Two Shrinks Pod

40 - Are you psychologising me right now? Do you think about me when I’m not here? Can I be the only one that sees you next time? Do you think I’m crazy? Why would I come and see if you if you’ve never had this problem? My kid has the problem so why are you telling me I need to change? How do you cope with everything I tell you? Should I leave my partner/job? Where do you live and can I touch your hair?

Yep - these are some of the questions psychologists get every day - so we decided to run through these and talk about how we respond to them and why. This is the ep for anyone who is super curious about psychologists and why we act the way we do - it should also be good for other psychologists to know they aren’t crazy and their experiences are normal (also see question four). For this episode we got Liz Daff (from the forensic episode) to join us in this discussion to give us an additional perspective on these questions.

We finish off with “Pods We Came Across” - pods we’ve been listening to this year.

Liz: Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History http://revisionisthistory.com/

Hunter: Trumpcast with the wonderful Virginia Heffernan http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/trumpcast.html

Amy: Susan Calman’s Mrs Brightside - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0683q6p/episodes/downloads

39 - Ever wondered how athletes improve their mental game and stop cracking under pressure? Or would you like to know how you could improve your own performance in sport (or anything else)? Then this is the episode for you. Hunter chats to Michael Inglis, sports psychologist and co-founder of The Mind Room https://themindroom.com.au/ about a mental conditioning program he runs for athletes. Michael has worked with professional athletes from many different sports including AFL, rugby, soccer and cycling and has a wealth of experience. The episode wraps with a food orientated Things We Came Across discussion of being “hangry” and orthorexia.

TWCA:

Feeling Hangry : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29888934

Orthorexia : https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/learn/by-eating-disorder/other/orthorexia

For the final interview of psychology week, Amy talks to Dr Timothy Schofield, research fellow at Melbourne University. They chat about Tim’s research into the stigma associated with welfare benefits, what makes a group vulnerable to stigma and the challenges of a research career. We wrap up with a Things We Came Across that soothes Amy’s doubts and riles up Tim with references to embodied cognition.

TWCA:

Bitter preference and psychopathy - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26431683

In our next interview for psychology week, Amy chats with Laura, a PhD candidate who’s researching the parts of our brains that are active in social anxiety. We talk about what happens when we think about ourselves and others at the same time, how they might be skewed in social anxiety and what it’s like being a PhD candidate.

36 - for the second psychology week 2018 interview Hunter talks to Dr Kathleen Leach about chronic pain and the role psychologists play in the treatment and management of chronic pain. Kathleen has extensive experience working with patients who have chronic pain. Our usual experience of pain is that pain means damage but this is not the case in chronic pain which is different to acute pain. Some of the topics covered include the risk factors for developing chronic pain as well as why the best practice treatment of chronic pain is done with team of a physiotherapist, occupational therapist and psychologist, in additional to medical staff. Kathleen talks about some of the psychological approaches to help patients improve quality of life and management of their pain, such as countering unhelpful boom/bust cycles.

Things we came across

Teaspoons : https://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498

35 - Want to know how to get better sleep? Then have a listen to this episode which is our first in the series of interviews for psychology week 2018. Hunter talks to Dr Lyndel Shand on how to get better sleep, they talk the ins and outs of sleep hygiene, why it is important to understand sleep cycles and stages of sleep if you are to improve sleep. As sleep problems can mean different things to different people they then talk through several cases examples exploring how psychologists (and you can) resolve sleeping issues. Topics include struggling to get to sleep, struggling to get back to sleep after waking, not going to bed, and hyper-somnia.

Hunter and Lyndel finish up with segment Things We Came Across, discussing the important topics of whether knuckle cracking does give arthritis, and the correlates of binge watching television.

Things We Came Across

Hunter: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9588755

Lyndel: Binge watching research https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27106091

Psychology Week 2018 and 2SP is having a podathon! We have conducted four interviews and we will release one each day this week.

Topics:

• How to get better sleep - with Dr Lyndel Shand. Hunter and Lyndel talk about understanding sleep cycles and then discuss several case examples (trouble getting to sleep, trouble getting back to sleep etc) to illustrate different problems and how psychologists work to overcome them

• Psychological treatment of chronic pain - with Dr Kathleen Leach - Hunter interviews Kathleen who has extensive experience working with people with chronic pain. They discuss the role of psychology in the treatment of chronic pain and how psychologists work in to improve the lives of chronic pain patients.

• Neuroscience of Social Anxiety - with Laura Finlayson-Short - Amy has a great chat with Laura, who is a psychology PhD candidate about what our brains do when we are socially anxious, and discuss what it is like being a PhD candidate.

• Understanding Stigma - with Dr Timothy Schofield - Amy talks to Tim who is a research fellow about his work on understanding stigma towards the self and others (eg. towards those on welfare payments), and have a candid discussion about what it is like working as an academic.

For each we also got our guests to join in on the Things We Came Across section - with interesting results.

Stay tuned.

Know someone who likes to have things neat and tidy, sticks rigidly to the rules and appears tightly wound? This week we’re talking about the characteristics of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. In the last of our personality disorders series, we cover diagnosis, theory and treatment of this PD. We attempt to avoid self-diagnosis (Hunter), outwardly reject prior misdiagnosis (Amy) and barely refrain from diagnosing the entire psychology profession with OCPD. Wrapping up the show, Hunter talks about medical journal articles from the 1800s and Amy ponders if she’s got what it takes to survive an apocalypse.

Resources
Personality Disorders in Modern Life, 2nd Edn. Millon & colleagues
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edn (DSM-5)

Things we came across

Hunter:
Maladies of the 1800s : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22Edinb%20Med%20Surg%20J%22%5Bjour%5D

Amy:
Alie Ward’s Ologies : https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/somnology-sleep-part-2-with-dr-w-chris-winter/id1278815517?i=1000422378279&mt=2

Are survivalists malevolent? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886918301223

Pod 33 - The penultimate episode of our personality disorder series takes a look at Dependent Personality Disorder - when someone has an excessive need to be taken care of, is submissive, clingy and fears separation. Whilst it is a rare PD (<1%) all of us have dependent elements and Amy and Hunter also compare it to some of the other personality disorders discussed in the previous pods. There is, as usual, good discussion about different theories to explain this disorder (hear Hunter get frustrated about psycho-dynamic theories) and finishes up with talking about how to do therapy to address the problems of this disorder. For TWCA Hunter spends a moment talking about Dr Christine Blasey Ford and her research, then pivots to discussing what your resume photo really tells others, whilst Amy succumbs to more research about the tv show Survivor (hey we have a brand and we are sticking to it).

Dependent Personality Disorder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_personality_disorder

Personality Disorders in Modern Life, 2nd Edn. Millon & colleagues (copies of pdfs of this can be found for free online if you know where to look)
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edn (DSM-5)

Things We Came Across

(Hunter) Dr Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Blasey_Ford
Resume photos: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916309023

(Amy) Survivor - chapter “Do you know who your friends are? An analysis of voting patterns and alliances in the reality tv show Survivor in : https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Reality_Television.html?id=mFVHXwAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

This week, Two Shrinks is leaving behind cluster B personality disorders and launching into cluster C, taking a long look at Avoidant Personality Disorder. We’ll chat about the people who seem shy, quiet and invisible, hanging out on the the fringes of social interactions. Continuing our PD series, we’ll take you through diagnosis, theories and treatment. As always, we wrap up with things we came across - Hunter discloses he has been binging on a Survivor podcast (Oz survivor). and ponders the effects of watching reality tv on aggression? Then they discloses Are Amy’s phantom vibrations normal?

Join us next time for Dependent PD!

Avoidant PD material from:
Personality Disorders in Modern Life, 2nd Edn. Millon & colleagues
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edn (DSM-5)

Things we came across:

Oz Survivor podcast - http://australiansurvivor.libsyn.com/website
Post-reality tv watching aggression - http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-33476-001
Phantom vibrations - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563212000799