like schema therapy.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

How to Tell If Someone Is an Episodic Narcissist

Entitlement schema is preoccupation with certain thoughts, feelings, or needs to the point of self-absorption.

Entitlement is the experience of a long unmet childhood need for validation.

The solution to self-absorption involves patience, kindness, and never engaging when triggered.

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Richard Brouillette Richard Brouillette

Study: Perfectionism Can Mean Worse Performance, Depression. Break the spell of unrelenting standards schema.

Recent research suggests that perfectionism generally leads to worse outcomes than when people set goals for excellence.

Excellencism involves setting good but achievable goals and being engaged but flexible with them.

Exploring your self-esteem, understanding your childhood experience, and setting reasonable goals can help people overcome perfectionism.

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